Trials And Tribulations Of Working From Home

The trials and tribulations of working from home. Working from home is hard, initially for people who may not have had to work from home continuously before, it may seem luxury. Sure, working from home for the first week or two is great, you are near your own fridge, less pressured and you don’t have eyes watching what you’re doing constantly. You also don’t have anyone who will judge your love for hummus and crisp combo whilst sitting in your dressing gown. The novelty of working from home goes quickly, and if you’re not prepared or set up correctly you will find that you will soon fall down this hole of a messed up schedule, bad sleep and poor diet. Ultimately this effects your work and the amount of productivity you can provide.

So coming from a person who has worked from home on and off for a few years, allow me to show how I work to ensure I keep up my productivity and more importantly, my mental wellbeing.

The right set up

My essential set up at home consists of the following:

• Coffee
• Snacks
• One home computer
• One work laptop
• Two monitors
• One keyboard
• One mouse
• Mobile phone

The above photo is my current setup. Whilst working I have a podcast on in the background, and often turn off the monitor to ensure that I do not get distracted. Other than the coffee the most important part of my set up is the small box under the middle monitor:

This little box allows me to plug in my keyboard, mouse and speakers all into one switch. At any time, I can press the button on the top of the box and it will switch between which computer it is plugged into. For example, if I’m just writing a small email, the laptop keys will do, yet when writing this blog for example, I require my full keyboard and the ability to do this without having to get down and unplug and re-plug it makes things a lot more seamless.

The right software

With more and more people working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic there is an expectation that businesses will realise that working from home more often could be possible. I would expect it to become commonplace in a large percentage of workplaces. Having the right software across all staff members is incredibly important, and thankfully, some of the best providers of software have caught onto how they can help.

The software that we use daily is a Zoho application called Cliq. Cliq is a program that allows you to instant message other people in your company at any time, it also allows for video conferences, private groups, departments and much more.

With the ongoing Covid-19 situation, Zoho have introduced a new feature allowing you to clock in and out of remote working, along with a ‘status’. We have all been there where we’re at work and technically ‘available’ yet we are focused and don’t want to be disturbed. Cliq allows this to happen. It also allows you to log out for a break when you wish. Department managers can also get the logs of these times, pop them into Zoho Analytics, create reports and much much more.

A great deal more

There is a great deal more to working from home such as keeping consistent breaks and away from screen time. Having the right set up and software is a huge head start when working from home. A call or email to Goldstar IT for advice could make a big difference to the future of you and or your organization working from home. Read a previous blog about Zoho’s own remote working software.