Hello Everyone! I come to you with some tips on how to survive working from home during this pandemic. Some of these are going to be technology related and some are not. You may be reading this when you are already working from home, but some of these tips may be helpful to you even after returning to the office. You may also work from home every so often even before the pandemic started, so these tips may be helpful to you.
- Having a routine is key. Try to do what you normally do if you go to the office, so for instance for me, I would eat breakfast at my desk before i actually start working. I still do that however, I don’t eat at my desk because my desk isn’t as nice as it is at the office, no big deal, so i sit out in the living room/eating area.
- Be comfortable, if that’s being in your PJ’s while you work, as long as you are not in meetings where your co-workers can see you, then I do not see a problem with that. I’ll admit I tend to sit in my PJ’s all day long while I work because I am comfortable in my PJ’s.
- Ensure that you are taking breaks as often as you are able to. Me, I try to eat my lunch at the same time every day, however, sometimes depending on what i eat for lunch, I am not always hungry at the same time every day. I also try and take a break 45 minutes before the end of my shift, you are probably thinking, why take a break when you are almost done with work. It goes back to the first thing i mentioned. Having a Routine, because if you break that routine it could potentially make your working from home experience not so great.
- Make sure your internet connection is up to par for being able to use your workplaces work from home solution. Check with your IT department to see if they have any recommendations on what your internet speed should be, they may even ask you to run a speed test to ensure that your speed is going to be good enough. If you have kids or spouses that are using streaming services, you may want to limit the amount of devices that are streaming at one time.
- Work/Life balance, i cant stress that enough. You might be thinking to yourself, well i’m already at home…so that is already out the window. Yes that is true, however, you can take PTO even though you are at home and even though you wont really be able to do much at this time depending on your states guidelines but then you wont feel like you have to be checking your emails if you are out on PTO. Working from home can definitely take a toll on your physical health, and most definitely your mental health because during this time you may not go out as much as you used to when you were working in the office because of the pandemic and you wont be collaborating with your co-workers like you were when you were in the office.