Top Tips to Help You Adjust to Working from Home

In the words of Fifth Harmony, (and in the midst of this crazy time for everyone throughout the C word) ‘we can work from home’.  For many people, this isn’t something we are happy about. Personally I have never had a full-time job that required me to work from home every day, if you’re like me and prefer a daily routine, getting out and about then this may come as a struggle to you. So I have put together some tips that can help you and your team to keep a consistent WFH routine in our current circumstances…

 

Below are some of the things that we at Embryo are doing ourselves every day:

 

Tip 1: Start each morning as you normally would. 

Keeping your routine as normal as possible will help you feel less out of sync with your days. I find that when I lie in that little bit longer and stay in my comfies all day when it comes to going to sleep at night my body just simply doesn’t let me. So set that alarm clock, have your morning shower, coffee, and get changed ready to start your day fresh. 

Tip 2: Get Slack’ing.

As a company we have always used Slack as one of our main communication channels, even in the office we would use it if people are in meetings or don’t want to shout across the office. We put client updates in there, company announcements, and many more. Slack is great because it also lets you voice and video call each other. If your company are all working from home, then downloading this has to be a must-do on your to-do list. Currently, our team has set each other a 9 am video call using Google hangouts and a 4:45 pm one. It’s a great way to stay connected with everyone and feel like you’re still having face to face contact. It sets our day off as if we were having our usual Monday morning meetings and also closes our daily nicely when we summarise what we have achieved at the end of the day. 

Tip 3: Set your workspace up properly.

Your work-station is super important in helping you feel productive and in keeping you motivated. When our team is in the office we have screens, laptop stands, extra keyboards and mouse mats, etc, so try and keep a consistent set up at home. Just because we aren’t in the office, doesn’t mean we should now just work from our beds all day, as we discuss in tip 1, stick to your routine and set up your workspace at your dining room table or home office (if you have one). This will make you feel like you’re sitting at your desk as normal ready to tackle through your workflow.

Top 4: Take a break.

Spending every single minute of the day at home can quite easily make us become restless, so it’s important to schedule in some breaks throughout the day. Set yourself a morning and afternoon brew time (perhaps 11 am & 3 pm featuring) to break the day up and stretch your legs. Stick to an official lunch hour and let your team know on slack when you will be taking it so you can take some time away from your screen, grab some lunch and take a walk around the block for a change of scenery. 

Tip 5: Switch your brain off at night time.

For my last tip of the day, I want it to focus on the evening times. I think an important thing to remember is that when you’re working from home,  you need to make sure you stick to your working hours. It would be very easy for us to just carry on working at our stations until 8 pm, however, this really won’t help us when it comes to switching off at night. So when it comes to the end of your day, close down your screens and enjoy your evening, go for a walk (or the gym if it is still open and you feel comfortable to). Grab your yoga mat and do a short meditation/yoga session, there are plenty of youtube tutorials or apps to use to help you do this. Calm is currently offering some of its premium features for free; meditations, sleep stories, talks, and resources. Set yourself a time where you put your phone down for the night, take a hot bubble bath instead so you’re not itching for a late-night Instagram scroll. Get yourself an early night ready to wake up for day 2 of your working from home period. 

 

Sending big love to everyone out there who is feeling worried or anxious about what might be to come. If we all stick together and stay positive, we can get through it as one.