Top Tips For Working From Home

Find a silver lining in the current situation with Sarah-Kate’s help

- Sarah-Kate lynch

As someone who has worked from home all millennium, I can heartily recommend it. But there are traps for the inexperienced or over-excited, both of which I have been at times. So, at a time when more Kiwis are working at home than ever, here’s how to avoid them.

GET DRESSED

Early on in my novel-writing career I talked to a classroom full of six-year-olds about my job. I subsequently got 27 thank you letters, which were all different versions of: “We like the bit where you never get out of your pyjamas.” In these days of increased home deliveries, can I suggest it’s not actually a good look to be slouching in your (no doubt slightly) soiled PJs post-midday? Getting up and having a shower – even if you just put on your stretchy fat pants and a clean T-shirt – is a motivating force for a home-worker. But no-one says you have to wear make-up. I personally like a deodorant, but it’s not as if anyone’s going to smell me. Although after frightening the courier driver recently with my Worzel Gummidge hair, these days I do occasionally blow-dry it.

LIMIT FRIDGE VISITS

For some reason, which the scientists who are not trying to cure COVID-19 are currently stuck in a basement trying to work out, you get much hungrier at home than you do at an office. To this end, I strongly recommend that you don’t have large amounts of chippies, chocolate, cakes and other party snacks within easy reach. I swear I can be sitting at the computer one minute and the next I am staring at the fridge contents without any memory of having walked (skipped or jumped) there. If you’re this way inclined, it really pays to have healthy fodder on the frontline. Of course, I’m constantly trying to stave off going up a dress size (the coronavirus has already proved quite fattening), but all you thin people out there can knock yourselves out.

GET MOVING