Your Career Team Goes Remote!
By Neepa Parikh | Director | Office of Career & Life Design
It’s the Friday of the first full week working from home (WFH) and the muscles in my neck and shoulders are screaming at me. My WFH setup was not designed to endure more than one day a week, but a lot of this can be fixed: a yoga ball to strengthen my core and improve my posture, board games to lift my laptop to eye level, and a separate keyboard to enable the latter. One of my colleagues is using Tupperware to create a standing desk. We’re making it work! Beyond creating an ergonomic workspace, we all must adopt various ways to make WFH manageable.
Here’s what the GGU career team has to say about this:
Joana Scharinger, Career Consultant
“One thing that is working very well for me so far is NOT taking my laptop to bed or the sofa and working from there. This is my #1 rule now. I created a workstation on a small desk with two monitors and I only work from there. I noticed a huge impact in my productivity after I started doing that.”
Kandis Rodgers, Employer Relations Manager & Career Consultant
“I get up and get ready in the morning as if I’m going into the office. I try to keep the same morning routine. I may sleep in an extra half-hour, but I get up, exercise, and shower as if I had to catch Bart and head to GGU.”
Tarik Asan, Professional Development & Student Leadership Manager
“It’s important for me to get creative with my WFH environment. For example, set up a playlist that motivates you to be productive and have it play in the background. Or, utilize your lunch time just as you would while in the office. Perhaps consider going out for a walk for a change of environment.“
Jimmy Bonner, Sr. Program Coordinator
“For me, being able to communicate with my roommates effectively and openly was helpful. For example, I have a roommate who is also working from home. We both like to use our living space to work as it has great lighting, is spacious, and usually well kept. We will let each other know when we must be online for meetings and when that happens, I’ll go to my second desk in my room and let her conduct her meeting without any distractions, and vice versa.“
What works for us may not work for you, so we suggest trying out different things to get into your WFH groove. Share your best practices with us by leaving a comment in the comment box!
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