Here are five proven tips that I have found that reduces working from home stresses for me and Focus’ clients.

Walk And Talk Meetings

Meeting dictates our mood, our delivery and our flow throughout the day. Get vitamin D, fresh air and new views to reduce down MRS and meeting anxieties.

Walk and talk meetings, turn one to ones into walk and talk meetings. These were great in the office and great out of the office. I personally like these when no one has to present. If you need to switch on the camera and have an iPhone leverage FaceTime audio and this enables you to switch on the camera.

In our leader’s letter newsletter; optimise your meetings, we touch upon meeting recovery syndrome (MRS) and why it is so important to vary and improve your meetings.

Schedule Pro

Communication fatigue is a battle we have always faced, never as challenging as with our remote-first, forced working-from-home situation we find ourselves in across the global. Scheduling will be a bit step to winning.

Use scheduling email features to clear 30 minutes of your day.
Emails take up hours per day, scheduling emails to send at the end of the day or the next morning will free up your time of unwanted responses or late pings.
If you are a leader you can leverage the internal out of office settings to notify those around you of your working hours.
Use scheduling in apps to prevent notifications from work apps.

Daily 30:15 Time Blocking

Time is the battle ground that everyone fights to win. Win by owning your time and using calendar blocking.

Block out the first 30 mins and last 15 mins of your day to plan and debrief your day.
The 30-minute morning session: Write a quick five most important actions to complete for the day ahead. This helps to clarify what is most important and a guide throughout the day.

Clients have said over the recent months that these 30-minute sessions help to structure writing a letter to their team.

In the evening, write down five points that are occupying your thoughts. These can be the most important projects, the people you want to pick projects up with, the people you want to proactively reach out to or the essential communications you need to send.

Remove Camera View

Being on camera remotely is a performance. It is challenging and a battle, reduce this stress down.

Hide your own camera/view on video calls and hide all non-video views. This will prevent you from looking at yourself and being interrupted by those who have called in and flashing through video calls.

When you run your own working from home retrospective, these are all tips that will help guide you forward as a team, a department or as the company as a whole.

Leave The Home Office

Working from home is new to so many professionals, it has become challenging to leave work. Learn to draw a line and create deliberate boundaries.

Block out the area of your living for work and close the station down, shut down the laptop, place on the chair out of view, place notepads, coasters, post-it notes etc on top of the laptop.
Clear divide helps to shut off and a clear space = clear mind.

In the very near future, in the future of work and the workplace we will likely see working from home (or remotely) take up 70% of your working and knowing how to draw the professional and personal line will be imperative.

Setting ourselves up for success in the Hybrid Office aka the Future.

If you would like to understand and plan for the future of work and the hybrid workplace, download our Hybrid Workplace Ebook Here.