Working from home during isolation -

If you are suddenly finding yourself working from home during isolation, you might be wondering how to keep your productivity high, children occupied and upkeep mental health and general fitness. I have worked from home since 2002, running multi businesses and bringing my family up. I have also had my daughter on home on isolation, so I thought I would pass some of my tips to you.

Set your hours

Although it can feel tempting to lounge around watching Netflix, its important to remember you are working, you’re just in a different environment to usual. So do make sure you set yourself working hours. When are you most efficient? Would you prefer to start work at 6am and finish at 2pm? Or do you want to organise your children first and start a little later at 10am? Use google calendar to set out your day, schedule in breaks, exercise, family time.

Virtual Community

A sense of community is vital, and this doesn’t change just because you are working from home. It is so important to get contact from others. Normally I recommend that business owners arrange some face to face meetings. But assuming we are all in lock down / or isolation, this won’t be possible.

So you need to get your sense of community online instead. The good news is, this is totally doable in a technology friendly world. Have zoom meetings (more on this later), join an online membership site (UKAWP, Elevate You,), attend virtual coffee mornings, hire a consultant to hold you accountable or join an *online mastermind / group coaching. I am a big believer that working with others increases your productivity. I am offering a 15% discount on my published prices to compensate for the consultancy being virtual and not in person.

Technology

So what are my favourite tech tools I use with my business? I won’t explain them all in this blog as that will take too long. But here are my favourites:

Dropbox – I share workbook bundles with clients here
Google Drive – I upload documents for my assistant to then edit
Canva – I create simple graphics for my social media platforms
Trello – I plan my launches and projects within here
Zoom – I conduct all my consultancy calls via video conferencing and this is my favourite
Voxer – a bit like WhattsApp, I like to save Voxer for my business messages.

Home Schooling

My youngest child (age 10) has been at home this week in isolation, thus I have been setting her some work each day. I found it helped to create a simple timetable and even schedule in break and lunch. My daughter has fully embraced this, although appreciate early days! I have created a simple schedule for you to use as a template each day which is available below.

BP-Homeschooling-PlannerDOWNLOAD

So what websites / tools can you use for home learning?

Twinkl – I have been using this whilst daughter was in isolation. And we loved it. Lots of amazing resources. Easy for me and interesting for her.
BBC Schools – lots of videos broken down into key stages then subjects
TimesTables Rockstars (my daughter has access via her school but you can purchase as a family. Can I say she loves this. And is rocking at her times tables )
TTS – Have some great free downloads to keep your child occupied, but still learning. I love that they have produced bundles per key stage.
PE with Joe – the bodycoach is going to be hosting PE every week day morning at 9am. Both Lena and I will be trying this out

Keeping Healthy

On a normal day taking my daughter to school I average on 10-15k steps per day. Whilst I have been in isolation that has dropped to about 6/7k. Which over the course of a few months would result in me being incredibly unfit and possibly unable to get into any of my clothes!

So what can we do to keep healthy? Firstly make sure you have fresh fruit and veg, try to avoid processed foods. I appreciate this is difficult when everyone is panic buying – but I sincerely hope this calms down.

Then ensure you set aside time every day to exercise, whether that is PE with the children or a HIIT routine. I have a home routine from personal trainer and nutrition coach Vicki Cumberworth which she updates every month for me. I have asked Vicki to help give advice on managing health and fitness at home and this will be coming to you in a separate post. I’m very excited by what tips she passes on!