Coronavirus: How To Work From Home, From Productivity To Personal Hygiene

Congratulations! You are now a home-worker! Perhaps your company is trying to minimise the spread of coronavirus with a Google-style remote working policy. Or maybe you’ve made the personal decision to hide out indoors until the worst is over, with a laptop and pizza menu.

Either way, welcome, friends, to my world.

I spent 10 years trying and failing to concentrate and relax in various office environments – from sleek, open-plan creativity farms to the poky, haunted backrooms of stately homes. But I only found my productivity stride when I began working from home five years ago.

And, while there are few upsides to a global pandemic threat, I’m eager to share my tips with you. So here are my WFH dos and don’t for being productive while remaining firmly in your comfort zone.

DO shower

Anyone who’s worked from home and says they haven’t pranced around their kitchen, resplendent in fluffy unicorn slippers, declaring themselves UNSHACKLED FROM THE RULES OF SOCIETY because they are the QUEEN OF PYJAMAS (or king/nonbinary monarch thereof) is lying.

Royal prancing in nightwear is one of the major perks of working from home. But! Seasoned WFHers also know when to call a halt to this sort of thing, and have a damned shower, because otherwise you’ll be rocking furry unbrushed teeth and overripe armpits for your 3pm client call.

Personally, I stay in my PJs to plan my day, but once I’ve sunk my third coffee, it’s time to shower and change into some smart joggers. Or, as I like to call them, “work pyjamas”.

DO ignore the front door

All manner of callers, from salespeople to missionaries, come to your door when you’re normally in the office – but if they come when you’re home, you don’t have to answer the door just because they decide to knock on it.

I didn’t realise this when I began working from home, and now I’m an unwilling member of several niche religions, and very nearly got a loft extension I couldn’t afford because I answered the door to a salesman, and felt too awkward to say no.

DON’T regrout your bathroom

Spend enough time at home and you’ll start spotting a wall that needs repainting, or a corner of the room that could do with a nice occasional chair to really make it pop.

STOP. WORK-TIME. DO NOT allow yourself to get sucked into a Pinterest spiral, or you’ll end up with a perfectly Marie Kondo-ed home, but no job.

That said, you could do a load of laundry at least, you filthy animal.

DON’T be afraid to change things up

Take breaks and get some physical activity in between any disparate projects you’re working on, and try using different locations (living room, garden, cafe – assuming you’re not on full zombie-apocalypse lockdown) for each one to spark your creativity.

DO turn on Netflix

WFH best practise states the opposite, but if you normally update your spreadsheets while Melissa with the photographic memory from content marketing tells you all about Love Is Blind, you might as well do it while watching Love Is Blind.

DO work from bed

I sometimes do this when working on big projects I find daunting. I go to bed; work on them in an email window – just employ little tricks to make the task at hand feel more manageable.

Plus, of course...

DO remember to wash your hands!

Duh!

If you share your home

Post a list of the things you’ll be working on today – for how long, and whether you can be interrupted – in some communal space, to prevent your housemates from wandering in with long, meandering questions.

Offer to cover additional household costs – all those cups of coffee, and thermostat-twiddling costs money, after all.

If too much noise – or too much silence – is an issue, employ headphones and a white noise/background noise generator, like this free site.

If you live alone

Work from a cafe if you feel lonely

Let friends and loved ones know where you are today

Host WFH sessions for local coworkers

Set up a Slack channel for the ones who aren’t local

Split your day down the middle by having lunch with a friend

‘Don’t answer the front door’ goes double if you’re in the house alone.`

If you have children (especially if they’ve been sent home)

Pair up with your co-parent – or another parent you work with – and take turns working and babysitting for a couple of hours throughout the day

Set up older kids with movies, blankets, tablets and snacks while you and your parent colleagues work in another room

Get childcare. While I’ve occasionally filed emergency copy while my two small sons race around me distracted by far too much chocolate, getting childcare is the only way you’re realistically going to get a big chunk of work done. That is, unless Coronavirus prevents that, too.

Finally, if you cannot work – don’t work

If you are ill

If your child is ill

If technology fails you

If you have to care for someone

If there’s an emergency.

If any of these are conditions you wouldn’t work under while in the office, they shouldn’t – outside of the bare minimum for handovers, etc. – suddenly, magically become applicable just because you’re at home. Tell your manager and coworkers what’s going on, and then close your emails and switch off from work-mode.

If this means climbing back into your pyjamas before 3pm, of course, you have my complete permission to do so.

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