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My Alternative Workplace: Personal tips to make the most of your day working from home
Jacqueline Goh is the Channels & Segments Marketing Communications Leader for Singapore. She started her journey at Schneider Electric in 2017, to drive marketing initiatives and digital campaigns for Commercial Business Units. In this blog post, she shares her tips and experience working from home.
“Dare To Disrupt! You are only as good as your previous work unless you disrupt now and build your next bold idea. If it’s not now? Then when?”
Recently, I have been starting to work from home every alternate week. I have seen some real benefits in terms of productivity. Let’s look at my new home office and how I manage this new way of working!
Starting early and planning out your workflow
My usual commuting from home to the office takes about 45 mins to 60 mins. But on days when I work from home, I get to start on my day earlier, usually before 8.30am. I’m a morning person and find that I can get a ton done in the early morning hours with the highest priority tasks first.
Personal Tip: Have a designated area as your “Home Office”. I have a desk to get my work done and I love to plan out my day with colored pens to list out the task’s prioritization.
Developing concentration and making your day productive
Even before starting my day at my designated “Home Office”, I allocate 10 to 15 minutes of my time on my daily yoga and mindfulness meditation practice to start the day right! This has helped me to strengthen my concentration and to focus on the most important items to complete for the day.
Staying connected with technology and maintaining human interactions
Try turning on your camera to make the remote meetings more productive and to get that dose of human interaction. #LearnEveryDay with your colleagues!
Personal Tip: To have more reliable and faster bandwidth, I have plugged in a Lan/Ethernet Cable to my laptop instead of relying on the WiFi. No more network issues during my video meetings and conferences!
Managing and tracking your time
I tend to tackle my tasks in a sprint of 30 mins, which is like you are on running on adrenaline. I am totally zoomed into the momentum of getting my work done efficiently, blocking-off the distractions of emails and watercooler chats. Working in my alternative workplace (home for me), helps me to be disciplined and train to work smarter on tasks rather than procrastinating on them.
What’s my reward?
After the sprints, I like to reward myself with a few things to get my productivity flowing again. I reward myself with a:
- Healthy Lunch (Loving my greens and healthy enzymes drink)
- Stretches for my lower back and shoulders
- And views of lush greenery!
With this new normal and taking in stride, we can use this work-from-home experience to focus and rethink our priorities. We can innovate new ways to better connect with our teams and customers in gaining greater productivity. We may be working from home but we are still closely connected. Like the saying goes never waste a crisis. We will rebound stronger and more resilient.
At Schneider Electric, remote working and working from home is included in our Flexibility at Work policies for some locations and jobs. If you’re interested in a career at Schneider, check out our website and search for job openings near you! www.se.com/careers apply now!
