Our Three Favorite Tips to Make Working From Home More Productive

This week, professionals across the globe reduced their morning commute to a quick journey from their beds to kitchen tables. As business leaders make the call to transition their workforces online in response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), employees are facing new challenges associated with working remotely.

At Poston Communications, we have a part-virtual workforce and asked our colleagues who already successfully work from home to help guide the rest of the team. Here’s what they said:

1. Take time to make time. The night before, go through your to-do list, bundle like tasks and assign them a time block on your schedule. For example, if you are a lawyer in a client-facing role, consider blocking time by client. It ensures that you give each client focused time to think strategically without distraction – and it certainly makes tracking time at the end of the day easier! We often tell our team, “if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first” – a line made famous by Mark Twain and underscored in many leadership philosophies. In other words, that time block at the beginning of the day should be reserved for the work that you would really love to put off until later in the day.
2. Stay connected. Working from home doesn’t mean you need to be cut off. On the contrary, make extra efforts to remain connected to your team while you are remote. Here at Poston during the COVID-19 crisis, we have scheduled regular video meetings with our entire team, and are holding our standing calls by video instead. In today’s tech-savvy world, there are a plethora of tools to keep you in the loop with virtual meetings, team chats and conference calls.
3. Use this as a time to reset. You’re likely a go-getter and realize in this new era of working from home that the expectation to stay connected is even stronger. Block time for breaks and think about using this down time to reconnect with your New Year’s goals and priorities. Pull out your resolutions. How have you been working toward those goals, and are there ways that you can reset now? Perhaps you’ve set business development goals for your practice. How are those coming along? What can you do now – even in the chaos – to move the needle? This crisis will end – soon, we hope! – and you can be ready to enter into “post-COVID-19” successfully.

Our Crisis Communications Team is also available 24/7 and rapidly responding to various issues related to the COVID-19 outbreak. If your organization requires immediate assistance, please contact Poston CEO Dave Poston at (678) 358-5876 or Vice President Megan Paquin at (407) 432-7066.

Alexa Ferguson is marketing manager at Poston Communications, based in Denver.