Make it work for you
Working from home can be a fantastic way of creating a phenomenal work life balance. The current climate might be an excellent opportunity to change your life for the better. A lot of employers are happy for people to flex their hours at this time as long as the work gets done. A lot of my team work from home, some people work better at night, some of them prefer to get up early and get the working day done and dusted by 3pm. If you can, make your working day work for you so you can make the most of your free time to go for a run or cook an amazing dinner.
Mix It Up!
Most people who are working from home will have a laptop or tablet, or you can use your phone for some things. When WFH, I really like having different sections of my day in different parts of the house. As long as you don't sit with bad posture there is no reason why you can't do this, it breaks up the day and makes you feel more relaxed. If I'm feeling a bit under the weather or its raining outside there's nothing more comforting than working in bed!
Set Boundaries
If you are working at home with Kids about it can be exceptionally challenging. If there is two of you working in the house it's even harder or easier depending how much space you have. If you can try and do shifts where one of you is responsible for the kids and the other is more isolated away and then swap, this way you can have some time to concentrate on specific tasks and then do things like checking and filing emails when it's your shift with the Kids and it's not such a problem to be disturbed.
Have certain spaces in the house for work phone calls or where being disturbed is a no no. This way everyone can have a space they know they can go without the life chaos to focus and have an undisturbed conversation.
Working at home with young Kids
This is going to be the most challenging thing that people are doing right now, I find this very challenging with a super active four year old Son. The thing I've found that works for us is to work in shifts, and get the Kids to work with you if you can! Most kids love the idea of being like Mummy or Daddy. Tell them you have some very important work for them to do, teach them what you do and get them to help you!
The most important thing I've learned is to not put too much pressure on yourself to home school during these really unusual times. There is no way you can home school and work at the same time so do what you can and make sure you spend quality time with your Kids, they are missing their social time with their friends and teachers and they need you right now.
Final Thoughts
I am super excited about how the current situation will improve peoples lives for the future, WFH is not something that suits everyone but the next few months will allow people to find out if they can really make it work for them and to get into a routine.
I'm sure that like my family and I, the last few weeks has been a really big challenge, a huge change and emotions are running high. The weeks ahead I'm sure things will settle down and we'll all get into a new routine that will become our normal, for a while anyway.