Coping with Lockdown

Our Top Tips For Working From Home

By The SCITT Staff

Emma Day

Keeping tabs on yourself…. are you crying more often? Quicker to anger? Find yourself not wanting to engage with others? Try paying attention to your emotional changes as well as those around you and how they react.  If your responses are different from usual, it might be time to step away for a moment, take some time outside, change what you are doing, not think about your work, or home schooling! Having a routine is great, but allow yourself to acknowledge it won’t always go to plan….and that’s okay. 

Helen Grimmett 

I think it’s important to have a daily plan but  to plan for breaks and fun sessions as well as work sessions. 

Throughout your day take quality breaks and do something that makes you smile. My favourites are: chatting to a friend or my family, dancing around the kitchen, eating something delicious, being silly in the garden with my children, listening to music (singing along loudly) or the birds and reading a chapter of a book. Take breaks, where you connect to things you love, enabling you to refresh and refocus and make working from home more effective. 

Maggie Noble

Set your alarm for a reasonable time in the morning and get showered and dressed within a reasonable time. Give yourself a target of activities that you’d like to achieve by the end of the day, but be adaptable. Completing small tasks that have had to be shelved for a while, if you now have the time, make you feel good. I’m enjoying contacting friends that I haven’t spoken to or even found time to message, for a while. Have a laugh with them but be honest about how you feel. Put some music on so that the house isn’t in silence and avoid watching every news bulletin. 

Mary Barber

Try to have a different space for working in if you can so that you can leave that space to relax. Take proper breaks and try to stick to some daily routines. Speak to family and friends, virtually if they are not in the same house. Share your good days and bad with fellow trainees, tutors or friends. 

Chris Eshmade

I write myself a timetable in 2 hour chunks, including meal breaks and music and reading and catching up on the TV. I have the same most days and then add something new each day. I virtually phone my children daily, it’s an idea to decide what you can talk about before you start. I am also good at lists and I love crossing things off. I have a book of lists and jobs that will be my Corona virus book.i text out to most people in my address book weekly and phone anyone on their own or vulnerable. I also walk daily, varying the route.  I also am watching a lot of Bargain Hunt!

Fran Attwood

I try to give myself a little challenge every day.  It might be something I have put off doing or it might be something I have never done before. I also try to vary my routine slightly so that things don’t become monotonous. Remember something that you have enjoyed in the past and can do from home. I’ve been enjoying listening to my ipod or CD’s that I haven’t listened to in years.  Finally, talk to someone or send them a text (whilst eating chocolate).

Ellie French

Plan your days during the week so that it feels like you have some structure and it makes the weekends feel more like weekends!   Try and move to a specific place when you are working; you can then make that place your ‘work area’.  Ensure you plan breaks in and if you can go outside during your breaks; even better!  Communicate with people outside your household. Use Zoom to chat to each other about the work you are doing or just to catch up and check in.  Zoom is also a great tool to use to catch up with your friends and family; try organising a quiz night or a book club.

Emma Nunn

Get up, get dressed, open that make-up drawer/shave. Organisation helps, To Do Lists, set reasonable goals and do not beat yourself up if these are not achieved (you always have tomorrow). Communicate with the outside world, check in with that person that is on your mind. Weekends are weekends. Step away and enjoy this time we have at home, read that book, do that thing you have always wanted to do, spend some time with/on you.

Saffron Lowrie

Make a list before you go to sleep  – what do you want to accomplish tomorrow? – Make it realistic. Set the alarm, shower, do your hair/make up so you feel like you. Wear your normal clothes, loungewear is for the weekend. Try and have some time for yourself throughout the day, it’s hard if you have to share your space 24 hours with others. Go outside, breathe the fresh air into your lungs, listen to the birds, feel the wind on your face, it really helps to keep you calm. Do not beat yourself up if you haven’t managed to achieve all you wanted to do each day, it can roll over to the next day. You will have good and bad days and that’s ok too. Call/Face time family friends. I facetime my Mum everyday at 3.30pm, I am actually seeing more of her than I have ever done. We have been doing virtual quizzes and games of Bingo with friends and family. We all have a glass of wine and some snacks and end up chatting for hours after. My daughter is doing a free online course from Future learn website and we have all been doing yoga, Davina’s Own your Goals website is offering 30 days free to all her exercise classes.

Jo Palmer-Tweed

Get dressed every day!  I try to make sure I dress in a more professional way if I am going to be on Zoom meetings.  In Zoom meetings sit in a way that means you will pay attention and be perceived as attending. Try to sit at a table for meetings if possible.  Check your background when you are on Zoom meetings, you don’t want to realise halfway through that your dirty washing is piled up behind you. I now put “do not disturb” signs on the door to tell other people when I am in a meeting.  I break my days down into 3 work sessions and one session to do something that makes me feel happy.  Check lists that you can tick off are really helpful.  Make sure you look at what you have achieved at the end of each day and congratulate yourself!  Make sure you take proper meal breaks and get plenty of fresh fruit and veg.  Drink enough water…the bottles with the times down the side are really helpful.  Check in on your peers, I Zoom with all our team at least weekly.  Make sure weekends are different!  I don’t work at weekends, I do brunch rather than breakfast, have a movie night, Zoom family, do crafts and lie in in the mornings.