The five tips: working from home with children around you
Keep your own office hours
Have good planning
Make time, take breaks
Get the right tools
Create a toy workplace
Keep your own office hours
It is a major pitfall of working from home: the feeling that working never really stops. A good balance between work and private life is especially important now – with all the hectic surrounding the corona crisis. Coordinate working hours that correspond well with your work, family and yourself and: stick to them.
What you can do now: get up an hour earlier than your children are awake. Then it is still nice and quiet at home and you can get rid of all emails. But: do not continue until late in the evening.
Use good planning
It is important to make a good planning for each day. But be realistic. You’re just less productive when your kids are around. Do important tasks first. Don’t plan too much. Otherwise, you’ll just get frustrated that you either can’t get your schedule done or have so much to do.
Make time, take breaks
An uninterrupted working day with your children becomes a difficult one. Break the day to pieces and you can spend the time in between to play with your children. Alternatively, just in case: start working together. Place your child next to you at your desk with a treat or a coloring picture.
Get the right tools
Essential to work efficiently. Test your internet speed / WiFi speed right now and check this against your attainable maximum. Fast internet is not only very important for your own work because uhhh … Netflix, YouTube, mobile phones, game consoles, iPads, and more – exactly. Fast internet is really the most important tool right now.
Create a toy workplace
Give your children their own ‘workplace’ in the house, where you collect toys in the morning that you choose together. Hang a new assignment on (part of) the toys every day, so that your children also ‘work’ on something that must be completed at the end of the day. The advantage of the fixed toy workplace, not too close to your own workplace if possible, is that they don’t come too often to ask where this-or-that is. We think.