What Day Is It? 7 Keys To Maintaining WFH Focus During COVID-19
Maintaining focus while WFH is a challenge during COVID-19.
Is it Tuesday or Thursday? Are you mixing up your days of the week working from home?
Due to the COVID-19 shelter from home mandate for millions now working remotely from home, the challenges of isolation, distractions, interruptions, family duties and more are crossing the lines literally from work and home.
The Coronapocalypse (it’s actually a word now, according to Merriam-Webster) has many of us working more hours than the usual 40-hour a week workload, even with commute time erased and lunch hours for the most part eliminated. (It doesn’t take an hour to walk in the kitchen and make a sandwich.)
“The #Coronapocalypse (it’s actually a word now, according to @MerriamWebster) has many of us working more hours than the usual 40-hour a week #workload. #WorkFromHome”
In a newly extended quarantine period for WFH employees, the hours can cartwheel over each other. Non-essential workers who are offsite and working at home with children, spouses, parents and pets needing nonstop attention close by are muddling through by working evenings and weekends to catch up.
Read more in Take The Lead on gig work
Take The Lead is looking out for you especially in these circumstances and has tools for you to embrace your power and shift into productivity to build and maintain the career path you intend—even now in the pandemic crisis that has disrupted and redefined the entire economic structure of labor.
“Maintaining focus while #WorkingFromHome is a challenge during #COVID-19. @Takeleadwomen has tools for you to shift into #productivity, even now in the pandemic crisis.”
“What you need is almost always there. See it and use it with courage. Because power unused is power useless,” Feldt writes.
“@Takeleadwomen has tools for you to maintain the career path you intend, despite #COVID19. “What you need is almost always there. See it and use it with courage,” writes @GloriaFeldt. ”
1. Acknowledge it is different and it is challenging. “When you were going into an office every day there was a clear distinction between your work life and personal time. But now that you don't have a commute to mark the beginning and end of your day and your office could now be in your kitchen, you can end up working all the time if you're not careful,” Kathryn Vasel writes in CNN. To correct that, she suggests, “Set your work hours, communicate them with your boss and colleagues and then stick to them. (Yes, there will be times when you will work late, but try to make that the exception, not the rule.)”
2. Devise an action plan. Rush University assistant professor and occupational therapist Laura VanPuymbrouck writes in Psychology Today, “Using an occupational therapy approach, I evaluated my own occupational balance. Using pie charts, activities of daily living checklist, and a weekly calendar I could see what activities I was neglecting and recognized how imbalanced my days and weeks were increasingly becoming. Action plans focus on changing small but important behaviors or ways of doing everyday activities.”
3. Turn off your devices. “Take steps to ensure you're as focused as you can be when working from home. If possible, creating a personal office using a room in your home is a great way to start. Turn off unneeded electronics, such as the TV, and remove visual and audio distractions that easily steal your attention. Cell phones, while useful, are very tempting to look at periodically. Try turning off notifications to some of your apps or putting it on silent when you really need to buckle down on a project,” according to Entrepreneur.
Read more in Take The Lead on remote work
4. Set boundaries. I notice more so than ever I am getting evening and middle of the night, to early morning and weekend work emails. No one seems to acknowledge any time off or the need for any time off. “It’s easy for someone to get caught up working from morning till night when already at home. At least in the office, there’s the element of needing to go home to get some sleep. The other side is the concern that we don’t know how to show up in a way that keeps us visible to the powers to be. Our guilt can drive us to work longer hours in hopes to show our usefulness. But that’s a recipe for burnout. Be sure to lay out clear office hours with your manager. Work to have the focus be on results vs. visible time on the computer,” Forbes reports.
“Set boundaries. I am getting evening and middle of the night, to early morning and weekend work emails. No one seems to acknowledge any time off or the need for any time off. #WFH #Advice”
5. Drift, then drift back into focus. Bryan Robinson, Ph.D., Psychotherapist and author of 40 books, writes in Thrive Global, “Take a minute and give your mind full permission to wander. Notice where it goes without trying to change anything. This counterintuitive strategy is much like leaning into a curve when riding a motorcycle — even though your thoughts might try to get you to lean the opposite way. This practice can actually relax the mind because we’re leaning in by noticing, not struggling to make something happen.” But then come back to concentrate on the task. “Studies show when we stray, we pay — we’re more stressed-out and unhappy when our minds wander than when we stay in the here and now. We’re happier no matter what we’re doing — even working overtime, vacuuming, or stuck in traffic — if we’re focused on the activity instead of thinking about something else.”
“Drift, then drift back into focus. Bryan Robinson, Ph.D., Psychotherapist and author of 40 books, writes in @Thrive, “Take a minute and give your mind full permission to wander.” #Relax #Destress”
6. Don’t start bad habits. That would mean sleeping late regularly, taking frequent snack breaks, catching up on the news every 15 minutes or not pushing yourself to get the required work done—because who would really know the difference? “Every morning when you wake up, ask yourself, ‘What do I absolutely have to get done today?’ Write that down before your day gets started. It’s not just a to-do list. Put those must-dos in your calendar and commit specifically to the time of day when you’re going to get those things done. At times like these, you have to hold yourself accountable because you’re not in a normal workplace environment that’s going to hold you accountable. Eventually this crazy time in our nation’s history will pass. It will be OK. You just don’t want to find yourself and your team members miles behind the competition when this pandemic passes, with lots of bad habits in tow,” reports Accounting Today.
“Don’t start #BadHabits. That would mean sleeping late regularly, taking frequent snack breaks, or not pushing yourself to get the required work done. #WorkFromHome ”
7. Make this a learning phase. Adam Grant, Professor of Management and Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, organizational psychologist, best-selling author and host of the podcast, WorkLife, tells the Word Economic Forum: “The challenging part is, as human beings, we don't like uncertainty and unpredictability. On the flip side, we're highly adaptable. Darwin wrote when he was building his theory of evolution that natural selection favours a sense of flexibility. It's not always the strongest species that survives; it's sometimes the most adaptable. I think one of the ways we can cope with the uncertainty is: when you can't imagine the future, you can actually rewind and think more about the past. You can recognize hardships that you've faced before. You can learn something from the lessons of your own resilience and then try to figure out ‘what did I do effectively before that might work for me today?’"
Adjusting to the disruptive demands of working from home, Take The Lead has moved all events and workshops to virtual offerings. Beginning June 1, Take The Lead is launching the online course, “9 Leadership Power Tools: The Sure Steps To Advance Your Career.” Check out out events, online courses, coaching, and trainings for you or your company. Click here to join our mailing list and be notified of new virtual offerings and sign up for the course.
“Adjusting to the disruptive demands of #WorkingFromHome, @TakeLeadWomen has moved all events and workshops to virtual offerings. #LeadershipTools #OnlineTraining”
“Beginning June 1, @Takeleadwomen is launching the #OnlineCourse, “9 #Leadership #PowerTools: The Sure Steps To Advance Your Career.” #VirtualLearning ”
