Posted by The coronavirus Covid-19 situation continues to escalate, until today 27 March 2020, there are already more than 566 k confirmed cases of the Covid-19. Countries all over the world have taken measures to ensure social distancing and working from home. As an employee in Belgium, I just finished the second-week work from home including eating, sleeping, and living in the same house together with my husband and our cat. The weather has been ironically beautiful recently, perfect for outdoor activities such as picnic, bbq, and brunch.
Most companies provide flexible working from home policy, where employees can choose one day to work from home in order to avoid commuting time, balance work-life, and occasionally focus on activities that require concentration. One day per week is reasonable, but more than 2 days per week becomes tricky.
Burn out from WFH is a real thing, I have heard colleagues of friends burned out after one week of WFH recently, to be honest, I am not surprised. Work from home constantly is a dangerous thing, especially if you get lots of work, the work stress does not go away because you work from home, instead, you can easily forget to eat, suffer from insomnia, and mix work and life. I am writing this blog post to raise awareness and give some suggestions.
1. Invest in an office chair
Back pain has been a major killer for white-collar professionals, one of my colleagues suffered from half a year of back pain and eventually had to go through painful surgery. Working from home for more than 8 hours per day on your dining chair, sofa or bed can kill your back! If you do not have a chance to get an office chair due to the current situation, try to work standing up occasionally to rest your back.
2. Coffie/tea break
When I ask my colleagues if they enjoyed working from home, they said it is boring, as, in the office, they can enjoy the coffee break with colleagues, and they can chat with each other. Indeed, one of the bad things about working from home is, there is no coffee break anymore with the colleagues. But nothing stops you from taking a break from work and enjoying this break with your partner. Actually, you can also set up a virtual online tea break with your colleagues if you live alone.
3. Create a routine for your day
Even on a normal day, there is no perfect separation of work and life for a professional. But the separation of the physical place can help to stimulate your focus, now working and living in the same place can indeed create confusion, you might end up working constantly, that is why a daily routine can help you to relax and also focus a bit on life.
For example, going out for a walk at 6 pm every day can give you an indication that you need to finish your work at a certain time and start the next activity. Other things like meditation during the day, book strictly your water break, lunch break can also help.
4. Wear your working outfit during working hour
Yes, even if you are working from home, you should dress properly. Imagine the mailman is waiting at the door at 2 pm and you opened the door with pyjama, or your colleagues request to have a video conference, and you appeared not properly groomed, after all, you are still working.
For me, more importantly, changing the clothes in and out of the working hour gives me a sense of formality that I can unconsciously respect. When I am in my working outfit, I feel more motivated and efficient, when I am in my pyjama, I feel more relaxed.
5. Clean up your desk after work
I personally clean up my workplace after working hours, I put my laptop back in the bag where it belongs just as if I would go to the office the next day. This is to give space to other activities, but more importantly, to stop thinking about work by not looking at the computer and notes, otherwise, it is possible that an additional 5 min email becomes another hour of working.
6. Brain dump
I use this technique even when I am not working from home. It just happened to you before also, while you are taking a shower, or brushing your teeth, all of a sudden you remember you forgot to set up a meeting, or send out a proposal.
“I have to do it otherwise I forget tomorrow”. True, if you don’t do something then it is forgotten, so your mind will constantly remind you to not forget it. One way to solve it is to just turn on the computer and finish sending the email – personally I don’t recommend it, sending email to others at the nonworking hour is not really recommended in the working etiquette (as you disturb others, and also create some expectation), plus, you practically started working again. Instead, I recommend writing it down somewhere, or simply send a reminder email to your working email id so that the next day you get the reminder when you start. This technique is called brain dump, just dump your ideas somewhere else, to make room for your brain.
7. Avoid social isolation
Try to have at least one conf call per day with your colleague just to avoid social isolation.
8. Encourage your colleagues
What I have realized is, health is really important, physical and mental health. Working alone can be nice occasionally, but not ideal for weeks or months. Everyone is still filled with loads of conf calls and to-do list, the least we can do is to have some touch-ups with our colleagues just to discuss how is work-life going, to check if everyone is healthy and safe, and encourage each other to continue until things go back to normal. This is exactly what we do at work, every day 10-20 minutes catch up.
I hope everyone is fine and healthy, in the end, appreciate the fact that you are still working. There are already 1 million people who are applying for temporary unemployment due to the Coronavirus. If you are currently temporarily unemployed, enjoy the break and appreciate at least you are healthy!
Work from home can also result in online aggression, check my relevant post:
How to deal with unprofessional emails at work?
Reference:
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2020/03/24/more-1-million-people-laid-off-due-to-the-covid-19-crisis/
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