The idea of remote work was never new. But for some of us who are forced to work from home because of the pandemic, it can be a daunting feat.
Here are our tips for those who are currently finding it difficult to work inside the confines of their homes.
Create Spatial Boundaries
The biggest difficulty of the work from home arrangement is blurring the lines between work and home. It is best to designate and create a working space inside your home even if it is just a corner or a small space.
At the minimum, hold yourself back from working on your bed since this is where you sleep and relax. Set aside a part of the dining table, a corner of your living room, or bedroom, as your house office. For this to be effective, ask family members or housemates to refrain from using the space and disturbing you while you are working.
Follow A Daily Routine
Since it is extremely easy to be swayed to do other things while working from home, sticking to a daily routine is the best antidote to a meandering focus. In these times when almost all of us are advised to stay at home, it is best to a have schedule for the whole day.
A good example of a workday schedule is below:
It is understandable that there will be days when you won’t be able to faithfully stick with your planned schedule. The key is to have some minimum that must be followed at all cost. Having an eight-hour sleep and eating breakfast before working are examples of non-negotiables that you can set for yourself.
For those who are workaholic, keep in mind that work matters must only be entertained within working hours. For your sanity, the rest of your day should be allotted to yourself, family, and other things.
Like the example schedule, the best daily routines are those that look out for your holistic health. As many social media posts say these days, you are not merely working from home. You are working from home, coping up with a pandemic. It is most important that you incorporate activities in your schedule that improve your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
If you have a business or just curious about how to proceed with social media management during the Covid-19 Pandemic, read our previous article: Social Media Management During the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Choose Collaboration Tools that Fits Your Working Needs
Thanks to technology, remote work is getting easier day by day. For those who are new to remote work, you can explore a lot of collaboration tools online. In consideration of the pandemic, most of the premium account offerings of these tools are free right now.
You can maximize these offerings to wisely choose the tools that can be of great fit to you and your company’s working needs. Collaboration tools are usually divided into three types: Communication, Project and Task Management, and File Sharing and Management.
Some of the popular communication tools that you can try out are Zoom, Google Hangouts, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Skype. Most of these tools enable call conferencing, file sharing, screen sharing, and live chats.
For project and task management, you can check out Asana, Trello, Airtable, Huddle, Wrike, Basecamp, and Monday. These will help your company in tracking progress of projects and accountability easily. Most of these have brainstorming boards and tools, calendar integration, scheduling, and reminders.
For sharing and organizing large size of files, the known ones are Google Drive, Dropbox, Nomadesk, MediaFire, Glasscubes, MS Sharepoint, and Confluence.
With these tools, working without physically meeting with each other becomes smoother and more manageable.
Standby for our next article on how to jumpstart a freelancing career.