Ever since the pandemic, working from home has increasingly become the norm for many industries. While the shift was initially due to necessity, with employers needing work to get done while being unable to have workers in the office, now even with the availability of vaccines and lower cases of COVID nation-wide, companies everywhere are choosing to remain remote. While there are many perks for the work-from-home employee, maintaining a balance can be difficult as the line is blurred between ‘work’ time and ‘home’ time, so we recommend these tips to stay productive (and sane).
Set Boundaries: If you have a spouse or kids at home while you’re working, be sure to set clear boundaries about when you’re working. This can be a physical boundary, such as they shouldn’t enter your office space during set hours or if the door is closed, or communication barriers if you don’t have a dedicated office space where you shouldn’t be approached if you have your headphones on during certain hours.
Have a Schedule: Working from home usually means you have a portal or login to your job which you can access whenever you like. While this is great for hopping on to submit a report you forgot about after hours, if you’re not careful the line between ‘on the clock’ and not can quickly be erased. The opposite can also happen where you may log on later and later in the morning, thinking you’ll just make up for it in the evening. Once this starts, its hard to get back on track, so always set an alarm to get up early enough to still eat a healthy breakfast or get some physical activity before starting to look at work, and once you log off in the afternoon resist the urge to hop back on unless its an emergency. Many bosses can fall victim to this themselves and try to reach out well after normal business hours. Unless your job requires you to be available, don’t be afraid to wait until the next day to respond.
Avoid ‘Meeting Creep’: With most meetings moving to virtual with Zoom or Google Meets, and many managers wanting to make up for the lack of in-person interaction with a whole heap of virtual meetings, you work day can quickly fill up with calls that get little accomplished. Also, if you’re forced to stop working in the middle of a project to hop on a call it can seriously side-track your productivity. An easy way to avoid this is scheduling meetings in large blocks of time when you plan to get actual work done. That way, when your co-workers check your schedule to see if you’re available for a call, they’ll be forced to pick a time when you’re not planning to knock out some work. Another strategy, albeit one that requires your employer to be on-board, is to simply not schedule any meetings except on certain days (like Monday to ensure everyone is aligned on what to get done that week).
Treat It Like an Office Job: Staying motivated and focused can be though. One big factor in this is feeling attached to the work. A great way to stay connected is to treat working from home just like an office job. Get up on time, put on office clothes even if nobody will see you, don’t sit on the sofa and work while watching TV, don’t take a 2-hour lunch break (but also don’t just eat at your desk while working). Its easy to get away with these things for a while when working remote, but eventually those bad habits catch up to you in the form of lower productivity or burn-out, so pace yourself, but make sure the pace is a good one.