Vikram Ravindranath Menon

WORKING FROM HOME THE WHY, HOW, AND WHAT Working from Home has caught the fancy of many for a decade now, and became a buzzword from 2020 thanks to the Corona Pandemic. Work-From-Home is here to stay and it will grow. From Corporates to Schools, From Metropolis surroundings to Rural Villages in far-flung corners of the country, almost everyone has in some way been a part of the Work-From-Home culture that has found a place in our lives. We saw people who were fully employed but were compelled to Work-From-Home as movement restrictions were imposed due to the pandemic, we also saw the evolution of the educated unemployed taking up online computer-related work to earn a living, we say school kids being drawn to virtual classrooms. Work-From-Home powered the boom in online marketing, video creating, and Online Education. A tsunami of ONLINE suddenly swept across the globe and everyone seemed to want to have a share of the pie. Words like Affiliate Marketing and Backlinking found their way into the daily used jargon. WorkFrom-Home is here to stay and grow. Let's now look at the Why, How, and What of venturing into the world of Work-From-Home. Why should I choose an online career? Is an often asked question. Why not? That should be the retort question. It is a healthy and legitimate source of income that both unemployed and those looking for additional income can adopt. It is the encashment of talent and knowledge that you possess. The employee gets paid for his work and the employer gets his work done, and more often than not at a lower price. It is a win-win situation for the giver and receiver. If you have the skills, the required equipment viz. A Smartphone or a computer, and a good internet connection, what is to stop you from boarding the train? Yes, time is an essential part of the requisites too. To add to the basic requisites stated earlier if you have a healthy Social Media presence and following why not use it to get the cash box clinking? Let us move to the HOW to set up and prepare for an Online career section. If you are considering or have decided to venture into the Work-From-Home legion there is a certain amount of preparation that needs to be done before you start. Spending time to prepare for what you are going to take on is the first step to succeeding in it. If you assume that working from home is a great relief from the daily commute to and from work, a comfortable home environment, and hot home-cooked food, snap out from that dream. There is a lot that goes into working from home, most of which you would not have envisaged. This is where the preparation part comes into play. Following these basic guidelines would set you up for a successful career. The first thing to do is to set yourself up in a special place to work. Not all online work demands a HomeOffice setup, but having a separate space earmarked as your workspace is essential. It could be a table and chair set up in a corner of the bedroom or if you have a guest room, nothing like it. But choose a place that is specific for the job. If calling is going to be a part of your job ensuring that the space you choose has a door to keep out noises and disturbances will be essential. Having a pressure cooker whistling or washing machine sound the alarm after completing a wash program is not the most welcome background sound when on a business call. It would be a great idea to ensure that you are not near the TV or perched on your bed. Your family is not going to like the former and the delays in completion of the job on hand will be a result of the latter. If space permits, then spruce up the area around the workspace with a potted plant and an artifact or picture, no harm in making the surroundings look beautiful. Once you have your office area set up, get the supplies and equipment that will be needed for the particular type of work you will be doing. Remember you are not going to have your office boy or Administration dept to get what you need, it is you and you alone who will be responsible for your needs. Make sure to make a list of all the items you will need to start your job before starting it. The last thing you want to be doing your first day on the job is going out to buy supplies that you forgot to get before getting started. A prioritized To-Do list is mandatory and preparing the next day's work before signing off for the day is the best way to work, be it from home or in the office. Next is to observe a morning routine. Keeping an early morning schedule and sticking to it is the first step in your working day. Late nights and extended sleep in the mornings is a big NO. It pulls you down. Stick to your normal work routine, if reaching your office had a 10 am schedule, ensure that you are at your work table by 10 am. Use the commuting time that you save by helping the wife/mother with her kitchen chores, it helps. Women who work from home should finish their daily cooking in the morning itself, this will ensure that they do not have interruptions while working. Working from home comes with its own set of issues, the foremost being the blurring of lines that demarcate office and home. You could find yourself being distracted or being called upon to help with chores at home. To avoid this it is essential that you communicate with your family members that you will not be available to them for a specific time in the day, say for example from 9 am to 1 pm. Communicating helps in sorting out such intrusions in your time. Just as communicating a ‘Do not Disturb’ time to your family and friends, it is essential that you fix a daily ‘End of Work’ time. Come what may, you have to switch off from your work by that scheduled time. This practice will help you balance your home and office. It is necessary to plan something for and with the family at the end of the day. A movie together, or a game of Ludo or Cards, anything that can be done together. Don’t forget to tell the family about the evening plan during lunch, they will be looking forward to it and will help keep the family bonded. Being at home means having a whole lot of goodies to tuck into. Do NOT get into the habit of diving into the biscuit jar or into those munchies that temptingly peek at you from the kitchen shelf. Regulate your eating habits and take care of your body. It is very easy to gain that excessive weight when working from home. What do you need to do to achieve your goal when taking up online assignments or Working from Home? First and foremost do a SWOT analysis of yourself. List your skills and what you like doing, this will help you choose the right online job or assignment. Whatever be the area of Online work you plan to undertake, be it Affiliate Marketing, Telecalling, Freelancing, Ghostwriting, Mystery Shopping, obtaining Referrals, or Selling Likes, there are a few basic but essential skills that you need to possess or enhance. Set up your timetable to relearn those skills if needed. • • Written Communication. Written communication is a lot different from spoken communication and it would be necessary for us to remember that. When working from home most of your communication will be in what you write, be it E-mails, Sales Copies, Forum posting, Articles writing, Translations, Transcriptions, even your bidding for a project on a freelance site, or the chat with a prospective client - at each stage, your writing skills will project your image and ability. Hone this skill, you don’t have to be a Shakespeare or a Milton but the effectiveness and the ability to get to the point without excessive elaboration will be desirable. Computer Skills. Anyone reading this write-up surely has the basic knowledge and computer skills. What we are talking about is beyond these skills. You are endowed with knowledge of how to go about search engines or send emails and use of emoticons etc, you know how to use Excel and MS Word, that is kindergarten stuff, you will say. We are talking beyond everyday computer skills, the use of different programs, different email clients, and multiple browsers. If you are planning to join a particular industry knowledge of the types of software they use and handling them would help. • • • • • Learning Excel and MS Word. I know how to use them could be your response, but, are you adept in handling all the formulas in Excel and capable of creating an interactive spreadsheet with pivot tables? Well, if your answer is NO, it would be well worth the time to learn them online, Youtube offers a lot of videos to learn from. The same goes with MS Word or Powerpoint. Learn all you can, sharpen your skills and enhance your knowledge. Time spent on this now will help you earn rewards later. Add to your skills Add to your skills by learning from the various platforms on the net. Youtube is a great source to educate yourself and update your knowledge level. There is hardly anything that cannot be sourced and learned from the ‘WWW’ Time Management. Whether on or offline this is one skill that everyone needs to master. When working from home it is easy to get distracted or sidetracked because unlike when in the office there is no one to supervise your movements. Work from home is usually governed by deadlines. Working from home also comes with that little lethargy creeping in, followed by some procrastination which leads to a 10-day deadline project lying untouched till the 9th day, and you being left scrambling against time to complete it. Mastering Time Management and utilising it will go a long way in helping you achieve your goals. Patience and Perseverance. Patience and loads of it will be necessary to help you keep your head up in your online venture. DO NOT be misled by all the hype on YouTube by various ‘Educators’ who claim there is a goldmine waiting for you to ‘casually walk in and carry away’. There is money to be made, no doubt about it, there is also a huge lot of competition. Many of those competitors are better skilled and have been in the trade for decades and hence well settled. You will need all the patience to get your first break, things will begin to ease after that, but it will take time so patience and perseverance will be essential. Use Available Tools. learn to use all available tools on your computer. From Trello to Google Drive for Docs / Slides/ Sheets, Speech to text, Social Media scheduling tools like Buffer. They could play a big role in your daily schedule. We shall bring you more informative posts like this, including information on which areas of online work to choose, a list of all the available sites and how to approach and sign up with them, Skill development, and lots more. Let us have your comments, suggestions, and question.