10 Ways to Organize Your Time While Working From Home
Are you an employee who craves flexible working hours? Or an employer who would love to implement flexible working hours but is too worried about productivity to even venture there?
Being granted flexible working hours and conditions might be every employee’s dream, one that is hard to turn into a reality and can easily be mismanaged by both the employee and the employer. In fact, one of the main barriers for employers to adopting flexible working hours is the fear that employees may either abuse the policy or not know how to manage it properly. This ends the discussion before it even begins, and both, employees and employers, lose a great opportunity that in fact may improve both the company’s productivity and happiness levels.
But we, at Kashida, know that it can work, and are doing it well! Since our inception in 2011, we’ve adopted a flexible working policy whereby the team can work remotely, completely or on certain days.
One of the ways we’ve made this work is by driving these 10 recommendations to our team, to help them manage their time and make the best of this flexibility. Here are 10 ways to organize your time better when working from home:
- Conclude each day with a to-do-list that reflects on and assesses the day’s accomplished tasks, and organizes your next day’s actionable tasks. You can use Applications to set checklists and actively reflect on items’ status – you may also opt for manual methods.
- Your checklists do not only have to cover work-related items. In fact, include all the simple tasks that have an impact on your energy and wellbeing, and eventually reflect on your level of productivity.
- Wake up at a reasonable time in the morning, surf the news/social media updates, change out of your pajamas, go for a morning walk or exercise and shower, do whatever it takes for you to feel energized.
- Have a good breakfast.
- Become results driven, so you do not have to work from 9 till 6 non-stop; in fact, you just need to schedule your day in a way that fits the kind of work you are doing and your deadlines.
- Schedule your working-day routine, including your lunch break and small breaks, and stick to it.
- Ensure you are not working less than 6 hours a day, excluding your breaks, which is the ideal number of hours in which the human brain can stay focused during the day.
- Try to leave the house/location you are working from for lunch breaks, for a chance to get some fresh air and exposure to different kinds of light and energy. But make sure you are available for online meetings or when the team needs you.
- Do not try to fit personal and social duties into your working hours; contrariwise, do not try to fit work into your personal time and weekends.
- Inform your significant other, family members and friends of your working hours and be very firm about them respecting those set working hours and space.
Of course, things are easier said than done; and honestly, being your own discipline isn’t the easiest thing. However, it’s all about creating habits. When the latter becomes among your habits, you will no longer need to force them into your day or treat them as a burden that is draining your energy and time. When they become your habits, they will be what defines your time and gives value to it.
Eventually, if managed well, employers will be more inclined to provide flexibility, especially when they realize that productivity can actually improve with employees’ enhanced conditions. When time is managed well, the challenge remains in ensuring working remotely doesn’t jeopardize the level of communication and good connections with managers and other colleagues; we will cover more tips about that in our next blog so stay tuned!
