How to Work from Home without Killing the Cat

Many of you will have been working at home for a while now because of the Covid-19 virus outbreak. It can be quite a stressful time when you’re either sharing a space with other family members or living and working alone.

If you want some strategies to reduce stress and stay calm and in control, check out 7 great tips in last week’s blog How to Manage Your Career Stress During Covid-19 and sign into The Career Café for more tips from other contributors.

There are also a lot of practical things you can do to make sure that working from home is successful during this time.

It’s especially important if you’re sharing your space with other family members.

Set times when you are working and when you are not.

Agree them with other household members and stick to them. You’ll need to agree about things like when it’s ok to have background noise and when you’d like some quiet.

This may seem particularly important if you’re having video calls but remember that most other people globally are experiencing similar conditions and will probably be tolerant of a little disturbance background noise.

For some people, working from home can feel very isolating and this may seem more so if you are unable to go out and socialise with people.

Make sure that you use technology to see and speak with friends as well as colleagues.

Having a virtual coffee can work wonders for your morale.

I have already had several and it’s a great joy even though we’re in different places. Tools such as Skype, Zoom, WhatsApp are all free to use for such meetings.

Remember The Career Café as well, where you can interact with others.

Make sure that you schedule regular breaks and a longer one for lunch.

When you do, leave your desk and the room. This can be a good time to use some of the calming strategies from last week’s blog for a mini-recharge of your batteries:

How to Manage Your Career Stress During Covid-19

Dress for the occasion - work.

This may or may not apply to you, but many people find that even though they are working from home, dressing for work gets them in the right frame of mind to get things done and they work far more efficiently. It also provides your brain with an anchor to say “this is work time” and another when you change at the end of the day to say “work is over, it’s time to relax and focus on family and personal things”.

Stretch those legs.

Depending on how the restrictions on movement go, you’ll also find that a walk around the block just before you start and another back (preferably the other way), provide another clear signal to your brain that you’re going into work mode and coming out of it again.

When we have more freedom of movement on the other side of Covid-19, this is a great strategy.

Master the technology.

As well as using it for social catch ups as I suggested earlier, you’ll most likely have your work emails and maybe some other work tools up on your computer. Make sure that when you’d finished work you’ve turned them off so that you can spend some quality time with yourself or others away from work.

It’s up to you to manage your agenda!

If you’ve got questions (or your own tips!) about working from home, pop them in The Career Café and I’ll respond in there.

(The Career Cafe is my free community to support your career through the Covid-19 outbreak - and beyond!)

Click here to visit The Career Café.

The next Career Café Live is tomorrow, Tuesday 31^st March at 12:30 where we’ll be talking about the challenges of working from home.

See you in there!

Dave

PS. A recap for your links:

How to Manage Your Career Stress During Covid-19

The Career Café