Hello Readers!
The coronavirus is in the air, and every citizen all over the world is requested continuously to maintain social distancing and stay at home, go out only when it is of utmost need. Schools, colleges and coaching centers have been shut down all over India and students are asked to stay at home, and study. Even board exams are now extended. At many places’ employers are also asking their employees to stay and Work from Home.
Well, work from home and learn from sounds good but question is, how we can manage our work from home? How does one maintain productivity, remain calm & maintain family harmony, love & care, all at the same time?
Work from home and learn from home, simply means you and your children must stay at home together, and thus working from home becomes hard. Come on, agree on it we all love our children but them sitting on our laptop makes it hard to work from home. So, here we must manage our time at home strategically in order to get our work done and also give our children some time.
The very first thing you need to understand and make your children understand that it is not a holiday, it is a working day or a school day and one is working/learning from home. And in this you have the benefit, you are saving your travel time say approx. 2 hours, this time can be used in a productive way, spend this time with your family, have important discussions or just play a game of Ludo, who doesn’t love a good game of family Ludo right!.
Well, here I am explaining some notions that will help you prepare a proper plan, to manage your work from home and at the same, make your children learn from home:
Timetable with Built-In Flexibility
Generally, you and your children both have a fixed timetable at school and in the office. Your children when they are at school, they follow their routines, but when they are at home, they set themselves free and negotiate the flexibility, and not only our children but we adults do the same when we are at home!
So basically, in order to work systematically, it is important to prepare a schedule, for a week with in-built flexibility, and make it mandatory for all the members of the family to follow that schedule.
Make your schedule for a fixed time, say either from 8 AM to 5 PM or 10 AM to 7 PM. Do not forget to add half an hour break after 90 minutes, it would help you relax, and get back to work with new energy. This gives you 4 slots of 90-minutes with an hour to spare for any unplanned activities, kept as a buffer.
You can fill this one-hour slot with group meetings or individual work topics. Children can fill their slots with different subjects, they can read, recite or learn.
Family Time
All the family members can take out time and sit together for their breakfast, during this time you can plan your activity during half an hour break that you have planned after 90 minutes of your work period.
These 30-minute break slots can be used for playing a board game, playing a short indoor game or doing a tea-party together and a flexible 30-minutes lunch break. Do not forget to appoint one of your family members as a “Schedule Enforcer” to keep check of everybody.
Fix A Certain Area As ‘Workplace’
Fix a room or a certain area of your house as a workplace, doing this will help you manage your work from home smoothly. If you are in that area, family members understand you are at work, and they won't disturb you. With children being at home this idea can take some time to work, but in a few days, it will get better.
Planning Weekends
At this time, when almost all the theatres and amusement parks, all the mall's everything is closed almost, it is difficult to decide what to do on weekends? But believe me, together you all can enjoy yourself at home only.
At this time, you can make other plans for your weekends like sort-out some good movies, that you can watch with your family, and do 2-3 movies per weekend. This weekend makes a plan to become fit, run for it, or do cycling for it, your choice. You can also plan to read that book you bought one month ago but couldn’t read because of the busy schedule.
You can also plan to sleep this weekend, as many of the working individuals have this complaint, “we have so many works to do, we cannot sleep properly.”
Point is the government is doing their part in all the possible way to stop this chain of coronavirus spread, now it is our turn to do our work to break this chain. One person can make a huge difference, step back, stay at home and slow the spread.
Be safe from COVID-19!
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