As the current pandemic keeps escalating a lot of us have found ourselves working from home, and a bit wary of how we are going to adjust to this new routine. There’s plenty of advantages; no commute, no dress code, no noisy colleagues, but it does have its challenges too.
Let’s tackle ways in which you can grow accustomed to a new way of working and keep yourself ticking along:
- Set up your space – Create an ergonomic workspace at home. This is key in ensuring you can stay focused for a long time without hurting your neck, shoulders, elbow, or any other part of you. This will help you separate your workspace from your living space, giving you a better chance of not being distracted by your day to day home surroundings (pets, kids, the tv etc). Here’s a guide by ‘Zapier’ to help you set up your desk ergonomically.
- Stay in touch – You may be feeling a bit isolated as your colleagues aren’t right next to you and this can bring on a bought of cabin fever, that’s normal. Let’s be honest half of our buzz for our jobs comes from discussing new ideas and socially interacting with one another. Make sure you reach out, call your colleagues, check in and or even try having a social video call, it’s always comforting to see we are all in this together.
- Keep your daily routine – It is very tempting to fall into a pattern of late nights, late mornings, eating badly and lounging in PJs while working from home, but this is exactly what you need to ditch in order to remain productive. Stick to your daily routine. So if you usually wake up at 7:30am to go to the office, then make sure you keep waking up at 7:30am. Instead of staying in your pjs, have a shower and put on something comfortable that you wouldn’t just wear at home.
- Take regular breaks – This is so important and often underrated. Not only do regular breaks ensure increased productivity but at a time like this, your health is the most important factor, and regular breaks will serve your mental and physical wellbeing. Scared of piling on the pounds? Go on a walk outside, or a run in the nearby park. Wind down with some yoga or meditation, some colouring or even some cooking. You will come back to your desk refreshed and ready to tackle the world. Make sure your breaks include rehydrating yourself!
- Webinars and Training courses – When you’re in the office you may dismiss a lot of the emails you get offering you free training and webinars on skills you have always wanted to perfect. Now you’re at home you have the perfect surroundings to truly concentrate and learn some really valuable skills on some of the training courses available to you. Google has some fantastic free courses for digital marketing and there are some great training courses for sales teams too.
- Plan your comeback – This is a bit of a lull period in most industries and especially true for the travel industry. It is a reminder that we can’t control everything. But we must stick together in all of this and be certain of one thing…we will make a comeback, and it will be huge! Travel may be sensitive to the climate but travel is also timeless, let’s not forget our passion and our love for the industry. What are you going to focus on in 2020? Don’t forget your goals, don’t forget to inspire yourselves and each other and focus on the positives that could come out of the year.
Best of luck to you all, look after yourselves and each other.
You may also be interested in…
- Keeping teams motivated during a crisis
- How do we redesign tourism for a sustainable future?
- Eight things the hotel industry can do to aid recovery