3 tips to stay sane whilst working remotely 

With thousands of us now working from home, we’ve been exploring the best tools and tips for making remote working as productive as possible for your business. 

One of the challenges many of us face when working from home is achieving that all-important work-life balance and routine. It can be all too easy to dine from our desks and keep working beyond the usual office hours. On the other hand, many of us love the idea of staying in pyjamas all day and working from the sofa.

Earlier last month, we prepared five tips to work well from home. Now, with a lockdown extension on the horizon, and lots of us anticipating a remote working environment for a while longer, we’ve compiled three tips to help us all stay sane!

1. It doesn’t always have to be about work

We’ve already covered some of our favourite digital tools for productivity and keeping conversations flowing throughout the day via tools such as Workplace and MS Teams. But these platforms can also be great spots for hosting fun, out-of-work activities, such as Friday virtual drinks, quizzes and themed weekly games like a Through the Keyhole style ‘who works on a desk like this?’ competition, for example.

These types of interactive activities help staff to unwind at the end of a busy day/week and act as important team-building exercises so that strong relationships continue, especially between team members who may otherwise have little interaction with each other during the working day.

2. Create (and share) your own working from home playlist

79% of people claim that listening to music whilst working from home helps to boost their productivity, whilst 59% link music to improving their mental wellbeing at work – according to a Total Jobs study.

Listening to music, for some of us, can be a great way to focus our attention and lift spirits. Though of course, certain musical genres could have an adverse effect!

Why not create your own dedicated playlist for working from home and share it with your teammates?

Taking it in turns to pick a ‘song of the day’ or ‘weekly theme tune’ could prove to be a fun way to encourage productivity and get to know the team a little better!

3. Start a new hobby

Remember those hobbies you’ve always been meaning to try but never quite found the time to do so? Now, with more time on our hands than usual, is as good a time as any to start!

There are plenty of free tutorials on YouTube for just about any pastime you could imagine; from yoga & pilates to baking, dancing, and learning a new language! Plus, Open University offers thousands of free online courses; covering Politics, Languages. Business, Sciences and so much more!

Have you got any working from home tips of your own? Tweet us yours over on our Twitter page!