Month: March 2020

• Minimise watching, reading or listening to news that causes you to feel anxious or distressed; seek information only from trusted sources and mainly to take practical steps to prepare your plans and protect yourself and loved ones.

• Seek information updates at specific times during the day, once or twice. The sudden and near-constant stream of news reports about an outbreak can cause anyone to feel worried.

All great advice. But what about the added feeling of isolation and oftentimes anxiety from now working from home? The guilt if you take 2 mins to put the washing on? Added feelings of pressure from management who might themselves be struggling with the sudden lack of ‘control’ from remote working?

We need to look at specific advice we can give to workers being asked (or told) to stay at home.

Here are my Top 10 Tips to protect your mental health if you are working from home:

1. Make you working day more productive by using your normal commute time as your regular start work time – so you’re already 30-60 minutes ahead on the day. You’ll start your day on a massively positive note and be feeling “on it”.
2. Set specific work hours and resist the temptation to stay in bed. Get up, get dressed, and find a space at home for a makeshift office. This will help you to combat anxiety/guilt associated with not doing your job ‘properly’ and/or imposter syndrome.
3. Ask your family to respect your work time, including children. As a mum of 3 myself, I know this can be difficult when children are younger, but conversations about timings can be helpful. For example, if you can watch XYZ and leave me to work during that time, I’m just in the kitchen on the table where you can see me, we can then do ABC together. Although far from ideal, it does mean you can get concentrated work time.
4. Communication online with other members of your team – Webex, Skype, etc. Make sure you grab interaction time where you can – preferably face time too. Don’t isolate yourself from other members of staff even if you are all now in separate locations.
5. Make sure you still finish at a regular time…don’t let you working day meander on throughout the evening. You still need to maintain a work/life balance even if they are seeming to be getting very merged.
6. Ensure you still have a lunch break and move throughout the day. Every hour stand and move around for a few minutes to get your circulation going and to stretch.
7. Journal at the end of the day to keep an eye on your emotions and mind set. Just in a blank notebook or journal, write down how you think your day has gone, what you have achieved, accomplishments for the day, etc. In doing so you can see how you’re doing in your own headspace and if re-reading a few days later speaks of negativity than you need to contact your upline to let them know.
8. Don’t hesitate to ask for what you need. Request the equipment you need as soon as you start working from home, or within a day or two when you realise you need something new. It’s extremely important to ask for what you need to get your job done comfortably, including the right monitor, chair, printer, software, etc. Companies should have a budget for home office equipment.
9. Make sure you work near to a window or sunlight. and try to create a and lovely work environment – think comfy chair, nice stationary and computer at the correct height.
10. And above all, when in doubt, be positive. We all quite like succinct and clear messages sometimes,  but the less face time you have with people, the less they know how to interpret your tone. When you work remotely  you must be positive, to the point where it may feel like you’re being overly positive. Otherwise, you risk sounding harsh and negative. It’s unfortunate, but true. So embrace the exclamation point! Find your favorite emoji :D. You’re going to need them.