How to manage your work and time in a WFH setting

Businesses have been moving to the cloud for the past several years, and the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the movement even more. Since employees are advised to stay and work from home (WFH) to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease, everything from recruitment to onboarding to doing the actual work are done remotely.

However, several work-from-home (WFH) challenges popped out during the lockdown period – including dealing with distractions at home, finding proper time management and work allocation, as well as issues with communicating with other team members. 

How can remote workers effectively manage their work and their time in a WFH environment?

Work and time management

Gartner defines work management as a set of services that apply workflow structure to the movement of information and the interaction of business processes and human worker processes that generate the information.

Work management is streamlining business processes and integrating procedures to help the company and its employees schedule and distribute work more efficiently while utilizing the available resources. Time management, on the other hand, is planning and controlling the time you spend on a certain project or activity. The only way to be truly productive in remote working is to efficiently master your work and time management skills and strategies.

How to manage your work and time in a WFH setting

Here are some ways to help you effectively master your work and time management skills, leading to more productive work days and better quality of output.

1. Be organized

The best way to manage your seemingly overwhelming tasks is to be organized. Work management software and tools are all the rage this remote work season, and all for a good reason, as these tools provide the much-needed help that workers need in order to be more effective.

Make use of appointment calendars, to-do lists, file folders, and schedulers. Take note of the tasks that need to be done and tick them off when they’re finished, it keeps you motivated. Also, try to have a more organized workspace, so everything is easier to locate. It also helps plan your whole week on a Sunday or Monday morning to prepare you for the week to come.

2. Block out distractions

This can be one of the toughest challenges to overcome while working at home. In every direction you look, and in every move you make, there’ll always be distractions – especially if you’re not living alone. 

Implement a morning routine, avoid TV and household chores while working, prepare your meals ahead of time, set break timers, and create a schedule for your kids and other family members. These may seem tough at first, but once done, you’ll be enjoying a not perfect, but much better distraction-free workday.

3. Learn to delegate and outsource

Work can be effectively managed if you know which tasks to do on your own and which ones to delegate. Having a virtual assistant to take care of your more repetitive and mundane tasks will help you be more efficient and focused on your core responsibilities. You can hire a professional virtual assistant through SixEleven BPO to make your day-to-day tasks a lot easier.

Effectively managing your time and workload

Keep distractions at bay by thinking of the big picture, reminding yourself of your vision and goals, as well as structuring your days in alignment with these said goals. Remember that the goal is to manage your work and time, and not let it manage you. It is a learning process, but hopefully we all come out safe and equipped with better work and time management skills after the pandemic.