Tips For Working From Home For Mothers
Author: Nikki Barnett Date Posted:3 April 2020
Ladies - Why Work From Home?
Online activities are nothing new, paying bills online, shopping online, buying presents online. We play games and keep in contact with family and friends online. We can even meet our soul mate online! Generally, we see these activities as different from work. Yet more people than ever are choosing to work from home. The rapid development of technology facilitating this. You can now conduct online conferencing, document sharing, & simultaneous working wherever you work.
Why work from home? The answer most often given, is that working from home reduces stress, that is not the only reason though. Flexibility in working hours allows women to manage their family time better. Continue their education, earn a living, and remain within a less stressful environment.
Companies are also supporting the move to working from home. With many putting policies into place to support the workers that choose to do this.
Working from home can sound like an easy option, a bit of a doddle! You know work when you want, watch a bit of TV, have mates round for a chat, sleep when you want. The reality is none of that.
If you plan to earn a living while working from home you need to consider certain things. You will need to have:
- Time management skills - meeting deadlines.
- Have a thorough understanding of the job.
- Organisational skills.
- Self-discipline.
- Critical thinking.
- Excellent communication skills.
- An outcome orientated approach.
- Flexibility.
Some Tips to Manage Working From Home
Create a workspace
Now, you may not be able to have space just for your personal use. You might have to use the kitchen counter or the dining room table. You won’t have that ergonomic chair and perfect height work table like in an office. So you need to get creative.
- Set some ground rules with family or whoever you share space with. Remember if you are not serious about working from home, why should they be?
- Be patient with yourself and others, working from home takes time to set up.
- Create a designated working area, but talk with the other members of the household first, to save problems later.
- Even a virtual workspace is important. Consider having separate Google profiles for work and personal use. It helps keep distraction from those funny Instagram pics, or FaceBook texts.
- Take note of the do nots;
- Work in your pjs.
- Work in bed.
- Forgo a ‘normal’ get up and go to work routine. In time you will establish a routine that suits you and your home. You will be able to walk the dog, bake some cakes as soon as you have determined a sensible workable routine.
- Forget to take a shower, wash your hair. Working from home is not an excuse for being a slob. You will feel better for following personal routines. Plus, your family or housemates will appreciate a less smelly you.
Ask yourself, would I do that at the office?
If the answer to that is no, then don’t do it at home. Combining housework and professional work will not benefit either. You need to create a work schedule and keep to it if you want to make earning your living as profitable as you can. A haphazard approach will not be productive. A flexible approach though can be.
- Look for the times you will have space for yourself.
- Enforce the ground rules - for example, no coffee break just 'cause someone in the house wants to chat or is bored. You will discover that an hour or even two has gone by while you drink that coffee. This sort of distraction can lose a train of thought or make mistakes in your work. The time wasted by having to redo or a more thorough check is not worth that cup or two of coffee.
- Be as organised as you would be in the office. Spend time at the beginning of the day to prioritise your work. Unlike in an office environment, at home no-body else will do it for you.
- Focus on your goals and deadlines.
- Limit distractions like ‘just having a peek at Facebook messages’.
Be flexible & adaptable
This is where working from home gets to be more fun and less constraining than in an office. Distracting breaks, created by other people need controlling. But it is necessary to put in place your breaks. If you don’t do this, you could find yourself in a different stressful situation.
A positive time management tool is the ‘tomato plan’. Officially known as the Pomodoro Technique. Briefly, this is a technique that teaches you to work with time, eliminating burnout and managing distractions. So you can bring in the deadlines, finish assignments all in six easy steps,
- Select the job.
- Set a timer for 25 mins. A ‘Pomodoro’ is a tomato kitchen timer that initiated the idea for this technique.
- Work on the task until the timer rings.
- Mark what you have completed.
- Take a short break. Not work-related, make a coffee, stare out the window, plié around the room!
- After 4 short breaks, take a longer one for about 20 mins.
Don’t forget to reboot and recharge
Working from home, some of the simple exercises disappear from our lives. Things like walking to and from the office, going up and downstairs. Ladies, you will soon be unhappy if you think your waistline is growing!
Use some of your break times to stretch, march on the spot, do some simple exercises. It also bears repeating, don’t use your break time for housework.
Look after yourself; it is sometimes too easy to get so focused on your work you forget about ‘me’ time. Something you would not do at an office, where treating yourself is the norm after a hard-working week. You could visit a spa, the gym, the hairdressers, read your favourite book, watch a play. Or you can order one of our pamper hampers such as the L’Occitane Cherry Blossom & Chandon hamper. Or the Little Luxury Hamper packed with gourmet goodies to nibble on.
One of the perks of working from home is the opportunity to order yourself a pamper hamper whenever you feel like it. Delivery in Australia is free, and you can track your package all the way to your door.
