Key Takeaways
- Many employees started working from home during the pandemic, and they continue to do so two years on.
- If you work from home, there are some things you can do to help put yourself in a good mindset and stay productive.
- We’ll review eight tips for the remote worker.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, employees all over the world, who had the option to do so, shifted to working from home. It’s now been more than two years since that shift occurred, and many of those employees continue to work remotely, even as office spaces reopened.
If you’re one of these employees, you undoubtedly found that the benefits outweigh the negatives to working from home. Nonetheless, remote work isn’t without its challenges, but there are things you can do to optimize working from home. We’ll review eight of the 11 from a recent Nationwide Financial article here:
1. Stay connected. It’s easy to become isolated and miss the camaraderie of being in an office environment. As humans, we need to feel connected to others, otherwise we can start to feel down and become negative in our thinking. Find ways to stay connected with your team, your community, your family, and your friends.
2. Take breaks. A good rule to follow is to take a ten-minute break every hour. Stand up, stretch, and move around, especially if you’re sitting in a chair for most of your day. Breaks will help you feel refreshed and refocused.
3. Minimize distractions. If possible, situate your office in a separate part of the house, ideally in a room where you can shut the door. This way, work stays separate from your homelife, minimizing the chances that you’re distracted while you’re working. Of course, this goes both ways, and when you’re finished with work for the day or the week, you can close the door and focus on your personal life.
4. Dress for success. When you dress well, it puts you in a certain state of mind. By wearing your work clothes, your mind gets the signal that it’s time to work.
5. Break the paper habit. A messy desk, piled with papers, will hinder your ability to stay organized. Going as paperless as possible will help declutter your workspace and make your working environment more pleasant.
6. Change up your environment. By not being tied to an office, you can work just about anywhere – from your patio, from a coffee shop, or from a park. You can also go for a walk around the block, meet a friend for lunch, or any number of things to help change up your environment. Doing so helps reset your brain and refresh you when you return to your desk.
7. Make virtual meetings look professional. Along with dressing for success, pay attention to how you come across on camera when you’re in a virtual meeting. Look straight into the camera, center yourself, smile, and engage with your co-workers. Remember that this is the only time they’re seeing you these days, unlike the in-person office days where you’d see each other every day. Make a conscious effort to make a good impression.
8. Protect your time. Don’t let people “should” on you and don’t allow them to schedule you. It’s easy, in this digital day and age, for things to suddenly appear on your calendar. Protect your time and make sure you’re doing what you know you need to be doing to fulfill your job responsibilities.
Hopefully these tips will help if you’re one of the many people working from home these days. It certainly looks like remote work is here to stay, so making the most of it just makes sense. Until next time, enjoy.
Gary
If you’d like to read more on this topic, here are a few of Gary’s previous posts that you might enjoy:
