Dressing for ‘sleep’ and other top mistakes to avoid while working from home

• As the coronavirus pandemic sweeps the country, many companies have asked employees to evacuate office buildings and work from home — even the onsite workers.
  
• While remote work options come with more flexibility and perks of working at your ease and no commute, the isolation is taking over causing stress.
  
• Networking platform LinkedIn suggests that some virtual facetime with the team is essential while working remotely.

As the coronavirus pandemic sweeps the country, many companies have asked employees to evacuate office buildings and work from home.

As many as 7,000 people lost their lives to the novel coronavirus so far — including three in India. As the government intends to control it, people have been asking to practice social distancing which leads to psychological distress.

While remote work options come with more flexibility and perks of working at your ease and no commute, the isolation is taking over and causing stress. This has largely impacted productivity and communication among professionals with desk jobs.

Virtual facetime is important for random chat

Networking platform LinkedIn suggests that some virtual facetime with the team is essential while working remotely. The employees should at least catch up with their colleagues once a day and discuss things outside of work.

This can also be achieved by daily or weekly standups with the team — which includes highlighting the progress and flagging daily issues like the scheduled tasks for the day, completed tasks and more.

Don’t stay in your pyjamas

Flexibility of being at home also adds to the laziness, thereby affecting the efficiency. To counter that, professionals should dress well to get into the productivity mode. The morning commute can be replaced with other activities to boost productivity like a walk, workout or meditation.

“If you’re dressed for sleep, it can be much harder to get your brain in productivity mode. Try maintaining your regular morning routine to set boundaries between working and living at home,” Indeed says.

“Dressing for the tasks ahead of you will make you feel more motivated, and is also a helpful practice in case of unexpected video meetings,” it added.

Schedule and timelines within a ‘virtual workspace’

When working from home, it is important to set working hours. This can be accomplished by indicating it the right way to the managers about the availability. For instance, Google Calendar alerts to inform about meetings and unavailability.

“Start each day off by reviewing the tasks you need to get done to make progress towards your goals that day and throughout the week. Take regularly scheduled breaks to stretch, get outside and rest your brain,” Indeed suggests.

Moreover, a separate workspace — a designated space — can be the best way to keep the professional and personal tasks.

‘Me time’ to avoid burnout

The fusion of workspace and home space can impact mental health as well — feeling overworked, forced tasks. In that case, gamified breaks, walking the dog can also help.

Indeed suggests the ‘Pomodoro method’ by focusing for say 25 minutes, and then taking a mandatory five minute break. In addition, it is important that professionals avoid opening emails, online chats after logging off.

However, this can also give birth to miscommunication and misunderstandings. Partly because the “rich texture of face to face communication — including body language and facial expressions — tends to collapse in written format,” Indeed says.

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