Getting productive and refining your abilities to work at home is especially important during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. If you have children that have not been able to attend school then the juggling-act that has become daily life can easily become overwhelming.
We take a quick look at some of how you can work efficiently, take care of the kids and also maintain a level of wellbeing...
Have a Schedule
Use a spreadsheet or app to schedule the children's outside playtime, educational times, naps etc.
Then in a different colour, map out your work schedule.
You may need to accept that you won't be able to work 9 till 5. You may have to wake up early, for example, 5 am, to get a head start for the day. Schedule your work hours around the children and not vice versa.
Getting up early, before the children, is probably the biggest tip for managing your work and your kids!
Prioritise Important Tasks
If you have something that is particularly important and has a deadline, you may want to schedule this for first thing in the morning, when you know that your children are highly likely to still be in bed. Because of all the interruptions, you are likely to endure during the rest of the day, lower priority tasks or tasks that may require less focus and cognitive effort can be scheduled for later in the day.
You can take this one step further. Make a list of the times during the day when you are least likely to get interrupted. Order these from least likely, to most likely.
Then for each time of the day, enter your work-related tasks and allocate the most important one to the time of day that you are least likely to get interrupted. The second most important task can then be allocated to the time of day that is second in the list - so the second most likely time that you are NOT going to be disturbed.
If that sounds confusing, please see this video for a full explanation!
Use Rewards But Sparingly
Both with yourself and your children! If you are home-schooling your children during the pandemic, then the transition from school to home may be difficult for some children. You can use rewards to try and encourage them to get work done. For example, you may wish to let them watch a movie or do some specific craft projects in the afternoon or evening if they can get the day's work done on time. Rewards are motivating, but they provide 'extrinsic motivation' - ideally we want children to enjoy the process and not just the rewards of getting something completed.
Having a weekend and midweek rewards can also help with burnout as a parent. This could be a 'family night' on a Saturday, where you allow the children to eat dinner and watch a movie as a treat or you enjoy a day trip somewhere together. A personal midweek treat could be something such as a hot bath & music, or enjoying a takeaway instead of cooking from scratch.
Boredom is Good for Older Children
Do not feel like you have to constantly entertain your children when they are not doing schoolwork. Being able to manage boredom is an important skill, as adults, it is unrealistic to think that we should be constantly stimulated and entertained. Self-control in these situations is also important, for long journeys when we have to stay seated for example.
Boredom can also stimulate creativity and discovery. It's unlikely that a child will just sit still when he or she is bored and they will often discover new ways of keeping themselves entertained.
'Children need to sit in their own boredom for the world to become quiet enough that they can hear themselves' - Dr Vanessa Lapointe
Self Employed? Use a Phone Answering App
If you are self-employed, then working from home during the COVID pandemic will no doubt have proven extra stressful. You can mitigate some of the stress substantially by outsourcing your telephone answering to a high-quality virtual receptionist or phone answering company such as Moneypenny. With the higher end companies, you can opt for 24/7 cover and a dedicated receptionist - or a small team of receptionists, who will know the fundamentals of your business.
Using a phone answering service means that it is a lot easier to focus when you want to get on with your work. Using an app, you can typically inform your receptionist that you should only be disturbed in case of an emergency. The receptionist will deal with all customer queries and sales leads, exactly as if he or she was a full-time employee working from your office. The 24/7 service can also mean that you are unlikely to get disturbed during the evenings and weekends, when you may need to catch up with specific projects.
Use High-Intensity Interval Training to Keep Fit
One thing that should be a priority, but rarely is, are your fitness and wellbeing. When we are busy and close to becoming overwhelmed, we often eat snacks on the go and don't find time to exercise.
You should always consult a doctor before taking up a new exercise program or regime. High-Intensity Interval Training such as Tabata Intervals is a great way to keep fit without using up too much precious time.
A single Tabata Interval takes 4 minutes to complete. Tabata intervals involve 20 seconds 'sprints' or all-out effort, followed by 10 seconds of rest. This is repeated 8 times. The original research was published in 1997 and utilised cycling (you can see the study here) and demonstrated that just 4 minutes of high-intensity exercise, was able to enhance fitness. Research also shows that although the exercise lasts just 4 minutes, it can boost a person's metabolism for 30 minutes afterwards.
Tabata can be used with almost any form of exercise. Cycling is preferred as you are unlikely to pull a muscle due to the low impact. Any bodyweight exercise is fine too however, bodyweight squats, for example, provide a challenging and productive modality. If you move on to using resistance-exercises or explosive exercises like squat-jumps, you should warm up first.
A quick tip for mindfulness is to do 20 seconds of mindfulness every time you take a break. Simply focus on your breath for 20 seconds. If you do this 4 or 5 times per day, you can become incredibly focussed in a short space of time. In can also help to use a Pomodoro Timer or app. The Pomodoro method involves working for 25-minute 'sprints', followed by a 5-minute break. You can use the 25 minutes to focus on the work at hand - each time your mind wanders, bring your focus back to the work. You can then use the 5-minute break to check your phone, check emails and make sure everything has been prioritised correctly.
