Doctor Pam’s Tips About Working From Home
24 March 2020
Many of us (including me) are coming to terms with a new way of working. Here’s a few tips I’ve found helpful:
- Separate your work space from your relaxing space physically if possible, or at least in your head
- Keep regular office hours – I tend start looking at emails about half an hour after I get up then I get suckered into starting work far earlier than normal – don’t do this!
- If you are caring for others or have kids at home, try and set ground rules for when they can interrupt you, and agree when you will devote time for them and when you really need to be working
- Try and do some ‘normal’ work as well as Covid-related work
- Keep your workspace tidy as you would at work, don’t spread everything round the house
- If you have remote conferencing, use the video facility if possible as it’s lovely to see colleagues, and admire their home décor (you can blur the background on most of these platforms if you don’t want others to see how much your kitchen needs painting)
- Stay off social media while you are working, it will only depress you
- Play music rather than listen to the news on the radio
- Get up every hour (set an alarm on your phone) and move about for a few minutes
- Use those moments to do a little household chore you keep putting off – my cutlery draw is now clean and tidy
- Get some fresh air and exercise at least once a day – be creative!
- Don’t snack all day and use the opportunity to be creative with meals, my husband loves that I can do the cooking for once
- Make sure you stop at a reasonable time, leave your desk and switch your devices off
- Vary your routine from day to day
- Enjoy the reduced commute time and use it to reconnect with family and friends, even if only remotely. This will help switch your head from ‘work’ to ‘home’
I’ve failed at quite a lot of the above in recent days, so please remember to go easy on yourself! I’ve found it quite hard to focus sometimes, but going for one walk a day has helped, even if it seems weird during ‘normal’ working hours.