Work from home during lockdown

Working from home during lockdown has been a struggle for many people and so this blog post offers some survival tips and a plan for success.

Whether you are a student, unemployed, or juggling homeschooling and a fulltime job, these tips will help create a structure and routine to your day.

Routine and structure

Create a daily routine and stick to it, even if you don't have a job. It helps to have a structure to your day and planning each day gives you a sense of purpose.

Create a daily routine that mixes work, fun, and household chores. 

Mix 90-minute sprints with mindless time. Switch between the two and use a timer. Spend a solid 90-minutes focused on something important. It might be work, or a creative project. It might be playing a game or working with your kids on their homeschooling. When the timer goes off, take a proper break, then you can wash some clothes, or do something mindless and then when the timer goes off again, jump back into another 90-minute sprint.

Try and find a reason to leave the house every day. If you can exercise, then do so, or walk the dog. Otherwise go and stand outside for a while. If you have a deck or a garden, make sure you sit out there for a while every day.

Move around the house, and have dedicated spaces for different types of tasks. Eat at the table, read in a chair, watch TV on the couch, and work on your laptop from bed or sitting at a desk. It helps to switch tasks and locations. Move around the house to add variety and break the monotony.

If you are working from home, try and make your workspace and your relaxing space two different spaces. Just because you can sit on your bed all day, doesn't mean you should. Set up a chair in the corner for reading and then do some stretching on the floor. Do your work in one location and then read or watch TV in a different location.

Mornings

Get up, get dressed, and make the bed. If you are going to be on video calls throughout the day, make sure you are as presentable as if you were meeting face-to-face. It's good for morale to be clean shaven and the bed made. It only takes a small amount of effort, but it makes all the difference, week after week.

Before you start work in the mornings, write in your morning pages or your journal. It is a great strategy to clear your brain and over the period of lockdown, it is a great idea to keep a diary of sorts. Your grandchildren might want to read your lockdown journal in years to come.

Make sure you plan your day. Schedule everything you plan to do, including video calls, phone calls, projects you want to get done and when to check emails. Don't just let the day drift along.

Try and plan your evening meals and the movie you are going to watch. As the day wears on, you will get decision fatigue. Try and make these seemingly unimportant decisions early and then you can look forward to them for the rest of the day.

Stay active

Try and find a reason to leave the house every day. If you can exercise, then do so, or walk the dog. Otherwise just go stand in your garden or your street. You need to breathe fresh air and see nature every day if possible.

Evening ritual

Last thing at night, play a meditation app on your phone to help clear your mind of the day's worries and make sure you get enough well rested sleep.

Because you are probably doing less physical activity, you might need less sleep, or you might find it harder to get to sleep. Doing some yoga and meditation in the evenings helps to wind you down from all that screen time throughout the day.

If you are working from home, try and switch off in the evenings and read a book or listen to music. Don't just fall into the trap of watching television the whole time. Try and limit your media consumption, this includes evening news, newspapers and updates on your phone. Schedule a time to check in with the news and then leave it alone for the rest of the day. It will only add to your stress levels.

Energy levels

Work with your energy levels. If you're an extrovert who lives alone, remember to schedule daily video chats with people. Your phone and Facebook Messenger is all you need for a video chat.

If you're an introvert who lives with people, remember to withdraw from time to time. Fill your creative well by reading or listening to music with headphones on. Introvert's need some alone time to recharge.

Weekends

Use the weekends to be creative. Try and make a clear distinction between a weekday and the weekend. Have a different routine on the weekends, or throw the routine in the bin. If you ever do get back to "normal", you will need to re-establish the weekly rhythm, so make a clear distinction now and the transition back will be less stressful.