Tips for working from home

With the COVID19 crisis, most of us are obliged to work from home.

For the majority of my career, I’ve had access to working from home, and even though, I have been working full time remotely since mid November of 2019, it’s been tricky adjusting to the emotional stress of confinement and not being able to freely go to meetings or fulfill the business trips I had planned. Our minds are struggling to adapt to the “new normal” while we also have to readjust our day-to-day organization.

Here are a some tips and tools that have been helpful for me to make the most of the current reality.

Plan your weeks in details

Confinement adds logistics on top of your actual workload: home schooling your kids, having your pet around all the time, taking care of your home (laundry, dishes, etc), planning all the meals, not being able to go to the gym or for a run. You name it.

With having everything & everyone at home 100% of the time, it can be tricky to make the separation from work and home. Even more so, if you don’t have a dedicated space or home office. I’ve found it helpful to plan ahead the activities I want to do each day to give it structure and have time to do the essentials while giving a rhythm. It allows a better separation and transition of work time and personal time.

To do that, I’ve created in my Google Calendar an extra agenda: called it “confinement” and chose a different color from my existing ones. Then I added the activities or things I want to get done each day like fitness/yoga ; meditation ; playing music (piano or guitar) ; and also added the breaks I need to take for lunch and to unwind when the work day is over.

Reinforce your habits

Additionally, I use the Habits app which I find amazing: it’s simple and so effective. You create a list of each habit you want to put in place in your routine, it’s both a great reminder of what you want to do but also a great motivation tool as you get to tick each habit when you’ve done them. It can be: reading, writing, listening to a podcast, exercising, meditating, learning something specific, going for a walk. Anything!

Daily to do

Decide what your daily priorities are going to be, then write them down / or add them to your virtual to do. My to dos are both on paper and on Trello.

Your items must be specific! Projects you work on involve many different steps to get achieved, those steps are what will eventually lead you to complete them successfully. So identify them and be as specific as possible in your to do, if you are vague, there’s a greater chance it will take you longer to complete a task.

Focusing

The good things about being at home is you won’t be interrupted by colleagues in the open space or spend to much time at the coffee hub. On the flip side, there are a lot of other distractions in your home that can keep you from working. It can be the temptation of sleeping in, procrastinating, being interrupted by family members, doing household duties, or just getting sucked into emails or social media.

There are many different productivity methods out there, the one I use is the Pomodoro technique, which is a time management system that gives you 25 minutes work time followed by 5 minutes break. While you are on the 25 minutes timer you must only focus on your work task - not peeking at emails, not peeking at your phone, not going for a coffee break!

Go to work!

Not literally right! Just act as if you were actually going to the office: set your alarm, have breakfast, do your workout, get dressed as you normally would. It is tempting to stay in pajamas all day (and I’m not saying I never do it!), but actually being dressed and ready puts you in a much more dynamic headspace.

The ideal situation is to have a home office, if you don’t, organize a space you can dedicate to your work, ideally a table with a chair. Avoid working from the couch or from the bed, not good for your back, not good for your productivity!

Connect with stakeholders

It is super important to stay connected with your team and stakeholders both for carrying on your projects but also for your sanity! If you don’t already have planed meetings, schedule them proactively. Make sure you identify the people you need to maintain a regular communication with. Being remote doesn’t mean you should work alone - at all!

How has quarantine impacted your workflow and what have you put in place to reorganize? Share your thoughts and tips on the comment section!

Take care, stay home & be safe! P.