It's been almost two years since some people have stepped foot in an office, swapping their cubicles for bedroom desks and kitchen counters as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage across the United States.
There are countless benefits of remote working for employees. But you lose the physical separation of your work and personal life that you get when commuting to an office, and a remote environment has pushed some employees to work longer hours.
Korn Ferry polled about 500 professionals in November and 69% said their boss expects them to respond to calls and emails outside of their regular hours, and 76% said the expectation to return after-hours messages has increased since the crisis began.
"The joke is not that we're working from home, but we're living at work," Anna Dearmon Kornick, a time management coach and head of community at Clockwise, an>Practice saying 'no'
If you find yourself working later and later in the evening to finish all the work your co-workers or managers are assigning, it might be time to turn people down. Saying "no" to a colleague or boss can be intimidating – but it's a valuable practice to set healthy boundaries and be a more effective employee.
Before having a conversation with your boss, rank your job responsibilities and projects from most to least valuable, based>Create a 'start-up' and 'shut-down' routine
Television host Fred Rogers offered>Stick to a schedule
There are countless distractions that can pull at your attention while working from home: chores that could be done between meetings, the TV, roommates, pets and children, to name a few.
"It can be incredibly difficult to have the self-discipline to get work done with all of these diversions in your face," Moore says.
Moore recommends using a time-tracking app like Clockify or TimeCamp to help you focus on different work tasks and find your most productive hours. You can block out specific times for responding to emails, taking breaks and doing purposeful, distraction-free work.
"At the end of every week or month, you can look back and see how you spent your days and whether it was the most productive, valuable use of your time," Moore says. "Then you can start to really plan your work day not just around the tasks that need to get done, but your productivity patterns as well."
