Stress-free in your home office: How to find your working mode

The exceptional situation surrounding the coronavirus brings the laptop onto the desk at home, or even onto the kitchen table. Those who can, currently work from home, and this often proves to be a greater challenge than initially thought. With these tips, we would like to help you find a new way of working that allows you to enjoy the benefits of the home office and leave additional stress behind in this exceptional situation.

1. Create an individual daily plan according to your inner clock.

In their everyday working life, many people have to struggle with getting up and going to the office at a time of day that does not correspond to their inner clock. In the home office, you have the chance to work according to this internal clock. Sleeping until midday is undoubtedly not a good idea, but getting up an hour later can indeed increase the productivity of some people. It would help if you made a precise plan of when your working day begins and what you want to do by when.

2. Choose your workplace consciously.

You would think working from the couch is one of the critical advantages of the home office. But for most of us, this is not the case. Many find it easier to find a productive mode if they keep the places where they pursue leisure activities strictly separate from the workplace. If you only want to read a book in bed after work anyway, there is no reason why you shouldn’t use the couch for work. It would help if you made this decision consciously.

3. Choose work clothes in which you feel entirely comfortable.

One or two people immediately thought of jogging pants and an old T-shirt, because it couldn’t be more comfortable. Most of the time, however, we notice after only a few days that the motivation decreases with this choice of outfit. Instead, it is now time to use clothes that make you feel great all round. Both wearing comfort and looks should make you feel good. The home office is also a chance to choose the one dress or shirt that you always liked, but was perhaps too flashy for the regular office routine.

4. Increase the team feeling through online meetings with colleagues.

.
It would be a shame if nobody saw you in your carefully selected office outfit at the end. Of course, this is not the main reason why you should stay in daily contact with your colleagues via video chat. Daily online meetings increase motivation and make you aware that even if you are sitting at home alone now, you are part of a hard-working team with a common goal.

5. Pay attention to your body and your needs.

While on stressful office days, we often sit uptight in front of the computer for far too long and forget about our needs, we can now practice exactly this competence. Within your own four walls, far away from the eyes of your colleagues, you can get up quietly from your armchair in between and do strange stretching and gymnastic exercises, get a drink, or close your eyes for 2 minutes and take a deep breath. If you have made it a habit to pay attention to your needs, you will later be able to use this competence more efficiently in your regular office life.

6. Find your inner drive.

If you already have a job that you identify strongly with and that you are personally enthusiastic about, you probably won’t find it too challenging to stay on the ball at home. However, if you have so far regarded your work as a bread and butter job, you may now notice that external incentives to maintain motivation are lacking. The new situation is now your chance to ignite the inner drive for work as well. Try to make yourself aware of every aspect of your work that you value and write it down. Maybe it is the feeling of being a valuable part of a team, or it is the new experiences that make you rise above yourself again and again. If you only work to achieve your personal goals, you can, of course, make a list of these personal goals.

7. keep the lunch break.

The temptation to keep one’s head above water with short breaks and to splash around during the lunch break is great because we are also happy to have an early end of work in our home office. Mostly if you work from home for a long time, you run the risk of losing your energy at some point. A half-hour lunch break, including a healthy snack, should at least be enough to get back to full power.

8. from office to leisure mode: think about a rite of passage.

Only now do we realise: the way from the office to home was also the way we left most of our thoughts about the work behind. Think of a little ritual that will bring you back this transitional phase. After the laptop has been closed, please take a short walk, have a cup of tea on the balcony, or call a good friend and tell him what you have done today. With your new ritual, nothing stands in the way of your well-deserved and relaxed end of the day.

Working from home is a new situation for many people, and it is perfectly normal for intense stress to arise now. You are not alone in this and can always take advantage of psychological counselling online to help you cope with the situation even better. Thanks to online counselling, our psychological companions also know the challenges of the home office personally, and can thus provide you with even better, individually tailored tips.