Like many other people in the world right now, we recently found ourselves working from home, not as a choice, but as a necessity, which is not actually bad, it is actually kind of awesome, the commute gets eliminated, we have a lot more control on how to set up our working space, we got rid of a lot of unnecessary meetings, etc. however it does come with certain challenges, after some time, we start to feel less motivated, less productive, and our professional life and personal life start to blur together. When there are no supervisors or coworkers, it is harder to stay on task and to avoid certain temptations. And every decision becomes yours to make, which can be overwhelming when you are used to a certain schedule, so how can we work effectively from home?
The first thing to take care of is the environment, which is our workspace, when setting up our working station at home we need to take into consideration two important things: Separation and isolation.
By separation, I mean setting up a place that has a singular purpose, a place that will serve just as a working station, the surroundings we put ourselves in has a certain amount of influence over our psychological states and the choices we make, we can choose another place for relaxations. We need to separate between the working space and the living space, so our brain does not get distracted by other things around and stay on task.
By Isolation, I mean to stay away from people you can get distracted by, people you live with, it is very easy to get distracted by people when your working spot is in a place where people you live with use in common.
The second tip, we need to adapt to is a working routine, in other words, “time management”, especially after eliminating the commute from our schedule, we have more time that we need to well manage, the time we get up at, we need to make sure that our body is physically is on a certain schedule. As we are working from home, sometimes, we do not know when to stop, having a working routine is going to be critical for our own happiness.
Another essential tip is to make sure you take a break; it is very important to refresh and come back with a clearer head.
Do not forget to enjoy working from home, it can be a privilege, it is time when you do not have a commute and time you can be closer to your loved once.
