How To Not Only Survive But Thrive While Working From Home?

On the face of it, working from home (WFH) looks to be quite appealing.

After all, WFH brings lot of good things to the table.

Such as:

• One can save lot of time and energy that is spent on commuting to the office and then back home as also other travel required for professional reasons
• One can transition from workspace to personal space almost instantaneously so anyone staying far away from their office is back home the very moment she shuts down the office laptop!
• One can spend more time at home and with their family, spouse and children and even pets
• One can stay away from office gossips and several unproductive activities that one may have to willy-nilly indulge in while at the office
• One can take care of certain simple and quick household chores at home during the work time which would have not been possible if one were working at the office
• One can find it easier to schedule meetings since meeting room availability is not an issue in the virtual world
• One can tend to feel more equal to others since the size of one's cubicle or cabin at the office becomes irrelevant and everyone is just a circle on the screen with some initials or an image! 

However, WFH comes with its own set of challenges and pitfalls too.

Here are some of the major ones:

• Lack of social and emotional connect with your colleagues
• Thin line between work time and personal time
• Blurring of work environment and personal space as personal space provides the physical aspect of work environment for performing work in the virtual mode
• Too much and very frequent disruption while working
• Strain on eyes due to excessive time spent in front of the laptop screen
• Adverse impact on physical well-being since
• The physical venue of every virtual meeting is the same every time - in front of the laptop!
• There is not much walking to do to reach the office cafeteria, one might as well be working just next to the dining table in one's home
• There is not much walking to do to reach the office washroom, one might as well be working just next to the washroom in one's home
• There is not much walking down the office corridors to visit a colleague's cubicle or cabin and of course no corridor conversations are possible!
• Adverse impact on mental well-being since
• The interactions with your colleagues become lesser
• The interactions, if and when they happen, typically tend to be highly work-centric
• The socializing done in virtual mode has severe limitations 

So how does one not only survive but thrive while working from home?



Here are some ideas and points that may be of great use:

• Develop empathy for your office colleagues:
• Expect to overhear a colleague's family and children on certain occasions while you are having a meeting with her
• Calibrate your management style, in case you manage people:
• Focus on deliverables and outcomes and not on hours
• Maintain close watch on who will do what and by when
• Invest time to understand the person behind the team member
• Keep the team motivated
• Exhibit patience:
• Take it easy when someone is late by a couple of minutes, occasionally, as virtual meeting may also overshoot beyond its planned end time
• It is easy to overshoot in virtual meetings because there is no one waiting outside the virtual room for the next meeting!
• Stay physically healthy:
• Get up and go away from your laptop once in a while as possible and move your body, stretch it a little bit and also relax your eyes
• Take care of your eyes and fingers since in the virtual world, your eyes and your fingers become the most important organs of your body to navigate your way through!
• Stay mentally healthy:
• Call the colleagues with whom you have good personal equations occasionally
• And as you do so avoid using the official channel, call on their personal number from your personal number
• Spend some time on yoga and meditation and mental relaxation exercises to stay calm, relaxed and focused
• Take leaves occasionally when you are totally away from your laptop, which is the gate to the office in the virtual world!
• Develop empathy for your family:
• Remember they need to do much more than the usual to take care of your needs as you are at home
• Don't forget that your family is not used to seeing you so much and in some sense you are barging upon their routine when you are working from home!