We all know how ‘work from home’ work model is now being claimed as making employees feel like they are ‘living at work’. And, we won’t deny that too, in a way it is true. However, if we contemplate and see the reasons as to why we are feeling like we are ‘living at work’ then the one loud and clear reason for it would be not having a routine. Only if we would have woken up timely, taken our office timings seriously and worked only during the office hours, this would have not been the case.
Nevertheless, it is never too late to get back on track. In this blog, we share with you a step by step guide that combines technology like attendance management software and small lifestyle changes to help you be more productive and punctual self while you are still working from home. Let’s start!
Plan the day in advance-
It is very important to have a purpose in your life every day. Without clarity of what you are going to do the next day, you can end up either doing nothing at all or trying to do many things at once. In both the scenario, By the end of the day, you will have no sense of achievement which in turn will make you gloomy and worried. The cycle continues and your work gets piled on and postponed for the next days.
To break free from this cycle, you must start making a highlight of the day that you do for your happiness while you are planning the tasks for the next day.
Categorise tasks into Urgent & Important-
Wake up in the morning and make buckets for home and office tasks in the list you have prepared last night. For instance, for office tasks, for a social media marketer important tasks can include studying the competitors’ social media platforms and the urgent task can be making a post on a trending hashtag that can be used to represent the brand. Likewise, for home, important can be to order grocery items and urgent can be to get the water leakage any electrical appliance fixed.
This method further helps in decluttering the tasks buzzing in mind and then doing the tasks that are urgent first and the important tasks at your peak productive hours of the day or night.
Mark attendance timely and really mean it-
Working with discipline is of paramount importance. Make sure you mark your attendance as per your shift timely in the HR and attendance management software your company uses and this shall help you furthermore. There is a list of free tools available on the internet to help you better organise your day in terms of life and work both. However, few of the tools that we feel don’t require much effort and help you immensely are Google tasks, Google Keep, Google Drive and if you company is using a robust HCM suite, nothing like it. There are a lot of things you can so with all these tools. Together they can help you get more things done successfully each day whether you are working from home or not working from home.
Let’s talk a little about how you can use each one of them judiciously-
Google Keep- This tool by google comes at the right-hand sidebar of your Gmail account. When you are in a meeting or you are working on something but ideas for some other tasks spring in your head, you can write them sparingly and organise them later. You can aslo save essential links shred in the meeting or you find relevant to your work here.
Google Tasks- This hits two swords with one arrow. While, as the name suggests, this tool helps you in writing the tasks for the day, it also is synced with calendar and clock to time your tasks. You can rearrange them on the basis of urgency and then tick them when after the other when you are done. The manner in which the task gets cut off from the list is something many find oddly satisfying, chances are you too will.
Google Drive- When you use this to make presentations, documents and other files and folders you save yourself from sending a lot of emails. Just make a folder for your team and give access to everyone. So, anyone in the team can add and access anything in the folder without having to nudge each other unnecessarily.
Your HR software- Using all the features in your HR software especially the ones that are related to communication, collaboration, attendance and recognition is really important. The attendance management software and timesheet should be used diligently. Both of these help reinforce discipline even more. Besides, chat features and other features to appreciate the efforts of each other should also be used. They help in increasing productivity.
Distract your distractions-
If you continue to fail even after planning for the days in advance then you need to look at your distractions. When you have not timed your usage of mobile and doing house chore, ‘living at work’ thing is bound to happen. No one is to be blamed but you. We all have the same hours and time; hence, set times for sending and reading emails, checking mobile, news, apps. The best trick in case of mobile is to keep it elsewhere. When you are on an important task, time it and make sure you keep your mobile out of sight and block news notifications on your laptop.
Disconnect, it’s necessary-
For people who live with you at home and for yourself, it is necessary to have a ritual that tells your body and people around that your work has come to a halt for today and now you can make time for yourself and your family. This is called disconnecting. It can be as simple as walking, taking a bath, meditating, listening to music, cooking a meal, anything that relaxes you.
Bonus tip: Make sure you have different places to different tasks at home. Don’t sit at one place for the whole day for all your tasks. And, keep your place of sleep sacred. Don’t bring work there!
Implement these and let us know in the comments which tip works the best for you out of all the aforementioned ones.
Have a Happy and Balanced WFH!