Valuable Tips For Your New Work at Home Routine
Our Director of Finance, Debbie Imel, was a remote employee long before Coronavirus became a part of our daily vocabulary. She’s in our Fort Collins offices several times a month and her smile, positive outlook, baking skills, and accounting expertise are legendary. We are all a shade happier when we pull into the RLE parking lot and see Debbie’s car there.
As we transitioned to remote access, Debbie gathered her work from home tips for the rest of us at RLE and we were so grateful! We’re sharing them with you now, in hopes that they will help ease your transition and make working from home a little less stressful.
– Get ready for work each day! Shower, put on some decent clothes, put on shoes (or your house shoes).
It really sets the tone for the remainder of the day.
- What I am wearing I may not necessarily wear to the office, but I would not be embarrassed if someone were to see me. ?
– Use your “commute time” for something enjoyable and for you.
I saved an hour of a.m. commuting each day and therefore try to use that time for me.
- Exercise, yoga (there are some great apps out there), puzzle, journaling, crafting, etc.
- Do NOT use your “commute time” for internet or social media (this is especially important now).
– GET OUTSIDE
You will even end up missing the walk from a parking lot to your vehicle!
- Walk in the morning.
- Take quick breaks and walk outside for 5 minutes or even just through your house hallways.
- Walk on your lunch hour.
– Don’t feel guilty about walking away from your desk during working hours.
You won’t have any coffee chats, co-worker interactions, lunches, meetings, etc. Therefore, I found it really important to take small mental breaks throughout the day.
- Don’t feel bad if you aren’t available at every possible moment, just be able to respond in a timely manner
- If you are at the office-you are not ALWAYS available every time someone was to buzz you.
– Take a lunch hour, or at least a half hour, and walk away from “the office”.
– Set up a designated work space.
I learned I cannot work and sit on the couch at the same time! Setting up a designated space will be tough for some, but you can be creative.
- A desk in a corner.
- A board across two file cabinets.
- The laundry room.
- Temporarily clear out a closet and place board, table etc. in there.
– Recognize early that the rest of your family continue to LIVE “at your place of business”.
- I just accept the fact that I will be interrupted throughout the day with everything – a door closing, a question, their phone calls, walking past you – 100 or 1000 times a day!!!!
- Take off your “mom / dad / spouse” hat and don’t feel guilty telling them you’re in the middle of something and that you will get back to them in x-amount of time.
– STAY CONNECTED
When you are working remotely, you do not have ANY office interactions and it is extremely difficult.
- Reach out to your team!
- Reach out to your co-workers outside of your department!
- Reach out
- Reach out
- Reach out!!!!
Hope this helps! We are all in this together.
– Debbie
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