6 good practices for those who are working from Home

While we are all fighting to prevent invading a common enemy, Covid-19, by keeping social distancing and working from home, it becomes absolutely necessary for everyone to remain productive, and immediately adjust in the new setting. Everyone, especially extroverts, are not at all used to stay at home 24*7 and it becomes important that the remote working, lock-downs and home-quarantine don't affect their mental well-being.

In India,  most homes still have joint families, (Grandparents, Parents and Siblings), and less private spaces (rooms) - in such conditions, how to remain productive and keep working is what I am going to explain here. Moreover, I am an experienced work-from-home employee who happens to have worked from home even before covid-19 spread and nurtured myself to remain productive and alert by practicing good practices. So I am eligible to share my experience on this topic. Without wasting much time, here are the 6 good practices for employees who are working from home:

Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

1.

Decide a working spot in home. That spot should not change.

You need to find a comfortable spot in your home where you can work peacefully. Those who follow desk-less culture in offices or those who have laptops, shall too find a fixed desk or spot wherein they can do their job. Such spots ideally are in a separate room where less distractions like TV sounds, family sounds, kids or outside sounds don't distract you.

Why to do this?

1. Psychologically, a fixed spot will train your brain to remain hooked for work. While your brain may still wander for standing up, it is up-to your Will to train it to remain seated. Imagine if you don't fix a working desk or spot at your home and you kept working on your sleeping bed or on couch or watching TV, I bet you'd either end up sleeping, playing games, eating or watching the same Naagin and Taarak mehta ka ooltah chashma soaps! I know you better 🧐
2. Other benefit is that, a properly organized working spot will have all your resources like laptop, important papers, pens, water bottle, sticky notes and usb at one place. You can attend meetings online without any hassles. 
3. After work, that space can be kept as is - your laptops/pcs can stay on, your office tools can stay as it is and there won't be any need to pack-up. If you have had done the same at other various places like your sleeping bed, dining table or sofa, you'd have to keep packing up things more than once anytime when food get served, or someone bumped up at your home. This leads to less work productivity.

Okay, I am getting it, but what about those people who hardly have separate rooms in their homes? This is India. Less private space, and joint families; struggling and hard working couples with small houses, remember?

Obviously I do, and I have solution for this too.

If you are staying in 1 HK (No bed room, only a hall and a kitchen) or you have bedrooms but all occupied by other people (-by your big siblings, or the sudden devil guests etc) or you simply don't want to go in a room where cockroach and mouses and lizards have their homes, the only option remains is your HALL- but wait you have a TV in your main hall (We all watch TV together in India still) and a TV watcher (Your wife or your kids). Now what? Fikar not and follow these:

1. Create a partition in your hall using saree, curtain or well your dhoti 😛; such that your hall divides in two sections: one section where your TV and TV watcher(s) shall stay and other one where your work space will remain. 
2. Whenever your TV is on, wear ear-phones, headphones or simply stuff cotton plugs to omit out the distraction due to noise. If you are going to have meeting, ask the TV watcher to use mobile and watch the same program your TV is running (Jio Live) and shut off the TV. (If TV watcher is your kid, then you know as a parent, how to stare with wide eyes and make them turn off the TV, don't you?) 😂

2.

Keep drinking (water re 🙄)

When you are in the office, you usually have water bottles with you. At home too, you should keep your water bottles with you during work and frequently drink water. If your only mode of getting up and having walk is an excuse of drinking water then make sure you stand up frequently from your work place and actually drink the water.

I have myself observed that I drunk less water when at home compared to when at office. This is because, unlike office, at home your speaking has reduced. You used to speak in meetings, talk with colleagues, scold that dog who keeps barking to every food delivery guy, gossip about her with him and even gossip with him about her! This much talking naturally asked more water but at home, there is no such talking (more typing). This leads to less drinking of water which should not happen. Stay hydrated.

3.

Keep clothes ready!

It's summer, it's your separate working space, it's your home - Wow what a combination! Why the hell shall I care to even wear clothes. 

But hey, sorry you need to. Whatever your preferences are, even you want to wear pants or not, but at least keep wearing (or keep ready with you if not wearing) a decent T-shirt/Formal shirt/Top. Because any urgent video call may pop up and then you might screw yourself in finding some decent piece of cloth to wear! 

Okay, so this advice is only for those who frequently have to go on live video calls. Right? Well, we don't go live video, we do audio meetings only. 

But hey, sorry again, you still need to wear clothes. Why? If you are single, your sudden un-clothiness will give your body some screwed-up signals 🤣, you will get distracted and well, not to say further, you will end up Not working but doing something else. you know what I mean, huh boys!

4.

Don't mess up timings!

If you are not having time flexibility then obviously you will have to be working in your work-time slots. but those who are having time flexibility often screw up their productivity. Even when you are having a time-flexibility, you need to determine beforehand what time-slots will you grant for your work in which you can stay productive at best. 

Whether that slot when your kids are sleeping? or that early and fresh morning when your attention level is significantly high? Whether you are a working parent, or single - you need to determine a fix time slot that you can follow most of the days. One day you worked 9-6 and other day 11-8 - these abrupt working times hamper your productivity because it hampers your bio-clock altogether.

5.

Distract your distractions

Hey Karan, but this mobile, the important tool that I use in work, in itself is a big distraction! That whatsapp notification, the instagram and ohh, the snapchat! What do I do?

I understand this. Your professional and personal life gets mixed up when the same whatsapp is used for both personal and professional chats. (And that's why you can't even lock your whatsapp because your client might end up on Whatsapp). So what to do?

This is the right time to tell your client to switch himself on slack or skype (whatever is feasible to use). You can tell him on the grounds of: "Hey, since I am working from home, I'd prefer all written communication via email and verbal communication via Zoom meeting or skype. This will help everyone in the team to stay in sync and more importantly it will help all remote workers to stop their use of whatsapp during working hours.". Believe me, they will understand. Once they agree, go to your Android and turn on Focus Mode, and lock out those distractions. (I know Iphone should also have something like focus mode, find it)

At the end, it's all on your will power!

6.

Work Out In!

You are at home! Omg, the naastas that your mom is making is getting consumed at exponential rate suddenly!!!!! 

This should not happen. You should control in eating things. Ask your wife or mom to lock kitchen or hide nasta dabbas if you can't keep control on your over-eating. Report your break timings to your TL and if your TL is supportive, then report your timings to HRs so that even a minute late in your break could make them eat you less 😂

Of-course, do some quick work-ins like

1. Climb up/Walk down stairs
2. Walk in hallway
3. Play with your kids/siblings inside
4. Cook
5. Wash clothes/Utensils (Remember, maids will also go on leave during lock-downs)
6. Some try-at-your-own-risk advice: Go outside to get "laathis" from police. (Please don't do this 🙈)

Don't worry, you will be fully used to do Diwali swacchta these days so work-ins should auto-magically happen. (Starting with pankha safaai)

All the best! Take Care!

Stay at home, Work remotely (not lonely)

Use this time to increase your bonding with your family. This time of togetherness might not come again. 

Let's also pray that Covid-19 meds gets discovered soon and this pandemic ends as soon as possible!

Read this blog post on my technical blog here