Six Top Tips To Creating a Geeky Bunker at Home
So it’s come to this. You are facing the prospect of working from home for the foreseeable future. How will that work for you? Change is always a bit worrisome but thankfully Secret Geek can help with this one.
Our Secret Geek is a home working veteran and has built up a bank of thoughts, tips and techniques that work for him/her and might help you out also.
1. Embrace it!
If you’ve been working in an office environment for the last, how many years, then you’ve really only been working at 50% capacity at best. You may be worried about distractions at home, but consider your first 90 minutes in the office environment.
| Commute | ❌ | Join in with chat across the desk | ❌ |
| Organise desk | ❌ | Field enquiries from Amanda in accounts | ❌ |
| Catch up with coworkers** | ❌ | Make another brew | ✅ |
| Take coffee orders | ❌ | Finally look at your to do list | ❌ |
| Make coffee | ✅ | Answer phone within 5 rings! | ❌ |
| Check emails | ❌ | Spend 15 minutes on an on spec phone call | ❌ |
And so it continues throughout the day. Work from home and you suddenly have control of your work environment (as long as the kids aren’t home as well) and it feels liberating. You know that feeling when you have a project to work on and you have to take-off to a quiet corner or book a meeting room just to get it done? Well that is exactly what it’s like working from home every day. Your focus and productivity sky rocket!
2. Keep the routine
Your going to save time, a lot of time, if you work from home. It’s tempting to spend it doing something else. An extra 1/2 hour in bed or doing a grocery shop. Secret Geek’s advice is to take advantage of the time you earn back. His routine involves cracking on with the day in the full knowledge that he will complete more than a days worth of output before 3.30pm, so he/she can pick the kids up from school. Which brings us to our next tip.
Sales Geek’s Response To Coronavirus
3. Reward yourself
Once you get into the groove of home working it can be difficult to stop. Secret Geek sometimes finds him/herself working nonstop, through lunch and into the evening. If there’s nothing to distract you then things, even food, can easily be blocked out. So consciously, give yourself a target and a treat at the end of it – set an alarm – and crack on!
4. Build your ideal environment
Get rid of that ergonomic chair that your company insist you have because it’s good for you and that you filled out a ten page assessment to get. Fill your surroundings with what works for you. This is a golden opportunity to build a work environment that is bespoke just for your needs. So spend some time getting it right. You don’t need a study to be productive, get everything you could possibly need in easy reach and rock on.
5. Avoid the temptations of Bargain Hunt
Daytime TV is a rabbit-hole from which you may never emerge. And if you do, you certainly won’t feel better than before you went in. Avoid it at all costs!
Where do you start when things things turn on a dime and the world as you know it stops?
6. Check-in **catch up with coworkers – as we spend more time isolated, this becomes more and more important
Don’t be alone. Check in with work and your work colleagues. It’s likely that whilst this self-isolating period persists that they will be at home to. So look into some technology solutions for keeping in touch. At Geek we use Zoom – it should have everything you need – just get work to pay for it!! We love this advice from Simon Sinek too.
https://www.facebook.com/simonsinek/videos/3118558585035434/
Start a work Huddle – recreate the water-cooler catch up in a digital environment. You will need that social interaction at some point. Even Secret Geek checks into the Bunker every now and then!!
And that’s it really. Working from home can seem daunting. You may feel like you aren’t going to be productive, when in fact the opposite is true. Just spend some time getting your environment right for you and rock on!
Stay Geeky!
