According to research from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 71% of organizations faced difficulty with transitioning to remote work in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. However, even now, you could struggle to ace the work-from-home game.
It can admittedly feel like a very trial-and-error affair, where some of the things that seemingly worked well for you in the office don’t quite fly in a residential environment. However, here are some WFH strategies that, at least for a fair few people, should work…
Prepare a schedule for each day
Once you’ve ascertained everything that needs doing on a given workday, you should compile all of the necessary tasks in one schedule to keep at close hand.
Lifehack quotes wikiHow’s Kathi Burns as saying: “A schedule is an effective means of staying focused, productive, and organized. You can experiment with a planner, notebook, or an app to structure your time.” You should then cross off each task as you complete it.
Remember to take time out
There will inevitably be a lunch break anyway, but you should probably allocate other breaks into your daily schedule, too – even if these breaks will only last a few minutes at a time.
As for what you should do during those breaks, you could simply nibble on a healthy snack, open the window to get some fresh air or even chat to another human being. After all, continually working from home can risk you feeling somewhat adrift when it comes to social contact.
Make good use of video conferencing
This is where your choice of technology can especially come into play. For example, if you would like to hold a meeting with co-workers, you could make this meeting a webinar, which Lifewire defines as “a live, web-based video conference that uses the internet”.
To helm a webinar to a high standard, you should look for the right webinar platform. Yes, right now, you might be thinking: “What is a webinar platform?” It’s a platform that should integrate a wide range of interactivity tools for making webinar delivery especially straightforward.
Find reliable ways to alleviate stress
We probably all have our own ways of relieving stress – whether that’s listening to music, stroking a cat or even just sipping a cup of tea.
It’s not hard to see how you could do any of the above-mentioned things during a hectic work day – even if the cat might admittedly be drawn to you more often than vice versa!
Keep away from social media when you can
Social media can be a horrendous drain on your time. You could look at your Facebook feed once, be distracted by something you see on it and then, before you know it, have spent a huge chunk of time watching a silly video rather than focusing on your usual work.
Though your job might require you to sometimes head onto social media, you should generally deter yourself from this practice, such as by hiding away your mobile devices.