The weather is getting better; the sun’s rays shine through our window in the early morning. For employees and entrepreneurs who are working from home, the question of what work will be like in the summer may come up.
On one hand, the beautiful weather and the summer break will bring the children and family members home. On the other hand, the good weather will lure many of you outdoors. One of the biggest issues is that you must work in the summer because fine weather alone will not pay the bills.
Like for many things, there are two sides to working from home. The benefits are that you can entirely remove the commute from your daily lives, and you can be with your children if they are sick.
The other side is that some comfortable functions of the office might be absent from your home, such as air conditioning or a calm, focused environment. During the summer break, there is more activity at home than at other times of the year, which can interfere with concentration and work.
In order to facilitate working from home, we have collected a few useful tips and tricks for the summer period:
1. Self-awareness
It is important to know yourself, and to know which periods of the day you are more effective. People who are more active in the morning hours can make use of the time before the children wake up, except if the kids also are early birds…
Night owls have more chance of concentrating better after the children have fallen asleep.
Besides, the temperature in the morning and late at night can be much more favorable than the temperature during the day. These are the periods that are easier to count on.
2. Flexibility
In the summertime, no matter how much you love them, family members can mess up your work schedule. That’s why it’s important to be able to reorganize your workflow as needed. The best solution is to establish an order of priority:
- Which tasks cannot be postponed at all? Will they be quick or lengthy?
- Which tasks are longer and which tasks need a shorter time to complete?
- Which tasks are not so important, would be good to start today, but not a problem if left for tomorrow?
If you have classified the tasks, and your usual workflow is upset, it will be easier to figure out which tasks can be done between others.
3. Balance
During the summer, completing your work might require more effort because everybody is on vacation, on a trip, playing with their kids etc. However, you have the chance to strike a balance between work and family time.
Younger children sleep more, but older ones can occupy themselves or each other more easily – this is the ideal, but we all know that there are always exceptions.
Children need to be looked after, but if the time spent together is quality time that recharges them, then children more easily accept that adults have to work too. So, it’s important to pay close attention to children during free time (trips, board games, creating things together etc.), because if children know that they only come after working time, then they will try to avoid delaying the end of the work – they will disturb the work less, so that the fun part will come earlier.
If the home workflow allows you to include your children, then do so. If you need to print, glue, or staple something, they will be delighted to join in, so the work will progress and the family is still spending time together.
4. It all starts in the mind
When it comes to working from home or self-employment, you cannot expect others to manage you. You must set up a timetable, complete various processes, and schedule your tasks. It may well be the case that working in the summer is harder than on a rainy day in the autumn, when there are no family members at home, and you are not really craving to go out into the gloomy, muddy weather, but this does not mean that you do not have a job to do.
Occasionally you may need to force yourself to work on a given task. For instance, if your job requires you to get to sleep one hour later or wake up one hour earlier – then you must decide about this because it’s your duty to arrange your working time.
5. Simply great
It’s important to find processes and opportunities which make working from home easier. Regarding household chores during summer, it is essential to think through the processes: Where can I make my work easier? Are there steps that I can combine? What processes can I entrust to somebody else, and what can I leave out from my duties?
Other members of the family can be involved in these processes, perhaps with a little extra encouragement, so that cleaning or preparing the ingredients for lunch can be left to the little ones. Children can easily be involved in other tasks, such as filling the washing machine, taking out the clothes, or vacuuming.
If the children are younger, you may want to focus on work rather than housework during their sleeping time, because if the children wake up, there is a high chance that they will claim your attention.
6. “Sharing the burden”
If one of the members of the household stays at home with the kids, it will set that person back in their daily work. So, if you get a bigger task that requires you to invest extra time and energy into your daily work (for example: more orders or deadlines, or a greater need for organizing) you have to learn to divide your work in a way that you don’t forget about your relationships either.
After a busy week, you may want to arrange a day to compensate for the missing family time, whether as a trip or a quiet family day.
You can also talk to coworkers, neighbors, and friends who are also working from home and have children, to get together to work while the children occupy themselves together. It’s important not to go to the other extreme and carry out work while chatting.
7. Recess
In order to avoid burnout and tiredness, it is essential to enjoy the pleasant weather, because summer is still SUMMER!
It’s important to recognize that driving yourself to extremes can have more negative consequences in the long run than letting yourself rest. Your motivation can really suffer after lot of work and no relaxation.
Of course, it could also be the case that you don’t consider daily work as a job, for instance, in the case of a creative project or if your livelihood is also your passion. However, it is important to take a break from time to time, turn off the computer, stand up, walk away from work, and do some exercise or rest!
8. Heat at home
If you work from home you may lack comforts such as air conditioning, which, let’s face it, would make your work much easier during a heatwave. Even without air conditioning, there are a couple of tips and tricks you can use:
- While there is usually a dress code in the workplace, there is none at home, so when it’s very hot you can dress in lighter clothes than you would in the office.
- Ventilation and airflow are essential to consider. It can be helpful to use blinds and shutters, as they prevent the heating of the indoor air.
- It is essential to hydrate properly in the summer: you can sweat even when you are sitting still. It is important to replace fluids, as otherwise your attention and concentration may suffer.
- Changing your diet might also help, as you can hydrate your body with, for example, lots of vegetables and fruits. If you avoid consuming meat during this time, you might also notice that you have more energy and you sweat less.
- As mentioned above, if you are working from home, you can rearrange your working hours, so if you work earlier or later, you can avoid the hottest part of the day.
We hope these tips and trick will help to make it easier for you to work in the summer. Is there something we left out? We’ll be happy to read your comments and suggestions below the Facebook post of this blog article.
