Whilst telecommuting has been around for decades now, according to an Australian Bureau of Statistics report, two-thirds of us still regularly head into an office or a workplace. Unless you are a sole practitioner, regular, ongoing or longer-term working from home arrangements are still pretty new.
If the coronavirus situation has now created a need for you to work from home, and you are not accustomed to this, there are some ways in which you can structure your day so that you don’t fall into the trap of over or under working.
Routine
Having a routine is imperative to successfully manage a working from home lifestyle. Whilst you might think that you can roll out of bed at 8.55 am to start the day at 9.00 am, it’s unlikely that you will hit the ground running productively.
If you already have a “going to the office” routine, then keep it for when you are working from home. For example, get out of bed at the same time, go to the gym, get the kids off to school. Your body is already in a well-practised cycle from years of repetition. It will only make it harder if you try and fight that.
This might mean you are able to start the day earlier, given you won’t have the commute. Make sure that you have a clear start and knock off time otherwise you will end up spending more time working than you would if you were in the office.
Don’t skip the good bits
During your commute, did you normally read a book or the paper? Did you listen to podcasts or the radio? If that’s the case, continue to do so as part of your work from home routine.
But now that you don’t have the commute, you can take a slightly longer breakfast, whilst engaging in those activities. Moreover, you now have the time to do some exercise at the beginning or end of the day in place of the commute. Why not take yourself off for a nice 30-minute walk between breakfast and sitting down at the computer?
Your body clock
Most of us work an average of eight hours per day (or at least would like to!) so that’s what we’re aiming for when working from home too. Carving up our day into four two-hour chunks can help us to the right work at the right time, depending on our levels of intensity (energy and focus) and impact (importance and return on time investment).
- The first two hours: High intensity/high impact tasks that directly and positively affect results and require a lot of attention, energy and focus.
- The second two hours: High intensity/low impact tasks that require being in the service of others. Giving time to someone in your team to “bounce an idea off” or something similar.
- The third two hours: Low intensity/low impact tasks that can be done while metaphorically sleeping because they are easy and the stakes are low. These are things that are repetitive and routine in nature – like responding to email.
- The fourth two hours: Low intensity/high impact tasks that don’t require a lot of “heavy lifting” brain-wise, but will have a positive impact: planning, maintenance, preparation.
Whether you’re a morning (early bird) or evening (night owl), your body clock is designed to do work that requires mental agility in the morning, and physical agility in the afternoon. When working from home, dedicate at least two hours in the morning to work that requires high levels of focus and intensity and do your more mundane or routine tasks in the afternoon.
Donna McGeorge, speaker, mentor and author of “The 25-Minute Meeting: Half the Time, Double the Impact”
