I love working from home, I’m all about working remotely. But… We all need to agree that working from home in the past year hasn’t been easy, or at all the same as it was done before. At least not around here, now that we have a baby and had to work remotely during a pandemic.
That is why today I bring you the 4 Top Things That Helped Me Work From Home This Year. And I promise, they are easy and everyone will be able to implement them in their life.
1. Wireless headphones
Ok, I was a little skeptical to make this change, since I travel for work and the idea of not being able to use my headphones during take-off and landing was not good for me, but baby broke my old headset and I had to do it. I grabbed an old set from my husband. I usually switch between these old JBL headphones from my husband and my AirPods, just because I’m still not good at being on top of the charging, but I may say, my life kinda changed. I can take meetings while walking around the room, go grab a cup of tea or water, take care of my baby, you name it. It’s just comfortable and free.
2. Logging off at 5 pm and…
3. Do Not Disturb mode
These two need to be explained together, because… well, they go hand in hand and that’s how they work for me. I can’t remember when did I set up my Do Not Disturb, it has been a while, but keeping things short, I have my Do Not Disturb in my iPhone set up for going on at 5 pm. Past this time I will not hear or see any notifications going on on my iPhone. This is priceless. Especially if you challenge yourself to close your computer and log off at the same time. One thing that usually happens with working remotely and almost every one of us suffered with it this year, is the sensation that since we can, we are available 24/7, or at least, almost all the time. And that is not true. Every one of us has a timeslot, a number of hours that we need to work daily. And it’s not 24 hours. So, please, do not work extra hours, only because you are working remotely and you can. Take the time to rest too.
4. Set hours for Do Not Disturb work mode
So, this is another simple thing everyone can do and helps a lot. Especially working remotely, since you don’t have that problem of that colleague coming your way and tap you on the shoulder asking “are you working? can we talk?”. (Yes, we had kids at home, which was basically the same, but let’s imagine we are in their nap time here, ok?) Do yourself a favor and use this functionality, at least, one time a day. I spent the majority of the past year working on a full day of meetings scheduled, always ending my days feeling that I hadn’t achieved what I really needed to do. Until I remembered this tip. I started using everything I had one hour free. I would set my status on our communication tool to Do Not Disturb and crack on working while people sent me messages or looked at my status and saw that I was not available. This is necessary. Especially if you have a lot of people relying on you plus work that you really need to have your mind focused on at the same time. This is a Scrum Master-approved tip. 😉
Hope you liked these tips. Let me know what you thought about them in the comment section below and leave your own tips there too. Let’s help each other to improve the way we are working remotely in this new era!
[…] productive remote working day. You can find other few tips to add to these ones on my last post 4 Top Things That Helped Me Work From Home This Year, where I go a little deeper into a few tools I […]