“Boss, Can I work from home today?”

“Why”

“Just have some guests coming over”

“No, you won’t be able to concentrate, there is so much distraction at home. Rather take a leave”

Argh, sounds familiar? Each one of us yearned to work from home at some point and loved to avail every possible opportunity to do so. Now when work from home is a compulsion by the companies, that’s a good change for the people who are constantly stuck between 9 to 5 or 12 to 9 jobs and couple of hours of travel. They get some ‘between the tasks’ time to spend with kids and family.

Now there is a bummer, you are all set to work from home (not just you, almost whole of the world) for few weeks or maybe few months- you never know. And the situation is not all hunky-dory with office, schools, shops, restaurants, transportation all out of bounds. You can’t just have a free run. You have kids at home all the time, you have your spouse with you all the time. You don’t have a domestic help available, nor you can plan your evenings, nor you can even order your favorite food. Let alone that, you can’t even do online shopping for some pastime (yes, you will have a lot of money saved by the time lock-down is lifted)

We are going through an unprecedented lock-down and are caged like an animal. Now you feel how they felt all this while. (Sorry I will not preach you as an animal evangelist).

It could be immensely uncomfortable to get adapt to a non-social set up for very long, while you are really close to your family in a real way and not through Social Media( at least those who are not living in remote cities for work and isolated at a different level). Social distancing is bringing Family proximity at cost of some Work-From-Home nightmares.

Let’s learn some tips on how to make it a more pleasant Work from Home experience.

1-Where do you sit entire day?

Did I hear “on Bed”? Sorry that’s good place to sleep and you will have “go to bed” feeling if you try to work from bed whole day. Try and arrange a table Chair set up to get you little office like seating. Sitting on bed will get you a bad posture for a longer duration working.

2-Discipline your routine

Work from home never means starting any time and finishing any time. Imagine you are in the office without having to travel daily. Don’t change your waking up routine and start same time every day and wrap up same time every day. Don’t let the discipline of your life go haywire. The advantage is you can have some music or TV show going along side while your eyes are set on the laptop, and have home made food and snacks at your convenience.

3-Don’t forget Sunlight and Fresh Air

In lock-down times, you may not be allowed to go freely on roads, but you can always stroll to your balcony or terrace in between. Or even better if you take your laptop to some open area of the house and take your remote meeting calls from there.

4-Don’t forget small chitchats with your Kids and Spouse

This is like a once in a lifetime opportunity to be able to spend that much time with your near and dear ones. Take small breaks to play with your kids, give them guidance on their studies, teach them some good manners and skills which you always wanted to do, but had no time for. And remember too much proximity with your spouse maybe little injurious to your relationship, on a lighter note!

5-Stretch and Run

Take smaller breaks. Go for a walk if you still can. Go to grocery store which is still open despite lock-down and fetch something. Create little jogging space inside your home if you can. Learn some stretching exercises and Yoga steps. This will keep you physically and mentally fit in tough times.

6-Work on a Hobby

Bought a guitar year back but never got a chance to get to it and strum a string or two? Been longing to learn some dance steps and were feeling baffled due to hectic work schedule. This is golden time of your life, tap on it. Go to YouTube, pick online tutorials and come back as a pro few weeks later and surprise your friends at work in the next annual party.

Hope you have a safe and happy Work from Home. Stay Home, Stay Productive and Stay Healthy.

Author Bio-

Chetan Saxena is a seasoned Digital Marketer and Chief Operating Officer of ISHIR. He consults businesses on various marketing initiatives as Head of Digital Marketing of Digital Success, a subsidiary of ISHIR and also manages offshore operations of technology side of ISHIR.