Working from home may seem like an ideal situation for many, but when you’re dealing with anxiety about the pandemic and your safety as well, it’s easy to fall into patterns of procrastination and feeling like you’re never away from your desk. As more offices turn to remote work to keep their operations intact, burn-outs are inevitable. With the weekend coming up, here are five ways you can manage burn-out and be productive:
•Find ways to ‘detach’: Since we no longer have the ride home from the office to psychologically separate the work day from our home life, it’s good to find ways to mentally detach ourselves from work. Change into comfy clothes, curl up on the sofa with a good book, take a bubble bath or just shut off all devices for an hour and be present in your surroundings.
•Don’t be afraid to ask questions: In an office it’s easy to go up to a colleague and ask questions if you’re not sure about a task. This becomes difficult over email as it might not seem ideal to many to bombard other people’s inboxes with mails. But you have to keep in mind that now, more than ever, is when we need to work together to get things done and while email etiquette is important, it’s better to get your questions answered so you can do your job better.
•Be prepared: Unexpected things will happen. Calls will drop in the middle of meetings, internet bandwidth might slow to a crawl and colleagues may end up calling you just the minute you walk away to get a cup of coffee. You have to stay calm and tell yourself these things happen and be kind to yourself and others this may happen to.
•Take breaks: Just like in the office, it’s okay to take a walk every hour or so and the best thing about working from home is that you can walk/dance/hop around to your heart’s desire without scaring your colleagues!
•Be honest with yourself and your employer: If you have kids at home, if you’re having connectivity problems, if you have to take care of your parents, tell your boss about it and be honest about how much you can do in how much time. Once you have outlined your goals with your boss, do your best to stick to that schedule and you’ll avoid stress and the resulting burn-out.
We know that the world is tough right now and managing work and family in the same space is challenging. WhatsOn is here to help its readers ride out this storm together. Stay on with WhatsOn for more tips and guides for fun things to do while stuck indoors.
By Tanzia Haq
