Working From Home Tips
If you don’t usually work from home and have an established routine of going to work elsewhere, you may find the change of suddenly working from home a little challenging with distractions present in our home life.
Most of us, doctors are not used to working from home. We have great routines when we get to work, and some might say that we are at our work all the time 😉.
Even those medical professionals who normally work from home will still find it difficult with their family members being around their “work” area 27/4. We all ended up in this somewhat disarray quite suddenly.
I found it hard losing my established routines and then having to develop new ones. I found below helped me and would like to share my five tips to help you through this challenging time:
1. Keep the routines that you can. There may be several routines that you can still keep in the current situation, don’t stop them.
a. Get up at a similar time as before. This will automatically get you in the work frame of mind.
b. If you usually exercise before work, do it now too. There are some great online options if you don’t have a home gym or would like to do a guided yoga.
c. Wear work clothes. For example, if you wear scrubs or a suit to work, putting it on can get you in a work mode and focus. Don’t settle for days of working in your pyjamas!
2. Put rules in place where you can work in peace. Put a “do not disturb” sign on the door; let your family know your work hours or put headphones on.
3. Create a daily schedule and a task list of what you'd like to achieve. I also suggest overestimating time needed to accomplish these tasks to create a realistic plan.
4. Take breaks for lunch, exercise or quality time with your family.
5. Create a daily timetable the night before. Decide as the family what tomorrow will look like. For example, who needs internet and at what time, who will use a computer at what time, who has an important meeting and needs to use office space or who might need some quiet time for themselves.
I think that when we go back to our normal life, we will miss the quality time spent with our family during the lockdown. Many families will be brought closer and left cherishing the lockdown moments long to come.