How to Work from Home Effectively
Best practices to succeed while working at home
It Has Been A Grind
We have all been working at home for a while now. You could be experiencing some fatigue, or your desk set up might not be encouraging efficient work. There is no better time than now to freshen up your workspace, embrace new habits, and overall change things around for your own success!
This article will discuss not only how to set up your physical desk perfectly, but also what things you can do for your mental health as well. There are a lot of factors to consider when setting up a perfect workspace. Therefore, companies are willing to put money into making sure their offices are as functional as they can be, in addition to being supportive to the human aspect in their employees. I mean, think about Google, that campus is amazing, and all designed specifically for optimizing the human work experience. Google is pretty successful, I guess.
Now I understand we are just working at home, most of us from a one-bedroom apartment, so we cannot realistically create a set up like Google, but we can try!
It is 2021, there is no better time to dive in and re-organize your workspace, so let’s do it!
Start with Location
We all have different living situations, so you must know your space well enough to organize it in a way that suits you. The best tip I can give someone is to focus on setting up your desk in a space you can call your own. If you can, having your work desk not around others or behind closed doors is best case scenario. This will give you peace and quiet to where you will go to work each day. Trying to focus at home can be hard, but if you have your desk in a spot that is separate from the rest of your house, you will find the best success.
Try to set up your work-from-home space in a room that is not the bedroom. You want to be able to get up and move around and “commute” to your desk. For example, my desk is right in the living room, so when I wake up, I can walk out of the room and not only physically but also mentally compartmentalize where I work and where I rest. If at all possible, I highly recommend this!
Organize Your Desk
Standing Desk?
If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up (bonus points if you know the reference). I have found a standing desk to be the most critical piece of my home office, in addition to my computer, of course. If you are not familiar, this is a desk that can be a low height for sitting in a chair, but it is controlled by a remote control to raise the height when your legs are needing to move. This gives you the ability to stand while you work!
The health benefits are enormous! You can get your body moving while you work, get blood circulating in your body, and for those who do not always have time to make it out of the house for a walk and some fresh air, this desk will help combat the antsy feeling.
Let’s organize!
Okay, you have your desk, you are now ready to organize it. Like I have said in many of my articles, a clean space keeps a happy face. Clear everything off your desk and start with a clean canvas.
Focus on what needs to be on your desk and make sure everything has a purpose taking up surface space. Once you have those things determined, get to work organizing desk space in a way that flows. If it doesn’t absolutely need to be on your desk, then find a new home for it. There is only enough room for essentials that you reach for multiple times a day.
Setting up Your Calendar
Whether you have an online calendar or physical calendar, the most important thing you can do is utilize it. Not just filling it out with meetings and projects, but filling it out with everything you do during the day. This will give you a clear mind each day because your plans will already be laid out for you. Here is a list of things you probably are not writing in your calendar that you should add:
· Wake up / Sleep time
· Individual work time
· Commute time
· Meals
· Walks/Breaks
· Catch up time/Cleaning out email
· Hobbies
· Chores
If you get in the habit of doing this in your calendars, you will be able to wake up each day feeling ready to utilize all hours of the day properly. Start by doing this as a nighttime routine – like brushing your teeth!
Move Around
This could be the most important tip I have in this newsletter. Working from home has completely changed how we move as humans. The results are simple, we are moving our bodies less now than ever before. So, this tip is simple. When you take a break make sure you stand up and walk around, do a little workout, go on a walk after work. Just think back to how much we would physically move back when we could go out and about. Now we just stumble out of bed to our desks. There is no trick to this, just finding what works best for you and getting your body active. I promise you, your body will thank you.
Productivity Apps
Keeping track of your work can be difficult especially when its just yourself at home with all your files and paperwork. That means you need a way to keep it all organized, right? Well, I have the solution for you! If you work at a company that already supplies a productivity application, then you are in luck and are probably crushing it! If you don’t, or you think there is a better process to help keep track of all your work, I highly recommend investing in one. There are applications built specifically for keeping your brain organized and clutter-free. There are a bunch out there and so do your research and get your work organized!
Overcommunicate
The subheading for this tip is as short and sweet as the advice. We all remember how easy it was to just lean over to people around us at work and ask questions, discuss projects, or chat. With working from home, we no longer have that luxury. However, your company probably uses a messaging system like Microsoft Teams, Slack, or Zoom to communicate. Use these tools to overcommunicate. Making sure everyone is in sync on projects or plans is crucial to a company’s success, so there is no problem with putting messages in these chats. Think about the flip side, you could all under communicate and then what might have seemingly been an agreed upon plan could get messed up because nobody wanted to follow up on specific questions. This is not what you want. Create an environment where overcommunicating is welcomed and crucial for success.
All in All
As you can see, there are a bunch of things you can do to make sure working from home is successful. Do not just take it from me, go out do your own research on great ways to work effectively. The internet was made for people to collaborate on these types of things! Just remember we are all in this together and do the best you can. This is such a unique time we are living in and all you can do is your best. Leave a comment below on your favorite work-from-home hacks to share with the community, you never know, you might just find a great hack in the comments!
Featuring
This week is huge for The In-Between Newsletter as it is the first time I am collaborating with two other amazing newsletters! Know All Sides and BrainBank are the two newsletters and I guarantee if you like my newsletter, you will also like theirs! I will be providing a little about description for each and a link below for you to subscribe if you are interested.
BrainBank:
Welcome to my 2nd brain—home to my book notes, projects, & writing.
I'm a writer looking for uncommon ideas that improve people's lives.
I channel what I find into BrainBank— a weekly micro-learning series sharing knowledge not taught in school.
There's a modest 1000 or so peeps that read it each week. You can join, read past issues, or see some love for it below. If not, that's okay too : )
Either way, don't be a stranger. Say Hi. Serendipity's a cool thing
Want to...
Learn things faster? (BrainBank #004)
Beat seasonal depression? (BrainBank #013)
Create word of mouth for your ideas? (BrainBank #008)
Invest your money tax-free? (#014: Keoghs), (#008: HSAs), (#007: DAFs)
Become a stronger writer? (#011)
Get used luxury cars 50% off? (#014)
Improve your focus? (#001: Biohacking), (#008: Tech Tools), (#017: Meditation)
Subscribe: https://www.rickcarabba.com/
Know All Sides:
Whether we like it or not, we are bombarded with streams of information every day. However, too often we find ourselves taking a back seat and allowing the information we receive to drive our bias according to the idea that the media ‘personalised’ for us. Instead of actively seeking out different viewpoints, we allow our thinking ‒ and eventually our beliefs ‒ to be shaped by what we read, what we watch and what we accept.
At Know All Sides, we publish our weekly newsletter that discusses both sides of the most important issues ‒ all under 5 minutes! We handpick interesting issues from a wide range of topics (social, political and ethical issues) and condense a diverse set of perspectives in one article.
We encourage you to be aware of your bias (even the slightest!), and ask yourself, “Have I considered a different perspective?” 💭
Subscribe: https://www.knowallsides.com/about-us#Subscription-box
