Mastering Time Management While Working Remotely

Working at home is often considered to be easy-going and less stressful than traditional work environments, but did you know that if it’s done inefficiently, it could consume even more of your time and mental space. So here are a few things that you should keep in mind in order to master time management while working remotely.

Let’s start with the positives of working from home:

Decreased commute  

One of the biggest benefits of working from home is not wasting your time commuting. Nobody wants to take the frustration of sitting two hours in idle traffic to the project they’ve been tediously working on for weeks, saving on fuel and, at the same time, it’s better for the environment too. 

Productivity shift 

Research suggests that working remotely can be more productive due to fewer distractions in offices, and, in some cases, reports have shown that productivity actually increases in home environments.

Flexible work-environment 

If you have responsibilities at home or children to look after, with flexible work hours, you can take some time to finish your immediate tasks and get back to your office work when it’s more convenient, which can be life-saving.

Personalized work-environment

Having your favorite candle lit as you take a sip of your favorite drink can be an amazing mood-booster between hours of tedious work which is not something you’ll be able to do in an office work-environment. Moreover, you can customize your entire work environment to your personal preference.

Health benefits 

Working from home, you can take some smaller breaks to do smaller exercises. You can have a proper gym routine as the hours are flexible, and it won’t interfere with your work routine. You can get more ergonomic chairs, catering to all your personal needs or any other customized equipment to optimize your work environment. 

Negatives

Family and household distractions 

 It’s extremely important to have a structured work plan for your day, especially for someone who is living with their family, in order to communicate with them to minimize work-time distractions. Not doing so could actually impact your work quite negatively. It could consume more time and mental resources to finish the same amount of work as in an office environment. 

Video conference fatigue

Research has shown that too many video conferences can have a negative impact on work productivity. So it’s important for us to know how many meetings we are joining and if it’s relevant for us to join the specific meeting because when we can join the meeting by the click of a button, we tend to join more meetings than is necessary. 

Mental health

Being isolated from human interaction can have severe consequences to our mental health. Us humans, being the social creatures we are, we need to have social interactions as a part of our day-to-day life.

It’s important to substitute the lack of social interactions by planning activities with friends and family. 

Collaborative challenges

Apple’s billion dollar campus is specifically designed for people to have organic interactions with each other because they understand the importance of ideas being shared and collaborations because that’s what breeds innovation. But working remotely completely negates any chances of that happening, so it would be important for a team to have brainstorming sessions as part of their weekly work routine.