It’s Monday again. Up until a month ago, maybe some of us were allergic to Mondays. More traffics, consecutive meetings, new deadlines, and it’s the first day of the week after a relaxing weekend.
But, these past three weeks, Monday seems the same as other days. Many of us still work from home. The same place as before with the same rituals. It becomes our NEW Mondays.
Though we work from home, there are some things we can do to make our Monday and any other days more productive and still enjoyable.
- Stick with your routine at the office
If you usually start your Monday with morning briefing and meetings, just stick with it. Monday is a good time to think strategically and create a plan for the whole week. Keep coordinating with your team and peers that are best to do in the morning. In the afternoon, you can review all the activities that have been done and suggest to your team. By sticking with your routine, you know what your goals are and what things you should accomplish every day.
- Dress for success
Yes, we work from home. Nobody sees us besides our colleagues or clients who meet us online through WebEx or Zoom. Maybe some of you just put on any shirt or dress that you see in your wardrobe and don’t care about your look. I saw some posts on my social media’s timeline that many only wear a daily-shirt with shorts or pajamas. But if you want to create in your mind that today you work as a professional and you will spend 6 to 8 hours to do your work, you’d better dress for success. It doesn’t mean you have to put your suit or blazer on or wear your favorite tie but just dress accordingly. Take a shower before work and wear nice cloth that is different from your daily-shirt. Avoid pajamas unless you want to go back to sleep again. For ladies, you can experiment with no-make-up-look. Dressing up and play with makeup even the natural one often boost your mood and confidence. Imagine if your team saw your face that looked like you just woke up from your bed, it could affect their moods and perhaps they would work half-heartedly the whole day. Sometimes we don’t realize that as a leader, our look and presence can affect our team members’ spirit. So please make sure, whenever you show up on the screen, you dress up a bit and show a fresh face with a big smile. One friend of mine has a ritual to spray her favorite perfume to make her more excited to do her work from home.
- Adjust the amount of time needed to do your to-do-list
These days, you work from home with many distractions: your spouse, parents, children, delivery-men, social media, and television. When you create a to-do-list, you can adjust yours with your current situation. Have a buffer time to do your work and create a shorter list than the one you usually have when you are at the office. For example: if you usually spend 1 to 1,5 hours to make a weekly plan or proposal to clients, better you put 2 hours to do that. Because we don’t know when our children ask something from us, or when we are needed in the kitchen, or when a delivery-man comes to our house. The other benefit of having a shorter to-do-list is, at the end of the day, there will be no guilty feeling because of the pending works.
- Take a break during your work-hour
Staring at your laptop screen for too long is tiring and easily draining your energy, moreover if you have online meetings all day. Take a break for 5 to 10 minutes every 1 hour. You can do stretching, walk around the house, listen to music, talk to your family members, reply to WhatsApp or drink water. It’s very important to take a break otherwise when you turn off your laptop every afternoon, you will feel more exhausted than before.
Dale Carnegie once said rest before you get tired. Listen to your body and have a nice break in the middle of your work. It will help you more productive.
- Turn off your computer at the end of the day and enjoy yourself
Some of us are workaholics. It used to that we could just leave work at “work” (the office) and come home to unwind. Now, that we are bringing our work home with us, we tend to “forget” the time and continue working. Afterall, we don’t have to fight the traffic and “go home” since we are already home. Tips: set a “quiting” time, turn off your computer, and plan to have a good evening, family time, and a great night sleep.
Though you work from home, or your Mondays seem like other days, and you are starting to miss your hustle bustle at work, just remind yourself to keep productive. Do you have any other tips to enjoy your Monday? Please share it with us.
In the meantime, stay calm, stay safe, stay at home, stay healthy and stay productive.
By Maria Shanti Devi Anggraini – Senior Trainer Dale Caregie Indonesia
