2020 is the year that has thrown the worldwide workforce into remote productivity mode. The coronavirus pandemic has forced many organizations to shut down their physical offices. While some of these organizations are encouraging their workers to work from home, others are not. Instead, they are entirely shut down. Whether you are a business owner, a CEO, an employee or a personal brand, we have all had to transfer our daily work tasks to our homes. The divisions between home and office have been torn down.

Although the whole situation can be described as sad, companies continue to adopt measures that are intended to provide a semblance of normal to an already twisted situation. Even worse is the fact that a lot of workers have never been in the work from home situation. They may have never thought of the possibility or may have even dismissed such work options as demeaning. This is understandable because the new trend is being adopted by companies and other businesses at a time when remote working has only started to become trendy.

For a lot of people working from home for the first time, concentrating on daily tasks can be daunting. Consider hearing your child cry while you are in the middle of a Zoom meeting. Well, I know you can imagine it. You probably have a good dose of your own work from home hurdles already.

If you are finding it difficult to get any work done from the comfort of your home, our remote working tips will help you stay productive and on top of your work game until this is over.

How to Work from Home Effectively

1. Dress Up

This is a simple but essential tip to achieve any work from home success. Dress up for work! Wake up as though you would be taking a drive to the office. Remote workers understand that they achieve way less when they get up late. So, adopt the daily work ethics that you had before you were thrown into the work from home situation. Get up by 5am or 6am like you usually would, take a bath and get dressed for work. Having to carry out your office tasks from home does not mean that you have to be shirtless or that you have to be in pants throughout the day. This is especially so when you will be having video conferences added to your day. Go about your work in your regular manner.

The good thing with your new work situation is that you don’t have to be dressed in a suit! You can be as casual as your work position allows. If there are any dress code rules stipulated by your company however, you should keep to those by all means. The key to working from home is keeping your work motivation intact.

2. Create a Work Space in Your Home

This is by far the most crucial aspect of working from home during this period. Just like you have a workspace in your company, you should also designate one in your home. There would be the temptation to work from your bedroom. This often doesn’t end well.

You should try as much as possible to recreate the same feeling of working in your office within your home. Experienced remote workers often have a home office where they do all their work. This allows you concentrate and is critical to getting any work done. You can use one of the rooms in your home to create a workspace. Get a desk, table, and some few decorations. Then you can place your files and a computer on the desk, and begin to work. Give your work space the feel of being back at the office.

3. Maintain Your Regular Working Hours

Once you have created a workspace in your home, the next thing to do is to schedule specific working hours. This will help you track the amount of work that you get done. It will also help you differentiate your office time from your home time. You can allocate a specific amount of work to your working hours and stop when the time is over. This removes the temptation of working throughout the day while balancing out the time you need to spend on other aspects of your daily life.

You have to put the pressure on yourself to adhere to your stipulated hours. The major difference between working from your office and working from your home is that you are in charge. Being in charge doesn’t translate to being responsible. So, you have to take extra precaution to ensure that you are doing it right. If you stay with people, try to let them know you are working from home and politely enforce the space you need.

4. Communicate With Your Office Team

While you may not be able to communicate with your colleagues physically, try as much as possible to communicate with them through social media platforms and other online workplace tools.

You can send reports of how you have fared weekly or daily to your manager and give him or her the chance to assess your work. You can also have chitchats with your colleagues and tell them how you miss their presence, just to socialize. Doing all of these would give you the sense of being at work, and keep you from turning the current lockdown situation into a vacation. Remember, the less productive you are within this period, the more catching up on work you would need to do when all this is over.

As a business owner, this would mean losing out on a chunk of otherwise productive time. We can say the same of everyone who has work to do. Don’t dump the work and wait until you can get back to the office. Instead, learn ways to achieve spectacular results with your daily work tasks from the comfort of your home.

5. Control Your Social Media

This is an obvious point. Social media can suck up all your time. Now that you are working from home, it is easy to push your work files aside without flinching and begin surfing the internet. If you want to achieve anything reasonable without having to accumulate work each day, you have to deal with the procrastination that comes with social media. Control your social media usage. You can begin by turning off your notifications from social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can also set timers on these apps so that you are reminded when you have spent too much time on social media in a day. Similarly, you can download time management tools to help you stay on track.

6. Get Help When You Need It

Working at home can slow you down whether you like it or not. Your everyday tasks can feel multiplied and you may need some help. There are a host of tasks that you can delegate. Your social media management, graphic designs, ads placement and a lot of other tasks can be handed to a professional. This is even more so if you are a solopreneur, a business owner or a top ranking company. Now that you have to work from home, you may find yourself taking longer to get things done.

With content creation companies like Prudent Pens, your everyday work tasks are reduced by half. We can help you get through the work from home crisis by offering you writing help that surpasses what you are used to. Do you have to create content at an exponential rate while being stuck at home? Are your email copies suffering from the drag?

We’re here to help.

Working from home while COVID19 is on rampage is an enormous goal. It can feel daunting and almost unachievable. It’s not easy to stay focused while the world battles the virus.

With the right help along the way, you can get things done much faster. If the help that you need is content creation to enable you reach your clients, reach out to us through the contact form.