Tips for working from home
COVID-19 is changing the way we work. It’s certainly a big challenge – one that requires us to embrace new ways of working. Here are Shell and Em’s tips for how to work effectively and productively from home. Check out the latest my millennial career episode where they share these strategies:
1. Overcommunicate
When it comes to communication while working remotely – less is NOT more. Your productivity is influenced by how well you communicate with your manager and your teams. Beyond impacting your productivity, isolation can also reduce your overall wellbeing and engagement. One way to bridge the gap is to overcommunicate with your team. Here are a couple of our ideas to increase connection and communication:
As soon as you start work, instant message your team and manager to say hello just like you would when you arrive at work.
Consider scheduling short daily stand-ups with your team. This creates connection and community.
Proactively communicate to your manager. Tell them what you’re working on each week and any roadblocks you might face. Chances are, your manager is juggling a lot of moving pieces during this crisis. Receiving your update will reassure them that you’re getting things done. Happy manager, happy life (that’s the saying right?).
Agree on the comms platform. Is it Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, text, Zoom, carrier pigeon? Who knows when there are so many options?! To reduce confusion and communicate well, make sure you agree on what communication channels you’ll use. Once decided, be disciplined and stick to the agreed channel.
Create moments in the week that help people to communicate and connect. Consider the varying needs of the people you work with. Ask your introverted team members to proactively look out for their extroverted peers who may be struggling with the lack of interaction. Intentionally create opportunities for online social connection. This will help both personality types to feel energised. And let’s face it – we could all use a bit more fun in our lives right now!
2. Create an environment that works for you
Find a space that works for you. It might the spare room, the dining table, the lounge, or maybe the back deck. Whatever you do, create an environment that is conducive to the type of work you’re performing.
Now that you’ve found it, eliminate as many distractions as you can. Distractions look like things you can wash, fold, sort, vacuum, mop, or chuck. Instead, clean and declutter your workspace each night. That will enable you to start your morning well. A clean and clutter-free environment is the best environment to get you in the zone.
3. Schedule your day
Self-accountability is crucial when working from home. It’s easier to procrastinate when you don’t have any peer or management oversight. So, maximise each day by scheduling your days using your calendar. You might be having less meetings than you would have before COVID-19. But you can still be using your calendar to help you become more productive.
Ensure that you have time allocated to perform high value, focused work. Complete the lower value, busy work around that – like emails and so on. My calendar for the week looks about 70% full. I then have a buffer each day for the unexpected things that come up – which let’s face, is happening a lot at the moment. Look at the complex activities you would normally procrastinate over. Schedule them in first thing. If you knock over the tough actions first, you'll feel a sense of momentum and achievement.
Another way I schedule my day and create self-accountability is by blocking all social media sites from my phone during work hours. I limit my daily usage to 15 mins per day and that they can only be accessed during breaks.
4. It's all about the breaks!
When working from home, breaks are super important. After having a break, we are more productive and attentive to the task at hand. So why is it so hard for us to actually take breaks?
Maybe subconsciously we think having a break negatively impacts our momentum. That they stall progress and output. Well the good news is that breaks do just the opposite. They reduce mental fatigue, activate creativity, problem solving and increase our concentration.
So why not find moments in the day to go outside and get fresh air. Instead of feeling the pressure to work non-stop all day, take 15 minutes and go for a walk around your street. If you’ve been working on a task that required a lot of focus, step away from the laptop and phone and take a break! Your work will thank you for it later.
5. Find child/partner/housemate free time
Ok. So this is the most challenging one. With the kids home from school and partners or house mates also working remotely, finding a quiet workspace is super tough, but not impossible. Work really hard to find windows of time where you are uninterrupted throughout the day or week. I promise it will be worth it. By doing this – it will enable you to continue to deliver high quality work.
I aim to find two blocks of 90 minutes per day where I can do deep work (inspired by Cal Newport’s book ‘Deep Work’). During this time, my family know I’m uninterruptable. It means I can work in a quiet space and get the more complex parts of my job done. The remaining day involves meetings and intermittent shallow work. These are the times where it is easier for me to be interrupted.
To do this, it may mean you need to change your start and finish times. Maybe for you it means starting at 5:00am – 6:30am to get uninterrupted work time before the kids wake up. Or perhaps it means that you do 8pm – 10pm at night. Do everything you can to find windows of time in your week where you’re uninterruptable. Your work deserves your full attention. And then, when you switch off, your family deserves your full attention, which leads us to the second biggest challenge of working from home – boundaries.
6. Set boundaries
The big struggle with working from home is setting boundaries and switching off. But to perform your role effectively in the long term, good boundaries are so crucial.
There are two reasons it’s hard to switch off when working from home:
The first is that people feel like they need to go above and beyond to demonstrate they are adding value. It can lead to working longer hours and being ‘on’ all the time.
The second reason it’s hard to switch off is because the workspace is in the home. This means there is no time or process to transition out of work mode into home mode.
This means we need to be disciplined in setting boundaries. Develop your own ‘end of day’ routine to help you switch off. Create a visual signal that says you’re switching off. It might be shutting down of your laptop rather than just closing it. Perhaps you can put your laptop in the car or out of immediate reach. Maybe it’s turning off your email notifications on your phone. Find an end of day routine that works for you and repeat it. This healthy boundary will ensure you’re able to sustain your performance in the long term.
7. Say no to trackies!
Controversial? Maybe. But hear me out. We know visual signals are important for our brain and our body. What we wear is one of those signals. It’s tells our brains the type of activity we will be performing and acts as a catalyst to get us into that head space.
When I’m binge watching a series on Netflix, I don’t wear anything from my corporate wardrobe. I’m in trackies, mismatched bed socks and an oversized jumper. This signal tells me I’m in relax mode. The reverse is also true when working from home. Don't get me wrong, you don't need to be in full corporate attire. But find something in between trackies and corporate. Something that sends you the right message and gets you into the zone.
8. Embrace new ways of working and keep adding value!
COVID-19 is fundamentally changing the way businesses operate. Business models are being reinvented. Organisations are transforming their products and offerings at pace. These changes are having and will continue to have huge impacts on the workforce.
If there’s one thing we can learn from COVID-19 it’s that nothing is certain. We can all be disrupted and we can all choose to grow or stagnate in a challenge. So, embrace the challenge. Embrace the new ways of working. Through this crisis businesses will learn to operate in new ways. They will learn that they can be productive and responsive with a remote workforce. They will learn what their customers truly value and pivot operations to suit those needs. So that means that you need to find ways to add value and to innovate. Seek out challenging opportunities or risks. Find the projects that might be outside your comfort zone and get on them. Through this crisis show the business you’re able to innovate, receptive to change and continually adding value. This will future proof your career. And when we through this crisis, you’ll be ready for whatever it looks like.
