15 tips for effective teleworking

Recommendations for teleworking while performing at work and taking care of our quality of life.

Teleworking is here to stay. While many workers have returned to working in offices since the end of confinement in most parts of the world, others have continued to work from home, with its pros and cons.

Before the pandemic, telecommuting was seen as a boon, something every worker fed up with offices, stodgy co-workers and bosses wanted. As remote work took over, many discovered that doing work from home was not so easy, and more than a few people have completely lost control of their work routine.

In order to help them, here are a few tips for teleworking and telecommuting. tips on how to telecommute and make our home workday more productive..

15 recommended tips and strategies for teleworking

Before the pandemic, there were many who envied those who teleworked. There was the idea that teleworkers were those lucky few who could get up late, sit in their pajamas all day in front of the computer or lie in bed with their laptop. The idea that the teleworker is his or her own boss, a boss who pampers himself or herself, is well established in the popular mindset.A boss who pampers himself, snacks when he feels like it and relaxes when he deserves it.

But since teleworking has been spreading in the wake of the health crisis, those who used to work from the office and then from home have changed many of their beliefs about this new way of working. Teleworking is hard, very hard. Workers face all kinds of distractions in the "comfort" of their home, facing also the clash of their personal and work life in the same place and time.

Losing control over teleworking is very easy.. Tasks pile up, weighing us down and making us lazy in equal parts. For this reason, in order to avoid it we are going to know some advices to telework and to avoid the most absolute of the labor disasters.

1. Designate a workspace

It is essential to have our own workspace when we do it from home. The ideal is to have the desk in a quiet area of the house, a place where you can concentrate and concentrate.A place where you can concentrate and where you can separate your work life from your personal life.

2. Do not work in rest areas

Many people thought that telecommuting was great because it allows you to work from your bed or couch. This is one of the worst mistakes we can make working from home. We must make an effort to get out of bed, and avoid turning places reserved for rest into workplaces.

Lying around all day may sound interesting for the first few days, but after a while it will prevent us from getting down to business.. In addition, with much probability we will hurt the back because one cannot work well from the bed and the sofa, they are not thought for it, but to rest relaxed.

3. Establish clear work schedules

One of the biggest risks of teleworking is to have totally anarchic schedules, and I say this from experience. For this reason, we must make an effort, set some hours focused exclusively on work tasks and warn the people who live at home so that they do not interrupt us.

We must set clear guidelines on the hours in which we work and preferably in the work area that we have designated specifically for this. We must stick to a very specific work schedule, and notify people of interest such as our work team, family and friends, so that they know when we are available.We must also notify people of interest, such as our work team, family and friends, so that they know when we are available for work and when we are available for personal matters.

4. Start the day with a routine

The morning is the most critical time of the day in the teleworker's life. Between getting up, having breakfast, going to the toilet and doing other chores such as shopping, the morning can go by in the blink of an eye.

It is inevitable that, from time to time, something comes up that we have to do in the morning that throws us off schedule a bit. However, as a rule, mornings are going to be normal and the best thing we can do is to make the most of them by making them part of our routine.

It is best to start the day with a routine, establishing tasks that give it structure.. It doesn't have to be with work tasks, but we can dedicate it to household chores, exercise, learning a language online or taking a walk. The point is to have stable mornings. And very important. Get up at the same time and get dressed as soon as you wake up.

5. Management of basic tasks

One of the problems of working from home is motivation. Unlike working in an office, working remotely is more difficult because you do not have colleagues and bosses to motivate you to do the basic tasks.

It is difficult to maintain a good level of self-motivation. It is therefore essential to establish plans for the next day and make an effort to fulfill them.. A very good recommendation is to start each day by prioritizing the most important task on the to-do list.

6. Prioritize the most complicated

If we start by doing the most complicated and time-consuming task, the better. The more challenging the task we complete as soon as we start our workday, the more motivated we will be to do the rest, which we will see as a piece of cake. This way we won't procrastinate and the rest of the work will be done with fluidity and dynamism..

7. Follow fixed routines

One of the things people envied most about teleworkers back in the days of the old normal was flexibility. To be able to do things when one felt like it was one of those advantages that teleworking was believed to have.

It really is a positive aspect if you know how to manage it, but as human beings need some preparation and order in their lives, it is best to follow fixed routines. Not preparing for what may come unexpectedly during the day will generate chaos..

8. Divide the day into blocks of time

Human productivity varies over time. We cannot work for 8 hours straight without a break, but neither can we spend only 5 minutes at a time doing our tasks. It is best to work in blocks, adaptable to our capacity of concentration and manageable according to our needs. Dividing the day in easily manageable parts will help us a lot to improve our productivity while teleworking..

It is normal that our concentration begins to wane after 45 minutes, although there are people who are able to work quite well for 2 hours at a time. Whatever our productivity lapse is, once we have finished it, even if we still have work to do, the best thing to do is to get up and distract the mind for about five minutes to start again the next block with regained strength.

9. Avoid using the phone

Not only at home, but also in the office it often happens that we check the phone over and over again, distracting us. When we are working, it is not the best time to use the phone. The best thing to do is to turn it off but, if for work reasons we cannot, leaving it on silent is also an option and let our contacts know what our working hours are and that if they have to call us for something trivial, it is better to do so outside those hours.

10. Restrict the use of applications

Related to the previous point, to avoid falling into the temptation of gossiping on Instagram or Twitter what we can do is to download applications to control the time we use them.. There are all kinds, some of them being Sense and Offtime. With them we can control the use of social networks, set daily limits and restrict access to any application that distracts us from our work.

11. Force yourself to rest

Working from home all day can become very tiring and frustrating. Teleworkers have the problem that it is very difficult for them to physically disconnect between work and private life, since both occur in the same space. On top of that, as work is stretched like a chewing gum, those who work from home hardly take 100 steps a day, realistically, those necessary to go from the bathroom to the desk and the kitchen.

To avoid this, we must force ourselves to take a break of at least half an hour between sessions, and dedicate an hour for lunch.and dedicate an hour for lunch every day. When we are resting, we can walk around the house or go for a quick walk around the block and clear our heads a little.

12. Keep physically active

Exercise is essential to maintain a healthy lifestyle and perform not only at work, but in any other aspect of life. There is enough time in the 24 hours of the day to do at least 20 minutes of exercise, even if it means lifting water bottles as dumbbells. If we can take a walk or go to the gym, all the better.

Relaxation is also very important, especially for our mental health.. Yoga, meditation and similar practices will help us to be more productive while teleworking, in addition to not feeling so much stress for our work tasks and, in addition, it will give us the feeling that we are very productive people in all aspects of life.

13. Taking care of what we eat

Another fundamental aspect to be healthy is to eat well. When working from home it can happen that, having the refrigerator at hand, we resort to it to handle the stress of work. This causes that many are those who put on a lot of weight the first months of their life as teleworkers. That is why it is so important to eat healthy and control what we eat, without dieting but avoiding junk food. In addition, a very heavy digestion is going to harm us if we work in the afternoon.

14. To watch over the security

Although we telework, we can be exposed to occupational hazards. Our home becomes our office during the hours we work and, although it is difficult for us to think that accidents that happen at the office happen at home, there may be such a possibility. That is why we must take care of our safety by making a list of all the occupational hazards that occurred at the of all the occupational hazards that occurred in the office and that can happen at home, in order to avoid them.so that we can avoid them.

15. Communicate with colleagues

The communication is very important in the labor scope, more if we are working at home. Many teleworkers ignore this aspect, which provokes to them the feeling of isolation that can evolve into depression.This will not only affect your productivity but also, obviously, your mental health.

Not working in an office does not mean that you cannot establish contact with your co-workers, interacting with them both for job-related issues and also to get to know them a little better and even meet them in person from time to time.