Pisith: How I tackle challenges of working from home during the COVID-19 outbreak

Working from home during this period of COVID-19 seems to be likely adopted by many enterprises, including my organization Open Development Cambodia (ODC). As the outbreak of the Coronavirus is taking place with an abrupt increase of the positive confirmed for COVID-19 infection, people are told to stay home, and in some countries where the situation is getting worse decided to practice lock-down to slow down the spread of the virus. Thus, we were suggested to adopt remote working from home in purpose of preventing mass gathering.

At first, I thought working from home would be fine for me as I’ve believed I could work from anywhere; thus, I decided to work remotely at home. However, in real practice, I encountered a variety of challenges. These challenges decrease my productivity in working and cause anxiety and stress.

But the problem must be solved for the sake of productive working!

So how I tackle the challenges to ensure job productivity and take away those adverse effects from my life?

Challenges and action taking to overcome them

During working from home, there are a variety of challenges people might face differently. For me, the challenges I must tackle consist of the workspace, surrounding environment, and the problem of psychological effects.

Choosing the right workspace

Unlike the office, we must set up a workspace at home, these can be on the bed, in the kitchen, or even in the bathroom. Choosing the right workspace is essential to ensure convenient working; our concentration on work might lose if the workspace is not comfortable for a whole day working.

So, I would choose to work neither on the bed nor in the kitchen because these kinds of place wouldn’t keep me for long hours working as on the couch, I might feel asleep or sleep during working. In the kitchen, I might be busy in grabbing snacks and drinks and leave my work with no progress. To make my working day productive, I prefer to set up my workspace at the front of the house, near the door and window, with a desk and chair which offer me a comfortable sitting for a long hour of work. Also, it would allow for fresh air and sunlight, which make me fresh.

Tackle distraction from hot weather

During the dry season in Cambodia, the weather is hot, which makes people, including me, feel not comfortable outside and inside the house that has no air conditioner. It is indeed that this kind of weather is disturbing that I usually can’t have a good focus on my work even though I have a fan to keep my sweat out. Still, the air from the fan is also somewhat hot.

So, what I usually do is to regularly drink cold water every one hour and take a bath whenever I feel quite hot. And this gets my body hydrate, and after taking a shower, it keeps my body fresh and comfortable for hours.

Minimize distractions of the home environment

For the home environment, people might experience the distraction in different ways. The ordinary disturbing things can be building and road construction, the noisy crowd in the market, concert, loud music of beer garden.

I live in a studio apartment situating in the middle of the Phnom Penh city. I am usually distracted by sound pollution such as the sound of construction, crowd, and noisy music and song from my neighbour and beer gardens. With these distractions, I found myself difficult to concentrate on some requiring high focus.

To tackle this unavoidable distraction, I often listen to music via a headset such as those composed by Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin. The rhythm of the music can block the surrounding sound distraction and makes me more focus on the work.  

Tackle psychological effects

Of course, our emotion impacts how we work and hence impacts working productivity.

The emotions of working in the office and at home might be different, varying with people and the type of their work.

For me, I don’t feel lonely by working from home, but I observed my feeling go wild and often get procrastinated with the work. These problems might sometimes be caused by the feeling that I am just at home, and I don’t feel like I am working.

This problem is just because the home is not the office as in the office. I feel like I am not yet ready for the works. And this shift in the working environment didn’t yet make me get used to it.

I handle problems by organizing the schedule for working, such as assigning tasks, to be accomplished each day and set the time for work as if I work in the office.

This technique is helpful in reduce procrastination and increase the productivity of working.

To sum up, there might be more various challenges of adopting remote working from home which people might experience differently. All the challenges I faced and the activities and techniques I applied to deal with those challenges are workable in my situation. These perhaps can only be used for me, but you can still try applying these techniques or modified them to fit your circumstance to tackle your challenges and let’s see its practicability.

Blog written by: Mr. VONG Pisith, ODC Data Research and GIS Officer.