Winning the work from home game

Initially, the idea of work from home (WFH) sounded alluring – one couldn't help but almost break into a dance. After all, it meant more time to spend with the family; more opportunities to experiment with and enhance our culinary skills; or even the chance to watch our favorite program at any time of the day. The possibilities seemed endless. And then reality hit us, and it hit us hard.

In the wake of the ongoing situation, some of us have been fortunate to have jobs that allow us to work from home. Remote can be equal parts liberating and taxing.

Here are some tips and tricks that have worked for people in upping their work-at-home game. All of these might not work out for you, but the tips are still worth a try. After all, we might end up working from home for longer than we had anticipated.

is more: We all love loading our phones and other smart devices with productivity apps and cram our workstation with gadgets. But cast another glance at these and ask yourself: are these apps, tools, and gadgets helping you become productive? Or are you spending more time fixing, troubleshooting and getting distracted with tech overload. A better approach is to only focus on essential apps and tools. Remember, minimalism is the word for gadgets and apps when you have remote access to IT people.

Celebrate the rain: We are often told about the importance of staying happy for our overall well-being. It is vital that we don't keep issues and concerns bottled up within. While we might appear calm and collected on the surface, pent-up emotions tend to erupt suddenly and intensely. It is okay to gripe about your job and share your woes with your colleagues and bosses. However, be sure to have the right perspective and a level tone to avoid being labeled a whiner.

Back up your content: It is common to hear our colleagues grieving over the loss of their important presentations, videos or documents that had taken them an atrocious number of hours to create- all because their PC suddenly crashed. Data backup is necessary, and yet it is something that we easily forget. Therefore, it is imperative that we reliably back up our content on a different device for example, on WD My Passport HDD, which comes with up to 5TB of storage capacity. This palm-sized storage device offers plenty of space to store, organize, and share your photos, videos, music, and documents. It is paired with the WD Backup™ software, so that backup happens automatically and without any hassle and is also offers password protection to keep your digital life's contents safe. Taking frequent data backups is key to keeping all your content safe.

Distractions? Embrace them: It is easy to lose yourself to just-one-more-video-game; or that graphic novel that you always wanted to read; or even hundreds of shows offered by streaming apps. And it is equally painful to extract yourself from the snares of these distractions. The solution lies in creating a to-do list. Start with the easiest job and every time you finish a task, mark it on your list. The gratification of completing a job motivates us to accomplish more tasks. This will help you stay productive and also keep the morale high. Nevertheless, once in a while, it is okay to steal some time to read a book or play a video game. After all, you are saving hours by not having to travel to and from work or even taking regular breaks as you would in an office setting.

All in all, the top priority for all of us should be to maintain our health – both physical and mental. As the saying goes, ‘this too shall pass’. For now, let’s all be grateful for this flexibility to be able to work from home.