Ten tips for healthy and effective working from home

Millions of working Dutch people are currently confined to their homes and most of them will not be worried. We discover en masse the advantages, but certainly also the disadvantages of frequent working from home, with or without children around us. Many Dutch people who do not want everything to go smoothly, are therefore desperately looking for methods or tools to make working from home a bit healthier and more effective. We have listed the best tips for you.

Tip 1: The pomodoro method

The pomodoro method by author Francesco Cirillo has been popular since the 1980s. It works as follows: you set a kitchen timer at a desired time in which you want to work concentrated on one task, for example 25 minutes. After that you can take a break for five minutes. During those 25 minutes you will also continue working, without interruptions or disturbing factors. Are you getting distracted? Then the 25 minutes start again. You can only really take a break if you complete the 25 minutes. Be strict!

Tip 2: Steel discipline

Put your private phone on silent and put it away. You turn off all notifications (email, Skype, Teams, social media, everything). You don't respond to messages or phone calls, let alone mail. Checking Facebook or Instagram is strictly prohibited. Set these rules for yourself and help yourself to comply with them, for example by temporarily removing social media from your bookmarks.

Tip 3: Treat yourself to something from the office

This helps enormously: there is always something at the office that you miss now that you are working from home. The dartboard, for example, or that delicious coffee from the coffee beans machine. Give yourself something you are used to from the office, during your five minute break.

Tip 4: Think about your posture and desk design

Have a good chair on which you can work in a health and safety environment and go Marie Kondo on your desk or work table. Everything empty except what you really need to work. The fewer incentives, the more work you get done.

Tip 5: Get rid of those sweatpants

Get dressed. Yes really. Lazy clothes make you feel lazy, you start working less concentrated and you deliver less. So just take that morning shower and put on regular pants.

Tip 6: The lunch break is sacred

Have a decent lunch and take that twenty minute walk. You also take your lunch break at the office, so do not shortcut yourself now that you are at home. Very healthy according to professor of neuropsychology Erik Scherder.

Tip 7: Five o'clock is five o'clock

Pack that laptop, empty the table, the evening starts. Leaving your laptop open all night and all night is a huge pitfall that creates unnecessary stress and evening work. When the work is done, it is done.

Tip 8: Snack healthy

Rather snack tomatoes than Doritos, so. Working with hunger is never fun, and when you go to the office you probably also bring something responsible and not a bag of chips. Continue to eat normally.

Tip 9: It is not every weekend

You may not have to be up at 6 a.m. to get ahead of traffic jams, but that doesn't mean the bottle of wine has to be on the table every day. Weekday drinking seems to be growing in the Netherlands because the duty calls less early in the morning, but you realize: even after one or two drinks you work less productively the next morning.

Tip 10: Accept your offday

And it doesn't work for a day? You sometimes have that in the office, right? Nothing to do about it. If you did all of the above, it just wasn't there once. You don't have to feel bad about that anymore.

Curious about tips for more productivity? Then view this home working tips, written by Thomas with six years of working from home.