My tips for you while working from home to help you keep productive and feel less isolated
Start the day as you would normally do if coming into the office
- Get showered, dressed and coffee breakfast etc before sitting down to work
- This helps to shift the brain into a different gear than if you just roll out of bed and start working in your PJ’s
‘Go to the office’ and keep up the commute
- If you don’t have a home office, do as much as you can to create an ad hoc, bespoke space exclusively for work
- We can’t physically commute, which provides clearer boundaries to the workday, so it is important to ‘bookend your day’
- For example start with 20-minute coffee in the morning and then exercise or go for a walk right after work to open and close the day
Make a plan / to-do-list
- when working alone from home it is much easier to get distracted, so be sure to keep a more structured daily schedule than usual
Stay hydrated
- People tend to drink more water and less tea and coffee when in the office – so make sure you keep a glass or jug of water on the go
Take more micro breaks
- Once an hour walk away from the laptop and go and stand in the garden, on the balcony or simply look out the window for 5mins
Keep up human contact
- Where possible when you need to communicate with a colleague or client use video conferencing before picking up the phone, and pick up the phone before emailing
- Take ‘virtual’ coffee or fag breaks with colleagues while on video call to stay better connected