With the ongoing pandemic, many people are being asked to work from home. Working in your home office can require more discipline than working in a traditional work environment. Here are some tips for maintaining productivity in your home office:
- Schedule: Create a schedule and stick to it! Try to mimic your normal working hours. It’s important to maintain some level of separation between work and play time even without the physical separation between the two. I would recommend if your office hours are 8am-4pm, plan to work those hours like you normally would.
- Breaktime: Allow yourself to take short breaks. Get up every hour or two and walk around for 10 or 15 minutes. The weather is starting to get nice out, so even a quick walk around the block is a good way to break up the day.
- Home office: Find a space to set up and specifically designate it as your workspace. Try not to have your work area be the same area as where you relax. It’s important when your workday is done you can leave it “at the office.”
- Technical difficulties: Allow extra time for technical glitches. Sometimes the internet will get taxed due to the extra traffic. Be sure to allow additional time when loading or pulling up applications.
- People need people: Try to spend some time socializing. All work and no play makes for a lousy disposition. We are social creatures by design and social distancing is hard on many people. I would suggest at least doing one if not two virtual events a week. Possibly host a virtual happy hour with some of your friends or a virtual coffee during the day.
- Morning Routine. Get up and shower like you normally would. This may sound obvious but act as if you are heading to the office. Clean up and dress as you would generally do in the office. Pajamas are great the first few days, but it can get old really fast. Maintaining some sense of normalcy during this trying time can be very challenging.