2020 has been a bizarre year when it comes to work. Like everything else, our careers have largely been negatively impacted by the coronavirus and Covid-19 pandemic. Many of us have had to change careers due to job loss or redundancy and want to make the best impression possible in our new roles. Some of us have switched from office based work to remote roles and want to prove that we can still work productively and efficiently from our own homes. Whatever your reason for wanting to be as productive as possible, here are a few suggestions that should help you along the way!
Create a Healthy Work – Home Life Divide
Whether you work in an office or work from home, you need to make sure that you create a healthy work life divide. Spending too much time in the office and too little time in your home is less common, as most people will leave when the day is up and not think about work until they return the next morning. But if you find yourself regularly staying behind to work overtime unnecessarily, this may be a habit that you want to change. If you work from home, creating a work life divide can be a little more difficult. You don’t have the same clear split when you spend time in the office working and time at home relaxing. Instead, it’s much easier to end up distracted and underperforming, or working longer hours and just “checking in” round the clock and burning yourself out. The following steps can help make creating a healthy divide easier:
- Determine your set working hours and stick to them
- Set designated breaks and stick to them
- Avoid working from bed, the sofa or other places associated with relaxation
- Create a designated workspace within your home
- Set boundaries with those you live with surrounding working hours and interruptions
- Have a business email for business messages
- Have a business number for business related calls
- Log out of your business email and turn your business phone off outside of your working hours
Get Your Senses Checked
This may sound like an odd one, but you might want to get your senses checked in order to increase your productivity at work. All too many people struggle through their day because they can’t hear what people are saying too well, or because they are unable to see and read easily. Checks can help you to rectify this and to work more efficiently.
Hearing
First, get your hearing checked. Of course, you don’t have to do this if your hearing is fine. But if you’ve noticed that you’ve experienced changes to your hearing, or if you are struggling with your hearing, you should definitely check in with an audiologist. All too many of us take our hearing for granted, but it is something that can deteriorate and that may need to be treated. Countless factors can impact our hearing, from listening to music through earphones at a high volume to spending time in excessively loud environments to simple age related hearing loss. But without this sense you may really struggle. So, if necessary, visit a professional audiologist who will be able to conduct a full hearing test on you. If your audiologist identifies any problems during the test, they will be able to recommend treatment, hearing aids and accessories like batteries for hearing aids that will improve your quality of hearing.
Eyesight
Eyesight is another important sense that can deteriorate over time. Everyone should visit an optometrist for an eye test at least once every two years. This really isn’t a high volume of visits, so there’s no reason to not be able to book your test in at some point within two years. Even the busiest of people have time for this! The eye test also isn’t anything to be daunted by. During the test itself, a professional optometrist will survey the health of your eye. This will give them the chance to identify symptoms of any conditions that will need to be put right. A sight test will also be carried out in order to determine whether you need a prescription for contact lenses or glasses lenses to rectify short sightedness or long sightedness.
These are just a few different things you might want to consider to make yourself as productive in your workplace as possible. Hopefully, the suggestions will come in useful and will work to your advantage!
