A guide to working from home can be helpful to navigate through your daily routine. Each individual is unique, and you will need to adopt that which works best for you in your environment. Working from home, for me, is a mindset. You may want to gravitate toward creature comforts. Let’s dive right into a most excellent guide for working from home!
1. Capitalise on extra time banked working from home.
You are no doubt over the moon about not having to deal with the traffic every morning with your life flashing before your eyes every time you change lanes. While we feel that this precious time in traffic is wasted, it can now be capitalised on by getting an early start to your day when working from home.
Don’t allow the comfort of your pillow to keep you from getting up early. Put on a pot of coffee ahead of the daily office routine, throw on some clothes that you usually wear for a professional working day and tackle those tasks from the get-go. When you feel you need a break, then chow your breakfast whilst working through your inbox.
2. Plan the day before and hit sixes all day long.
Speaking of tasks, make sure that you are planning your routine the day before. It doesn’t help to capitalise on that extra time at home and then spend the better half of your morning planning your day. You will find yourself on the back foot more often than AB De Villiers hooking a short one for six with that approach. So, if you want to hit sixes all day long while working from home, have a plan and stick to it.
3. Use the right tools available online.
Ever seen a lumberjack cutting down a tree with a nail file? In today’s digital economy, there is an array of helpful, affordable and sometimes free tools that are the right tools for your newly discovered work life at home.
We have listed some of our favourite and most trusted tools used here at RocketNet:
- Microsoft Teams – great for video calls, online collaboration with file sharing and storage, application integration and calendar management
- Dropbox – an excellent file hosting service that offers transfer of large files, cloud storage, and file synchronisation
- 1-Password – you can store your passwords, software licenses and other sensitive information with one master password
- RocketNet Fibre – hey, it’s our blog, but seriously we offer unshaped, uncapped and non-throttled fibre internet
4. Use the appropriate fibre internet speed and router set up.
Moving your work into a home office may be frustrating if you don’t have suitable fibre internet speed. The fibre internet used at the office will have a different set-up to what you have at home. Download and upload speeds may be worlds apart depending on the package you purchased from your ISP. The router set up at the office may also be very different from what you have when working from home. The type of router you currently have may be causing speed frustrations.
We have a few of our own tools that can help you.
RocketNet probe app.
If you are experiencing that pull-out-you-hair slow internet speed that you didn’t before, download the RokcketNet probe app onto your phone. Open the app, lay your phone next to your router, and the app will run a diagnostics test identifying where the issue may be. It may be that your router cannot deliver enough bandwidth for your needs or that you have overloaded your router by connecting too many devices
Support Team.
Our WhatsApp support team are fantastic and ready to help. They are available to chat anytime from Monday to Friday from 08:00 to 20:00.
5. Set aside some ‘connect-with-the-outside-world-time’.
Human interaction is super essential for your sanity. You don’t want to emerge from working at home into the ‘real world’ looking as though you escaped from some asylum and are searching for your next victim. Get out to purchase a coffee, take that menacing dog for a walk or, at best, sit down at that coffee shop to continue working for a while.
6. Use distractions to your advantage.
It’s incredible how many people suddenly develop attention deficit disorder (ADD) when they start working from home. Instead of allowing distractions to pull you away from work, use them to your advantage. For example, if you are a gamer, give yourself 30-minutes of game time as a reward for completing a certain number of tasks. If you enjoy a neat and tidy home, stick the washing on and use the washing machine as a timer to get some work done before the next load.
7. Have space dedicated to work.
Make a space just for your work at home and hang a sign on the door that reads ‘work only’ and includes some trading hours. You need to switch off, so you don’t end up in the WA (workaholics anonymous). Creating that separate space helps with the mind game and with healthy boundaries, especially when your neighbour wants to come over for ‘tea and a quick chat’ now that you are ‘free’.
8. Just before closing.
Working from home can be liberating, fun and comfortable. It has been proven that it can increase productivity and improve work-life integration as well as employee satisfaction.
It requires a sharper focus and more assertive discipline not to be distracted by all your creature comforts. Have a plan, find a routine, keep focused and enjoy working from home.
