Working remotely or from home was becoming a norm even before the pandemic started. With COVID-19 lockdown, it became mandatory for everyone to start working from home. Now, for people who have never worked a day from their home, this can be quite challenging. Or even for people who work once or twice a month for the home can find it a struggle because you are working remotely for a long time.
Depending on the person, this can be a blessing in disguise or a difficult challenge. If you have an office setup, the right tools, the ability to work better and more productively from home, and so on, remote working is not a problem for you. But for others, this can be quite a change, and adapting to it can sure take a lot of time and help.
But don’t worry, working from home can be fun and relaxing, and you get to spend more time with your family as the commuting hours decrease. In this blog, we will discuss some tips that can help you make gradual changes and adapt to a life of remote working. Let’s begin.
1. Go easy on yourself
Any transition can have a big effect on you physically and mentally, and working remotely is no different. You may feel anxious or isolated or nervous, or you can feel happy and relieved at this change. Whatever the case is, make sure you give yourself time to accept all these feelings and go from there. Not accepting will make it harder for you to adapt to the changes, and will decrease your productivity.
2. Communicate
Communicating is an important part of ensuring that there is always trust between the members of a team. But when you and your team are unable to look at each other and communicate or have timely communication, it can become a problem. Thus, you must communicate a lot. Here are some tips to keep in mind:
- Schedule a meeting every day once or twice to check in on your team members and get a timely update
- Video calls or chats or emails are all good for keeping a check on your team and communicating formally or informally
- Create a calendar using Canva with schedules of all the meetings that the team should attend in the entire day, and share it with them.
- Ask for help or reach out to offer help to your teammates if they need it. Don’t hesitate to do the same.
- Furthermore, if you leave the desk for a minute while the team is online, drop a note so that if anyone tries contacting you, they know about it.
3. Manage your time
Working remotely means logging in more hours. Despite what managers think, a worker usually works more because it becomes hard to leave your work. We keep thinking that we can get in more work and logging off seems quite hard. But this is not good for your health or personal life. You need to manage your time, and by that, I mean, start in the morning every day at the same time, and log off work at the same time at night, unless you have something urgent to do.
It will give you time to spend with your family, do something for yourself, or relax.
4. Create a routine
Now that you have a dedicated time phrase to work in, you also need to create a routine so that you can work better. Start the day by waking up on a similar time every day. Do your morning chores, exercise, eat a hearty breakfast, and then set-up your office? Make sure you have everything with you for the day. Also, create a to-do list which will help you get through all the tasks important or small for the day.
Also, the first thing every day after you enter your make-shift office is work on your calendar to see what meetings you have or what you need to schedule and let your team members know about the same.
5. Pay attention to environment or furniture
No matter whether you are working remotely for a month or months, you need to make it comfortable for you. So, invest in a good set of chairs that is comfortable for your back. If you don’t have a dedicated room for your office, buy a small desk and chair that you can fit in a corner. Also, invest in good quality headphones as it will help you communicate better with your team members.
Working from home can be great for you, you just need time to adapt to it. Also, it can give you a chance to work on other projects that you always wanted to try.
