Managing your time

For a lot of us, working from home has been something that we have done by choice, or it’s a new way of working since the Pandemic for some companies. Some companies do have a blend of work from home and work in the office, and it all depends on each individual company. When you work from home, there is one thing that you must manage, and it’s your time.

Managing your time so that you still get the day of work done, but you also stop working, is important. When you work from home, you must ensure that you have some good discipline because either your personal life or your work life can start taking over the other time. Being able to ensure that you can keep focused during the day and get the work done is important, and waking away at the end of the day is something else that you need to do.

Working from home does have some advantages, but there are also disadvantages to this. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages that I have found.

• People think that because you work from home, that you can help them out during the day. This isn’t how it works because there is stuff that you need to get done, and you can’t just do things for friends and family.
• No travel time to and from the office, this can be both an advantage and disadvantage because you don’t have time to de-stress after work before stepping into family time. It is a cost savings because you don’t have to pay transit fares or as much vehicle costs when you work from home.
• You don’t have as much people interaction because you aren’t in an office where there are other people to talk to. This again is both an advantage and disadvantage as the number of distractions are limited when working from home, but you can’t quickly bounce an idea off someone else.

So, managing your time can be a challenge when working from home but if you have the discipline, it can work well for you. It does give you the ability to get the work done without the other distractions that can office environment provides. For me, I have my planner always open on my desk and when I think of something that I need to do, I document it. Being able to manage my time can be a challenge some days, but being able to focus on the tasks at hand without all the other distractions is also nice.

Companies have found that some employees are getting more work done since they have been working from home. This is probably because of the fewer interruptions that happen each day. Some other companies have asked their employees to go back into the office on a full-time basis because they found people were not getting the required work done. Each company is going to be different with how they handle the working from home versus the office. So, if you are one of those individuals that enjoy the people interaction, you may enjoy having a blend of working at home some days and then working in the office other days.

Managing your time, no matter if you are in the office or at home and working, is something that we all need to do. For me, my planner helps me keep my focus, and it shows me at the end of the day what I was able to accomplish.