How to Overcome the Fear of Working from Home in this COVID-19 Times
By: Alfredo Alvarez
Tags: Covid 19, Work From Home, Side Hustle, Improvement, Self Improvement

It is a reality now. Many of us are forced to work from home in a way or another for our clients and/or employers. But, how do you navigate these uncharted waters? How you overcome all these new obstacles for productivity, and most importantly, what to think about when it comes to the financial side for the weeks to come?.

Forced to isolate yourself and Work from Home

Yes, most of us are now sitting at home taking care of almost all the tasks we carry out regularly at the office, trying to do everything we can to keep up and deliver what is expected from us.

What about anxiety? What about uncertainty and not knowing what is coming in future days.

Not knowing what’s coming to us and in public health care matters and the financial side is shaking more than one world around here.

Navigating uncharted waters.

Understanding that this could be a prolonged situation and not knowing the possible outcomes puts us in a difficult situation, nevertheless, the answer I believe lays in taking action and do something today to create a foundation for our future.

Here are some of the steps I’m currently putting into practice:

Developing a new Work Routine

Let’s face it, we’re just starting and as I’m writing this article, I’m just closing the second day of quarantine.

I’ll give you my disclosure:

What I’m talking about in these lines ins my current Life/Work Experiment and this article will be updated and followed up with more content I’ll produce while this whole situation develops.

Now we can continue.

1. Find a “Day Opening Task”

Forming a habit requires de repetition of a series of small tasks and movements — as walking to your bathroom, opening the door, holding the toothbrush and putting toothpaste on it before starting brushing your teeth — for some time for your brain to file it as an “Automatic Task” thanks to the “Decision-making” region of it and a group of cells tasked with “Chunking” those small tasks to create a habit, as two recent studies from Dr. Ann Graybiel from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggest it.

The Idea of creating an Opening Task is to indicate our brain and body we’re no longer on “Sleeping mode” and now we’re moving on to “working mode”. For some people is the act of brewing coffee, reading the newspaper or having a good breakfast. It all depends on your taste and the time availability you can get in the mornings.

Why is this positive?

Working from home could be a great experience, whether you do it regularly or maybe because you’re locked down for this COVID-19 pandemic we’re living in nowadays.

But you need to explain your brain that even when you still at home, you are now working and the tasks you’ll be performing vary from the ones you use to do at home when you’re just chilling in front of the TV watching Netflix.

Adding an Opening Task for your Working hours will help you a lot to divide free time from work time and wire your brain in a way where those “Chunking Cells” will indicate your subconscious self you’re entering into a new state of mind where you need to get some work done.