Pandemics turn your life upside down overnight, and leave you scrambling to regain control of both your personal and professional life. Because working from home or off-site is one of the ways to keep working during a pandemic, it is therefore important to ensure that you manage your time effectively. These tips may take some getting used to but you will surely benefit from putting them to action as you get your life back on track.
Take care of tasks one at a time
Resist the urge to check your emails while on a Zoom meeting, or even try to respond to one. Chances are you either send an inefficient email or you lose track of the meeting while you’re trying to send the email. It’s not impossible to do two mentally tasking activities at the same time but multitasking is mostly you shifting from one thing to the other. It is therefore more efficient to complete one task before starting another one so that you deliver the best results at what you’re doing.
Take care of your health
You are most efficient when you are happy and feeling safe. It is important to work but you cannot work effectively over time if you are not taking care of yourself. There are some micro-practices that help you stay in top shape during a pandemic. Some of these include washing your hands, going through a self-wellness checklist, doing breathing exercises and taking periodic breaks from work. These things are mostly things you are already used to, you however have to cultivate them as habits and incorporate them into your everyday routine to avoid burnout and increase efficiency.
Create a workspace
Knowing where all your work tools are is an essential way to keep yourself up to speed with your work while being at home. Messy desks slow you down and it takes forever to complete the simplest tasks because you are searching for things. Ideally, you can convert one of your room to a home office. If you don’t have the space, clear out a corner of the house and designate it as your workspace. Clear your desk, arrange your documents and experiment with different filing and storage options. Having a workspace keeps your work moving along nicely like clockwork as you save time looking for things.
Prioritize using your calendar
When you put something first on your calendar, it has to be the most important task that you have for that day. Every day or however frequently works for you, identify what tasks are priorities and make sure you do these first. You should also ensure that your priorities are important and put on your calendar, so that you can maintain order all day long.
Check up on your team
You do your best work as part of a team, so you need to check up on everyone in your team to make sure that they are fine. This includes both physical and mental well-being. These times are hard, and everyone is dealing with it differently. If you notice that someone is lagging behind, take time to help them to focus on their top priorities and manage your team resources to ensure that things are moving along efficiently even while working from home.