October 1, 2020 Remaining Productive During the Shift to Work-from-Home

A few tips on how to stay productive as you work from home.

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the business sector has mostly remained operational, even when many countries only allow skeleton crews to report to work. While the virus has indeed caused an upheaval of standard working protocol, there are many companies that have adapted to the crisis by having their employees work from home rather than cease operations completely.

However, there are changes that office workers have to adjust to in order to work from home. Whether you’re replacing part of your staff by working with outsourcing companies like EAG 1Source, or completely shifting your team toward a work-from-home setup, there are many distractions to resist and without an ever-watchful supervisor, the distractions might win. Here are a few tips on how you can stay productive as you work from home:

Create a Home Office

The very first thing you have to secure is a proper work environment. It has to be clean, quiet, and most of all, comfortable. You need to have a stable internet connection as well as a laptop or computer. If you don’t have a suitable place at home, you might want to consider a nearby coworking space. While you would need to take precautions to remain at least six feet apart from co-workers during the coronavirus crisis, coworking spaces are a great alternative to offices because they are much less crowded and they are also much cleaner.

Create and Follow a Schedule

Working from home can still mean working normal office hours without the commute. It is, however, important to be able to organize your time in order to get your work done. In order to resist any distractions, it’s important to dedicate your focus entirely to a single activity. Do nothing else, except the task you’re scheduled to do in the moment.

Communicate Regularly

It’s also important to maintain communication with your co-workers, especially if you’re working on a collaborative project. Team communication programs such as Slack and Skype can help you organize your remote team, while content management systems will allow you to organize tasks so you’re able to see what work lies ahead.

This will help you keep track of how far along you are in a given project, and how much work you still have to do. It will also help you schedule your tasks better and determine how far along other teams are with their tasks.

Take Breaks

While there’s the risk of working too little, there’s also the risk of working too much. Without a set working schedule and with an unrestricted focus on work, there’s also a chance that you might end up working too hard. There might even be a chance that you get overwhelmed by the work that’s being assigned to you. Remember that working from home is a different experience in that you won’t have coworkers to interact with, and you won’t have office facilities to use unless you go to a coworking space.

It’s easy to get burnt out when all these factors work against you. The Pomodoro Technique is an effective way to set rest intervals without compromising productivity.

Working from home is not what we’re used to, but as the world adapts to COVID-19, changes have to be made in order to mitigate the situation. May this information aid you as you work from home during these trying times.

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