My name is Amar. I am a writer and comedian based in India. I have been working for myself for the last 5 years, as a freelancer, and a lot of this time has been spent working from home.
I feel the world suddenly needs my help since this new global pandemic (what a sexy word, no?) has hit the world and everyone is being forced to work, workout/walk, face their family, and stare at themselves from home.
In a usual world, we have options to move about the market, office spaces etc. to go about our lives. Remember that?
So, as I say in the title. I am going to try and make this guide elaborate and comprehensive, which are synonyms.
Here we go:
1. Your family members are not your colleagues
You cannot discuss work with your family. Most people in Indian families, especially if you live with your parents have no idea what their wards do. So, you cannot discuss your work with your family.
Family is family. Work is work. Keep them separate.
2. Make friends with the house maid
If you are new to working from home, you will have to face a person called the maid or the house help to sugarcoat the entire situation.
She should not find you repulsive, like mine find me repulsive. I haven’t done particularly anything wrong to make her dislike me so much, but she doesn’t like me. So, our relations are quite at rock bottom. We hardly talk. Not that we are supposed to have long conversations, but we should have some mutual respect. I have for her. She doesn’t like me working from home.
So, try to be on decent relations with your house help, if you happen to have one, or a few.
3. Bolt the damn door
You cannot, just cannot work from home, if the door is open and there are other people home.
You have to bolt the door and work from your closed room. Otherwise, anybody can enter. Your wife, your mom, your kids, your father, your maid, your neighbor's wife. I am just saying, to drive the point.
Make sure you have an environment where you can work from a closed room.
4. Do not work from the bed
Try. I mean, if you work from a double bed, there is a high possibility that the vacant portion of the bed may seduce you to expand your body inside it and throw your laptop on the other side.
If you must work from a bed, work from a single bed. If you try to expand from there, gravity could catch you.
That may prevent you from dropping your laptop from your lap.
5. Eat less
Stay away from the refrigerator, if you do not want to add 10 kilos or pounds to your body weight by the time the work from home period is over. If you survive Corona but you succumb to obesity, it is not a great situation to be in.
Stay away from the kitchen and eat light.
6. Schedule everything
Hey, this is a note to self. Working from home needs way more discipline than working from an office. If you don’t schedule your work and family hours, you will get messed up and would have no idea how much work you got done.
Schedule time and commit to it like a cat commits to milk. I mean I could use a better metaphor there, but please make do.
7. Limit social media
You may end up spending endless time on scrolling Instagram and checking out women if you are a man, or if you are a woman. Everybody is checking out women on social media. There is nothing to check out in men.
Not just that, you may find yourself part of conversations you have nothing to do with. Yesterday, I found myself reading about lingerie on a Facebook group I shouldn’t have been a part of, to start with.
Limit social media, and know why you go there.
8. Take a walk once a while
Just like in your office, take breaks. Work for a while, and then walk out, have a small conversation. Kiss your kids, if you have, or your wife, if you have, or your parents, if you have.
Kisses are good reminders for life’s existence. So is sex, if someone cares enough to have it with you and vice versa. This point is getting digressed. The point was to take a break.
Don’t touch strangers. COVID-19 is not a great time for tinder dates who may end up in your house from an infected country.
9. Work out
Make time to exercise a bit. The problem with spending too much time in home is that you may end up looking disheveled and that may turn your motivation off to work out or even to go out.
Do not go to gyms-social distancing, remember? Work out inside the house. Do some yoga or something. Just do something.
10. Do not take video calls
Just don’t take video calls. You may not remember if you are wearing anything, and someone telling you on the call to put something on, could be quite embarrassing.
11. Read, even if school was long way back
You will be saving sometime, you see? Although office spaces are great environments to work, but they end up killing a lot of time in daily commutes, gossip, and generic idle time.
Make some time to read some stuff that you haven’t made times for, in years.
12. Make a pact with your boss
I have read that in some organizations, they set some sort of a tracker on employee’s machines to track what they do during work from home.
That’s a terrible approach. If as a company, you are so untrustworthy of your employees, you won’t sustain work from home.
As an employee, make a pact with your boss, to be accountable for the mutually agreed output, howsoever you achieve it, in as much time.
Trust is way more important than pajamas.
I will close the list here.
In the times if this pandemic, we as working individuals may end up learning a lot about ourselves, and not just that, organisations may end up learning something about themselves too.
Be safe, and work from home, while we see through COVID-19.
If you liked the article, please take a moment to clap and comment how you found it.
Thank you,
Amar
