A few tips to organize your day, motivate your children and make the most of the time you’ll spend together as a family, which is a time of confinement.
Coach Tom reveals his good advice for spending time with your family. We’ve made the bet to offer you this list in English, just to familiarise your ear with the language of Shakespeare! Listening regularly to content in the learning language allows the brain to memorize common words and expressions.
You don’t need to be a language enthusiast to understand this podcast, which is part of a conversation class at VivaLing!
Are you ready ? Let’s go!
Welcome to the VivaLing English Podcast “Tips on Working and Studying at Home.”
Difficult times. Difficult times require us to change our habits and routines. This is never easy but can bring benefits as well as problems.
All around the world, offices, factories and schools are closing. As a result, children are studying at home, and adults are working from home.
In this podcast, I want to give you some tips as to how you can organise your day, motivate your children and make the most of the time you will be spending together as a family.
But let’s take a step back into the past. Nowadays, the majority of people leave their homes to work, but how long has this been the case? What percentage of time since Homo sapiens evolved have the majority of people left home to work: 6%, 0.6%, or 0.0006%?
Answers, as usual, at the end of this podcast.
The number of people tele-commuting, working from home or using a home office, (please don’t say, “I’m doing home office.” Home office is a compound noun and refers to a place of work) has tripled in the last 15 years. 47% of people who work from home say they are very satisfied with their jobs. This compares to only 27% of people who go out to work in an office.
I have been working at home for the last 4 years. It’s not always as easy as it seems to juggle family, domestic tasks and work, but it can be done, and it can be done well.
Here are my tips to help you manage your day.
1. Judge your day on what you have achieved, not how long you have worked
Set yourself a list of tasks the night before. If you get through your tasks, you have achieved your objectives. One of the great things about working from home is the flexibility you have with time. If you are a morning person, get up early and get things done before the kids wake up. If you are a night owl, use this time but remember to …..
2. Set Limits
This is an extraordinary situation. You need to be fit and healthy and keep your immunity system strong. Working yourself into the ground will not help. If you were in the office, you would not answer the phone at 9.00 p.m. So, don’t do it when you are at home. Emails received after 6.00 p.m. will only be dealt with the next day. Decide your business hours and stick to them.
3. Have fun!
Children and young people are not stupid. Even if they give the impression they are happy, they hear the news and might be afraid and worried. Maybe you will be spending more time with your kids than you normally do. Make sure that you play a board game, watch a film, cook or just chat together.
4. Take breaks
Working for too long is counter productive. If your kids are studying and you are working at the same time, coordinate a 10-minute break every hour. Use this time to get up, do some basic exercise like push-ups or just make a cup of tea and chat. Be just as disciplined about finishing the break on time as taking it.
5. Limit your use of social media
There are many reasons for this. If you have your smartphone next to you and it vibrates every time you get a notification, you will not be productive. Leave it in another room or use airplane mode. The other reason is that the wave of rumours, bad news and false hopes will stop you from focusing on the well-being of those who are closest to you, and this is the most important thing.
There are many examples of people who have produced their best work in quarantine.
London was placed under quarantine between 1605 and 1606 due to the Bubonic Plague. The great writer William Shakespeare was forced to stop working and write from home. It is in this period that some of his greatest plays, Macbeth, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet are thought to have been written.
The same thing was true of Cambridge, the famous university town. A little known 23-year-old student called Isaac Newton was forced to go home and suspend his studies. It was during this enforced 2 years of isolation that he was able to create the theories and ideas that changed science forever. So use these examples to stay positive.
Now, back to my original question at the beginning of this podcast.
What percentage of time since Homo sapiens evolved have the majority of people left home to work: 6%, 0.6%, or 0.0006%?
Homo sapiens is now believed to have evolved 300,000 years ago. Before the industrial revolution, families worked from home as a unit, either helping on farms or with their own trade in a workshop, but based together in their own homes. The industrial revolution started just over 200 years ago. So, that means that humans have only been working in offices and factories for 0.0006% of our time on earth, so you should be able to cope with a month or three or four considering all of that history behind us.
Stay positive, stay healthy, and thanks for listening. Goodbye.
