Managing work at home is hard enough and is no child’s play for sure. While it may seem liberating that there is no one to overlook your schedules and work deliveries at home but the sheer lack of it can also prove to be a big hassle. Wile, amidst the Covid-19 lockdown when all commercial buildings in Kolkata are shut, it’s a tricky way ahead for everyone working remotely.
One needs to be a self-motivated expert at time management to make sure they manage to squeeze in all important tasks for the day and end up doing them efficiently. It gets difficult to stick to a schedule at home and prioritize all to-do tasks for the day, it gets all the more challenging for remote workers who are away from their bosses.
One has to battle constant temptation of watching one more series of Netflix or read a book during your work break; all of a sudden, it’s evening and you’re not done with anything for the day except for logging in and procrastinating.
We’re sharing some pro tips here on prioritizing work and get everything important done in the day:
- Eat the Frog (Not literally) – Well, several HR experts have suggested that the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog. This will leave you with a contented feeling through the day that this was probably the hardest part of the day that you’re already get done with and nothing worse is going to come later. ‘Frog’ here stands for your biggest and hardest task for the day that you most likely are to linger on. So, the first thing when you start up the work each day, eat that frog.
- Stick to 1-3-5 Rule – The best part to go about prioritizing your day is to limit the number and nature of tasks you plan to undertake for the day. The rule of thumb suggests to stick to 13-5 rule; plan to do just 1 big thing, 3 medium things, and 5 small things per day. This will make sure that your day is all productive, have variety of tasks, is a judicious mix of tasks that are logical to be attempted in a day. This will save you from the hassle of spending time on unnecessary tasks or being clueless about which task to do next.
- Keep Distractions at Bay – This may seem very easy to say but is actually the hardest to do. If you want to make sure you want to get done with everything important for the day, set up your home work office at a place where there are no distractions. The space should be such as to cut off the visitors, has no TV or other digital entertainment device, and is fuelling enough to motivate.
Keep your personal calls on snooze for the day and tend to only work-related notifications. You can also enable work mode in your cell phone that would mute all social media notifications.
- Manage Your Energy Levels, Not Time – Your energy waxes and fades during the day which also gets consumed largely because of the critical tasks in the first half of the day. Make sure you keep less crucial tasks for the latter half and keep your energy levels soaring throughout the day by gulping down immunity boosting foods and drinks.
If you keep interruptions at bay, make a to-do list every morning or better even, do it an evening before, this will successfully pave the road for a much productive day at work. All the important tasks and deadlines will always be met and the energy levels will soar high as the morning.
