Working from home: establish a routine and use the right tools

Many employees must stay at home these days but need to continue working as if they were still in the office. At first, home office might seem like a great idea. However, a few days in you might notice a sudden drop in your productivity and realize you’re missing the stimulating environment of the office space. Can this be avoided? We’ll show you how to best manage working from home.

Bring order to your home office

One day you’ll get up at six, the next at nine. You’ll begin your day watching a little bit of TV in your pajamas and get around to the actual work around ten or simply once you’ll feel like working. Sometimes you might not feel motivated enough to start at all. To make up for the lost time, you’ll keep working well past midnight. Sounds familiar? This is the road to hell, and you can be sure that you won’t finish even a quarter of the work you’d normally get done during your standard workday.

Working from home? Yes. From your bed? Rather not…

Tips from Nathy – Webnode social media manager:

My husband needs to go to his office several times a week. During those days we try to organize our time like this: I work from 6 to 9am and my husband leaves for work. I take care of our children between 9am and 2pm and try to keep them as active as possible to tire them out. Around 2pm, when it’s finally quiet enough, I get back to work and keep at it ideally till 7pm. My husband comes home at around 5:30pm and takes care of the kids until I wrap up all my projects. Whenever he can stay at home, I try to trick him into helping with kids as much as possible ?. We’re a team, right? I really couldn’t handle this situation without him.

In several Webnode teams we hold a daily online meeting at 9am, where we share what everyone is working on and whether we need something from each other. Other companies have similar virtual meetings twice or even several times per day.

Maintain the right level of discomfort

Your brain likes it when a workplace looks like a workplace. Whether yours is a full-time remote job or just a temporary solution; desk, keyboard and computer are associated with work way more than a comfy bed and a notebook perched upon your legs. Maintaining the right level of discomfort doesn’t mean that you’ll place a drawing pin on your chair to sit on, but that you’ll be sitting in your chair instead of lounging on the couch. Also, keep yourself active. Move your body regularly to get your heart rate going, bring more oxygen to your brain and stay fit.

Tips from Zuzana, Webnode HR manager:

I exercise daily. Mainly because I enjoy it and it also clears my mind incredibly. I’m already used to this routine, plus I can put on some good music.

Use the right tools

Even though you’re at home, you should keep in touch with your colleagues. Not only via e-mail or phone, that’s a given. Right within your reach are many more creative tools.

Use G-suite from Google to create and update documents. Text documents, tables, e-mail, calendar, everything is online and available for free. You can also use the storage space on Google Drive. These features are accessible through any computer, all you need to do is sign up online.

The ideal workplace might look like this

What if you want to watch the progress of your projects or even supervise all the processes? You’ll need a good project management tool. The most popular tools out there are Trello, Jira, Asana and BaseCamp. Their basic versions are usually available for free while full versions need to be paid for.

A few more Webnode tips

To interact with your colleagues and quickly solve any issues, try Zoom for video conferences and webinars. Microsoft and Google offer their own communication tools called Teams or Hangouts Meet which you can use for chats and conference calls.

Right now, both Google and Microsoft offer all their premium functions and features for free. If you’d like to try them out, now’s the best time.

In Webnode we also use Skype and Slack for a quick chat. If you want to stay informed even on your smartphone, Whatsapp or Viber are great solutions.

Are you also working from home? Wondering how to create a website? Check the step-by-step guide.