WFH with Covid-19

Covid-19 epidemic has changed the whole world on how it operates. Though it is a tragic situation we need to make sure we manage our work with proper responsibility and with ideal balance.

Working from home is the best option we have right now to keep everyone safe. Managing our work when working from home is not easy as we thought. We have many roles to manage at same time and need to make sure all our stakeholders of those roles are satisfied.

I’m a mother of 2 kids who are below 6 years and a developer working as a team lead. My 1st week of WFH was totally a mess, I had no idea how to balance all these work. There were days I cried because I was extremely tired and extremely stressed.Not having good time to spend with kids though me at home, mother guilt started hurting me to the extreme. Having so much to manage and high stress of family safety made me going crazy.I searched google to find out how others managing and try to my day more productive. I tried few things which seems worked really well so far, and still I’m searching ways of improving.

Following are my stakeholders whom I should satisfy

1. My Family
2. Kids
3. Team members
4. Company
5. My Self

My Family

Main things I had to manage was the day to day house hold work where I had paid helpers and I have no one due to current situation.

1. Start Day as you used to:

Though you WFH wake up same time as you used to and finish up all cooking and cleaning same as you leaving home for work. This helps you to save lot of time to manage work during the working hours.

2. Get help

Get help from spouse where he could help you. Trying to do all alone will not work. Talk with him and get him help you on some house tasks so it will give you some more time.

3. YouTube recipes for dinner :)

Find some easy baking recipes for dinner. Get your kids involved in preparing dinner with you. It solves two things, preparing dinner and make kids entertained. Try simple recipes where you could finish off things in shorter time.

Kids

Staying inside home for weeks is extremely hard for kids and it is even more hard to explain them the situation. We have to make sure they don’t feel bored and make them self occupied on something. Home schooling also plays a major role here.

1. Placing your work station

I have placed my work station closer to where kids could play and do some activities. Having me in an isolated work station was one of the mistakes I did during the first week. Having your work station with kids help you to keep eye on the kids and let them feel accompanied.

2. Kids Activity Kit

Have a activity kit planned for kids so they feel the excitement and learning.There are plenty of activity planner for kids out there in the internet search it and plan for a week. Get them work on it while you managing your office work.

3. Have time for conversation

While working try to build some small conversation with the kids to make them feel that you are part of the activities they carry out.

Team Members & Company

As I work as a team lead my team members need my support. As this WFH is a new mode of operations there were so many things to manage to make sure everyone could carry out work smoothly.

1. Plan the Day

Have a call with you team everyday Morning to discuss and plan out the work to be carry out, and see whether anyone having and blockers. This quite important to plan the whole day including calls you need to take. Having calls in a proper plan you could get you partners support , so he could manage some work so that you could have calls without disturbance. In case he is also busy have some activities plan for the kids for those time slots so they are occupied.

2. Time Box your tasks

One of the biggest issue we have when WFH is that we feel time is timeless. So we keep our selves occupied in different things. So time box the work you need to carry out within the day and try to finish those tasks as planned with less disturbance. This actually doesn't work 100% because you cannot predict kids moods but try to adhere to that rule. Otherwise you will end of working extra hours to complete your tasks.

3. Time for Casual Chats

When WFH one of the biggest challenge we face is socialization. We start missing casual chat and those social activities. Even my team members started feel bored. So we started a “Virtual Coffee Session” every end of the day. Where we discuss the sync also have to casual chats with video conferencing. This seems working really well as whole team seems so excited to join the call.

4. Have WFH Ethics

Have a properly defined working from home ethics and share with the team so you can carry out work with high productivity.

My Self

This is where I still struggle to manage. Having all things managed smoothly still it is bit hard to find good time to spend on my self. But everyday I spend at least 1 hour watching a movie or a drama so I could relax my self a bit.

Being a working mother is always challenging. I’m still trying out things to make things run smoothly. Thought to share so someone could get help out of it.

Stay Safe !!!