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The world working from home

Date: Thursday, May 7, 2020

I’ve just ended my 6th full week working from home. Starting out with my laptop in the front room, then as we realised this was going to be a long-term thing, I set up a more permanent space in our backroom. 

To keep myself sane in these stressful times, here’s some things that helped improve my mental health around working from home.

Lessons learnt

  • Create a workspace. It helps to have a dedicated area for work, it sets the tone for your day. 
  • Work hours. It is tempting to say; get this finished, just one more email, answer that call. Don’t. 
  • Routine. Keep to your normal work routine, shower, dress for the day. You’ll feel fresh & ready. 
  • Communication. Keep in touch with your team and work colleagues in general. We miss each other, even a silly gif can cheer your or someone else’s day. 
  • Have a weekend. Do non-work things. If that’s gaming for you; close work programs and treat the computer as a toy. No sneaky emails.

Useful tools 

Microsoft Teams

  • As Microsoft Partners we all use Office365 and communicate through Teams.
  • You can schedule daily project scrums, management meetings, client sessions. 
  • The screen sharing ability lets us continue to pair-program and work in unison 

Zoom

  • At least once a week we have a full team meeting where we can all share our work and personal news. 
  • It keeps us as a unit and improves morale 
  • Additionally, we get to talk with colleagues we’re not directly working with 

Voipfone 

  • Having a VoIP system meant that as we all started to work from home we didn’t need to do anything special to keep our main contact number running. 
  • They have mobile tools and PC tools to keep our lines of communication open. 

SnapCamera 

  • Add fun into your day & your meetings 
  • Laughter brightens any day

My main takeaways are these; 

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