Working From Home Tips: How To Effectively Manage Time

With the pandemic, almost everyone is working from home. It’s important to know how to effectively manage your time, hence this post on working from home tips.

It’s already the fifth month of the year guys! How time flies! Do you remember when you were over flogged with going to work or school and silently prayed for a week’s break? How you would function better if you resumed or closed work early or had an off day or two weekly? How that would solve all your problems because all you needed was a little more rest and sleep. Please just laugh at yourself (lol).

I can’t be the only one on this table. We know for a fact that most companies and institutions now work from home due to the global pandemic. A rough estimate should put it at three months because some companies took the work from home action quite early. You finally have the freedom to play around with your activities! And what better way to achieve this than to manage your time?

Now you have the freedom to give ample spacing between your daily activities. You’re your own boss with timing! Can I hear an amen? Well then, let’s not waste any more time. Here are few working from home tips that will help you greatly with time management.

Working from home tips on time management

Plan ahead

Most of the points I stated in this working from home tips post would only be feasible if you plan ahead. Working from home entails a lot. For one, you have to contend with domestic distractions.

A good way to plan is by first asking & answering the following questions.

• What do you hope to achieve by the end of each month?
• As a student how do you stick to your reading plans and prepare for your school examinations?
• As a worker, how do you plan ahead for your online meetings, tasks your boss throws at you &
• Generally, how do you improve on your self-care and development?

 Planning ahead is all it takes. Know when to play and work because it is very easy to get distracted when at home. You know what is expected of you, why not go ahead and do it so you can Netflix and chill.

I understand that this is actually easier said then done especially since there is no set date to the end of the pandemic. Some people would only pick up after themselves when it is announced that activities would resume in a month’s time. They’ll go back to praying for “a week’s break”. However, you can work and relax a lot during this period. Planning ahead helps to keep you focused and organized as you already know the time constraints to particular tasks and projects and how to tackle them. 

Create a schedule

It’s easy for an entire day to pass by without achieving anything. I truly hope I’m not the only one who has experienced this. It is to that effect that you need to create a schedule or routine that you’ll stick to while working from home especially if you don’t have deadlines. With deadlines, you are motivated because you have a time frame. But without deadlines, you tend to relax and lose sight of the things you ought to do. Having a schedule takes away the burden of wondering what next to do. You already have it outlined, so you get straight to work! Creating a schedule is an important working from home tip that everyone should take seriously.

Set time limits & reminders for each task

I set an alarm for every hour so that even if I’m distracted, I know the amount of time I just let slip by. Task yourself to beat your set time for tasks and since you’re working from home, reward yourself with breaks after every completed task as this would help to boost your morale. You can also used timer apps like the Pomodoro focus to-do app. Also try setting reminders. They will help you work on your daily or weekly tasks especially since you’re home with lots of distractions from family, friends or social media. You can use your phones or computers to set daily reminders and check your progress at the end of each day. 

My Experience Working From Home: The Truth No One Tells You

Remove non-essentials

Working from home can be daunting, don’t worsen it by setting unrealistic targets. Don’t kid yourself. When planning, remove all non-essentials. You know yourself and what you can do. If you plan to take on more tasks, infuse them in little portions. Don’t overcrowd your schedule and end up not actualizing them, losing your focus and most importantly, your time.  

Work Smart

Are you a morning or night person? You need to figure out when you function best to utilize your time better. It’s also about working smart; not how far but how well. You don’t need to stress yourself during the day when the weather is probably hot and there’s distractions from everywhere. Use such times to surf the net and watch a movie or two. You can decide to work early in the morning or late at night. Whichever rocks your boat. 

Working smart also entails working on tasks that are most important, as you are likely to spend more time and resource on them. Rather than the opposite where you’ll end up with wasted time and unfinished work. 

Focus on one task at a time

We all are different, but i find that jumping from one tasks to the other often leads to many uncompleted works. so I advice, rather than focus on several activities at a time and not finish any, why not settle on one task and finish it before going on to the other.

Sometimes it seems like you’re wasting time on a particular task that you want to shift onto another. That is very understandable but if you do that frequently, you’ll have a series of unfinished tasks and time you cannot recover.

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What I do in such instances is to make use of my notes, if I find my thoughts wandering on another project while I’m currently working on another, I put down those thoughts and continue. I realize this pushes me to finish up the project on hand to get to the new one, rather than dump it entirely. 

Get enough rest

Yeah! Sleep is very important and you know how refreshed you feel after having a good night’s sleep or siesta. The first month into the quarantine, I was sleep-deprived. I wanted to keep track of all I had missed due to work. The irony! I barely slept for five hours. I was always on my phone, following up with series and movies I had dumped due to work or what’s trending on Twitter or viewing WhatsApp status and having a laugh. Of course I didn’t do much work on self development. And work was really sent in at the “dead” of deadline. Resting well, exercising and eating healthy, helps to boost your work performance and timing. 

Working from home tips- Avoid perfection

Trust and believe in yourself to put in your best in delivering your tasks; do your work to the best of your ability. But remember that no one is perfect. Avoid the urge to have “a perfect work” as this would ultimately lead to loss of time with little or no extra effort in that particular project. 

Go back to your drawing board

You cannot engage in an activity constantly and expect different results. If you try all of the aforementioned working from home tips and it’s not working, try tweaking your schedule. Go back to your drawing board. Change your plans, choose better schedules that fit your home office, eat healthy and rest well. Try and try again to get the routine that suits you best. 

Remember that working from home can be all sorts of things you want it to be. Find what makes you comfortable, once you are comfortable, you’ll be productive and in due course, learn to manage your time well.  I’ve always been a bed-person.

I work a lot from the bed, I snack and eat while working on my bed; it already has a dent on it, lol. Have fun while at it, because why not? If you have to dress up and use your dining room or your reading area or study to work just to get the feel of the office, why not? Anything to get going. Keep your eyes on the prize, stay focused and utilize your time and these working from home tips well. 

I hope you enjoyed reading this working from home tips. If you found it helpful, please share with your colleagues and friends. We can all ace this working from home thing. Let’s go