Talk about a polarizing topic, forget the 2020 election and the Mask vs. No Mask debate, ask someone if they enjoy working from home and you’ll get very different answers depending on who you ask. In a recent survey done by PWC about 60% of employees say that it has been successful being completely remote. Now some of you may be saying to yourself wow 60% is pretty high right. If you ask me, someone who works from home 100% of the time, I would have thought that number would have been much higher. I’ve asked a number of people if they’ve liked working from home and I’ve noticed depending on their age, you’ll get a different answer. Keep in mind, my survey was not scientific and I didn’t ask hundreds of people so don’t take my statistics as hard facts, but from my view, I noticed the younger workforce, say 40 and below, enjoy working from home, while 40 and up want to get back into an office at least for part of the time.
So for those of you who are reading this and absolutely love working from home, then you probably already know some of the tips I’m going to give but for those of you who are losing their sanity working from home, here’s some helpful ways to keep working from home fresh.
Leave Your House
Remember when you used to work in an office and you would go out for lunch, maybe run to a store near your office quick or even take a walk with a co-worker to grab coffee in the building. Well just because you are working at home it doesn’t mean you’re on house arrest. I know it’s a pandemic and we have to be careful but it doesn’t mean you can’t take a walk during your lunch or afternoon break. Go outside walk around the block. Take your garbage out from the front of your house (Okay that one isn’t really exciting). Grab a coffee from the coffee shop in town, or a donut, or an ice cream cone (okay maybe a cup because it’ll probably be hard to work and not drip your cone on your laptop). Sometimes we get so caught up in being glued to our computer and feeling stuck in between 4 walls that we forget that it’s okay to step away from a couple of minutes.
Change Your Environment
If you have a dedicated office space in your house you may say, well how am I supposed to do that. Well here’s how: Unplug your laptop and MOVE. It’s not going to kill you to take your laptop and say, sit in your kitchen for a little while (well qunless you decide to try and eat that hotdog you forgot was in your fridge since last month). But seriously, sometimes its easy to get caught up in thinking that you have to stay in the same room all day and can’t move, since we were trained to either be in a cub or office all day. Unless you’re hiding from your kids all day in your office take that laptop and change the spot in your house that you’re sitting for a little while.
Call Someone
Remember when you would be in an office and actually talk to people? I’m sure you probably still have interaction with your team every day (hopefully, or if not you may want to check that you’re still employed there) but you used to run into the mailman or the guy on the second floor and have a random conversation about the weather or how amazing it is that Tom Brady is still the best quarterback in the league even in his 40’s. Working from home we tend to only talk to people when we have to, which isn’t a good thing for the mental health. So whether it’s someone that you used to talk to in the office that you don’t deal with directly, or a family member or a friend, decide in the morning who you want to contact and do it.
Following these pretty simple tips can help you to keep your sanity and in fact even enjoy working from home. So what are you waiting for?
The Workin' Parent 