How should a parent work from home during a lockdown period?

Are you like me used to working in the office in the 9-5 fashion and now you’re being asked to stay home with your family and carry on working whilst this unprecedented time passes by?

Do you wonder how you will manage to do that?

With kids being at home, they need to get the important education and you will have to help them.

You will also have to keep on top of the meals and the entertainment so they won’t get bored!

And how about some time off to stay sane?

So how exactly should you do this?

How should you work from home and be effective?

How do you keep up with it all?

Don’t worry; with a little bit of planning and an open mind (and a lot of patience), you can manage it all!

If you have a partner – that’s half the success as he can take care of the kids whilst you’re working.

If you’re a single parent (or your partner is a key worker)- you will have to juggle a lot of things to find a time to work. But it is all doable and I will try to help you figure it out.

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How should a parent work from home during a lockdown period?

The first thing to consider is to establish how independent and self-sufficient your kids are.

If they are very little you will have some time between nap times where you can focus on your work.

If you have an older one (teenagers) and young one/s, ask them to help out and keep an eye on the younger one/s whilst you get to work a few hours.

This will have to be flexible working arrangements which you will need to tailor around the needs of your family.

The second thing to consider is to talk over with your boss about your flexible hours. It might not be 9-5 and you might not answer the emails immediately but it will get done as soon as you get a chance. They should understand and hopefully agree this is the only way your work can be done.

So here are 5 top tips that I had figured might help you as a parent to work from home during a lockdown period:

1. The working space.

You need to decide where you will be working.

You might already have a home office. If you don’t here are some tips on what to consider when setting it up.

It’s essential that you find a space where you have good light, a desk or a table, comfortable chair, ideally separate from the centre where the kids are running around. This will help you to focus and to get your work done without being interrupted.

Remember, if you do not have a desk, a chair or light, your boss should be reimbursing you cost of you getting them by yourself otherwise they should provide you with it. Speak to your boss if you do struggle to get them.

If you do not have a separate office space, you might need to set it up in the living room, or the kitchen/ dining room.

I have a little desk in my living room with a PC on it where I can work whilst supervising the kids.

It’s not ideal and I would rather have it set up in my bedroom however my children are too little (and too unpredictable – read naughty) and I cannot just leave them alone.

 

2. Adjust your working hours to suit your household

 

Most likely you won’t be able to work during the regular 9-5.

As mentioned above, it is important to discuss this with your boss and agree what hours you will be doing, and if possible ask for flexibility around the hours.

If you have young kids no matter how much you try to hide from them, they will end up budging in and needing things from you.

So perhaps try a few different hours that suit your household better.

Especially if you’re a single parent or if your partner is a key worker and is out there working most days.

You might find that waking up earlier then kids would work better.

Getting 2 hours out the way before everyone else wakes up might be the most effective 2 hours of your working day.

During the day – if you can (depending on the age of your kids and how long they can play unsupervised) sit your kids to watch a movie or read a book or draw some pictures while you get some emails sorted. And the rest of the work you’ll probably be able to get done once they are asleep.  That way you will most likely work fewer hours than usual. This brings me to my next point:

3. Accept you’ll not get as much done as usually

Being in the office you probably spend about 6 hours of actually working effectively- this is the time from 9-5 less the hour-long lunch, coffee making time, discussions with your colleagues, and toilet breaks.

At home, you’re most likely to do about 4-5 hours of effective work (unless your kids are old enough to just get on with their day letting you work without much distraction).

So you really have to work smarter not harder. How?

4. Work smart not hard

It’s not always about the number of hours that you put into your work that brings the expected results. You might find yourself procrastinating and wasting a lot of your productive time. What does it actually mean? And how do you work smarter?

“Hard work means putting in a lot of time and effort doing a certain amount of work. Whereas Smart work means spending less amount of time performing the same amount of work” (Quora.com).

To work smarter you have to be mindful of 4 things:

• -Planning
• -Prioritising
• -Time management
• -Focus

Prepare a “To-Do list” at the start of a day (or even in the evening before as the last thing before you go to bed) with the most important things you need to get done on the day (or next day respectively).

Keep a secondary list that you run alongside the main list with “To Do Later” list with less. This will form a to-do list that you can

Focus and get things done off your “main list” one by one.

Prioritise the most important things and allow those that can be done at the later time- these can be annotated in the “to do later” list if you end up not completing the task in the day.

Set the time how long should you take doing it and stick to it whenever possible.

Concentrate on one task at the time and do not multitask. You will end up losing focus and spending more time than you set yourself at the start.

Put your phone on silence and really crunch the work without letting yourself be distracted by checking your phone or calls from friend or relatives or the social media profiles.

Obviously your kids can be the one that disturbs you hence I really recommend working before they wake up or after they had gone to sleep.

The days that your partner is off- let him take care of the kids and then you can catch up on the items that you have left to complete later.

 

5. Keep “acting” as if you were going to work.

 

What I mean by this is – get dressed, do your hair and even put some little makeup on as if you were going into the office. You can treat it as if it was a “casual Friday” as you might want to keep on a comfortable side!

Beside kids might get you dirty so be prepared.

The reasoning behind this is that you want to keep the momentum going.

Keep the routine going.

This applies to any time you might switch from being in the office to working from home in any other circumstances not only the one we are facing now.

Keeping the routine is important not only for your mental health but also for your productivity.

It’s also so that your kids know that everything is “sort of“ normal.

It’s a difficult situation but the most “normal” we keep it the easier it will be to keep sane!

 

Conclusion

I hope you have enjoyed my 5 tips on how a parent should work from home during a lockdown period.

This is a new situation for me so I am still figuring it out myself. If you are working from home with the kids I would love to hear from you. What are your tips on this? Please let me know in the comments below.

 

You might also want to read:

How to exercise at home for beginners for weight loss

33 invaluable advice on a professional career that will make you succeed on every level.

 

Stay safe everyone

 

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