The office can be a very distracting place: from your coworkers stopping by for another chat, to countless coffee breaks, 5 minute meetings that drag on for hours, and a phone that seems to never stop ringing.
By comparison, working from home seemed like it would be a picture-perfect paradise of uninterrupted productivity. But as millions of people now stuck self isolating are starting to realise, the home office comes with its fair share of distractions.
Have you faced these working from home challenges yet? How have you fared in keeping your work life and home life balanced? Read through and let us know how you’re dealing in the comment section below.
Family
Working from home has us trading in chatty coworkers for family members. With more than 90 percent of Filipinos living in homes with more than 1 person, the home office is way more open-plan than we would prefer!
You can ask your roommates or your partner to please be quiet, but kids are a whole new issue – as this newsreader from the BBC learned. Better keep that office door locked, lest your next Zoom call becomes a family affair.
Pets
If you thought kids were hard to handle, then you clearly haven’t had to deal with Zoom call full of cats. Try keeping your coworkers on task with that cuteness overload! After all, oohing and aahing over everyones beautiful little fur babies.
Teachers are having an even harder time, especially fitness instructors trying to turn their homes into gyms and dance studios. Those yoga moves are just begging to be interrupted by this curious cat.
Pants
It’s not all pets and other people ruining our work from home productivity though – sometimes we are our own worst enemy. Or at least our wardrobe is!
Now that we no longer have to don business attire every day, the world is realising that work is a lot more comfortable without pants. Along with allowing for a lot more flexibility in your work space, working in your pyjamas means you can go from bed to desk in mere minutes!
Normally it would be no harm at all, after all no one in your group hangout can tell you’re not wearing pants. Unless you stand and stretch in full view of a live webcam!
Make sure you don’t get caught with your pants down – always be sure to close your meeting before you leave your desk.
Technology
Technology is a core component of the modern workplace, and having strong computing skills is often a necessity in any job. However, the sudden switch to working from home has been a crash course in teleconferencing for many workers.
With so many checking in for virtual meetings for the first time ever, it should come as no surprise that some people are struggling. Like this person who accidentally activated a weird feature in Microsoft Teams and somehow managed to turn herself into a potato!
Not all these issues have been harmless though, with meetings in the popular Zoom app being regularly interrupted by hackers and trolls, leading to the term “Zoom bombing” becoming a major trend on social media. Others are using these technological hijinks to their advantage, like this farm that will let you pay for a donkey to interrupt your meeting.
