How to stay sane when you’re stuck at home
Many companies have started to implement home office in the last few days to protect their employees from infections and flatten the curve of the corona pandemic.
This is a very reasonable action and we want to support every company that has decided to do so. Over 40 percent of eyeo’s employees are working remotely full time. That’s why we have quite a lot of experience in working remotely and establishing a remote culture.
When you’re used to working fully remote from home, you might have established a routine for your work day that helps you to feel good and be productive without leaving your house. But if working from home is new to you, you might feel a bit lonely or miss going to the office.
Our experienced eyeo colleagues shared their best practices and tips for staying sane when your stuck at home.
Routine
You have your own routine when you prepare for a usual work day. Don’t give up on it! Get up at your usual time, take a shower and dress up like you normally do! There is definitely an appeal to staying in pajamas all day, but getting ready and putting on actual clothes will make you feel better!
Plan your meals
Planning your meals throughout the day helps give it structure. Take a break while you’re eating and don’t inhale your sandwich while sitting in front of your laptop. Taking an actual break will help you to eat more slowly and to concentrate better afterward. Planning your meals will actually prevent you from forgetting to eat, which might lead to bad moods and hangriness. Even more important: Don’t forget to drink! Set an alarm on your cell phone or smartwatch to help you stay hydrated. Keep a glass of water, or another tasty drink, at your desk.
Take breaks, go for a walk and move
Go for a walk in the sun, have a short meditation (there’s plenty of apps like headspace or balance to help you with this) or do some indoor yoga with YouTube videos. You can even block those annoying ads with Adblock Plus during your yoga session
Set boundaries
Start and end at a reasonable time. If you’re not commuting to work, you need to be more strict about your working time and not work for hours on end.
Find a good spot to work
A separate room is ideal, but a designated desk in your bedroom will do as well. If you don’t have this option, clean up your kitchen table and use that. When you’re done with work, put your laptop away and clear off any remaining work items. Aside from ensuring you won’t spill wine on your laptop, this helps set (again) boundaries between your private and your professional room. Spruce your desk up if you have one, put out a nice vase of flowers, clean it up from time to time and, if you are used to the busyness of an open office, put on some music.
Have different devices, if possible
If you’re getting your emails on your private phone, it’ll be even harder to resist getting back to your laptop. If possible, have different devices or turn off notifications and be strict about your working hours. This is especially important working from home as the boundaries between work and free time may become fluent, which can negatively affect your mental health.
Interact
Just because everyone is working from home doesn’t mean that you have to miss out on interactions! There are a lot of tools that can foster interaction that are actually fun. At eyeo, we use Mural but there are many other tools that have similar options like a whiteboard, sticky notes and voting options.
Stay in touch with your colleagues
At work, the kitchen is a social meeting point. This alone can be a good reason to go there, prepare yourself a drink and have a chat with colleagues. To replace this when working from home, try having virtual coffee dates—or happy hours— with colleagues. This can be very funny as well 🙂
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
