Tech tips for working from home
There are more and more people working from home given the current situation we are facing. This might be part-time or short term to cover school holidays or sickness, or it could be that their work is entirely home-based. Here in Essex, we have a fabulous number of freelancers, self-employed creatives and small business owners, many of whom might spend at least part of their week working from home. These tech tips will help you work from home successfully.
Your Laundry is Not That Urgent: Staying On Task
You have work to do, you have deadlines, your inbox needs your attention and so naturally you find the allure of the laundry basket irresistible & your filing must be done straight away. These are not tasks suitable for work-time. A great anti-procrastination tool is the Pomodoro system. You work for 25 mins, then a timer tells you that you can have a 5-minute break, then back to work. After a while, you are rewarded with a 15-minute break. Set up a Pomodoro app on your smartphone or just user the timer. It is a simple but effective way to keep you on track.
When Coffee Shop Ambience Isn’t Suitable
Sometimes working away in your Essex coffee house of choice just isn’t going to work. While some people can work in silence, others need background noise. This is where your tech starts working for you. With Amazon Echo, the Google Home Hub, and other smart technologies to hand, you can easily stream music, audiobooks, podcasts and more to keep you company. Just tell it what you want and you’ll be set-up up with what you need. Check out the Brain.FM app for some brilliant work from home rhythms and more.
Staying Connected
Facebook may well be your social media site of choice. We certainly love it here at All You Need Essex. That said, it can be one heck of a distraction and therefore not ideal to have on in the background when you have work to be getting on with. Instead use communication tools like Slack, Zoom or Skype to collaborate with others and for meetings (and as a way to avoiding travelling to meetings). These tools are also great at helping you get your daily fix of social interaction without getting sucked into watching cat videos on YouTube or being pulled into drama on Twitter.
Top Tech For Making You Move
Did you know that many experts now claim that sitting down for extended periods can be as harmful to health and wellness as obesity? If you’re working from home, depending on what you do the chances are you spend the majority of your time sitting on your backside. Use a fitness wearable to monitor how often you move, to tell you when you are lazy and need to get up and to keep an overall eye on your activity levels. Trust us, maintaining motivation is much easier when you’ve included some physical activity in your day.
We live in a fabulously advanced world with apps for everything and tech that makes us move, that entertains us and that keeps us connected with ease. Take advantage of these tools to make your working from home experience a great one.
Author Nicki Cawood.
(Image rights to Andrew Neel via Upsplash)
