For parents, social distancing has meant a lot of togetherness with immediate family. 

School has moved online for many students across the country. (Is it summer break yet?) Packed extracurricular schedules have been replaced with leisure family dinners. And kids are having a lot of time to just be kids. 

Sounds great. However, it can also be tricky, especially if you’re combining your newfound family fun with working from home for the first time. Your heart is telling you it’s a good thing. They’ll be off to college before we know it, right?! But your head is reminding you of to-do lists and various work deadlines you need to meet – all while you’re also assuming the roles of full-time educator and coach on top of the regular parent stuff.

So how do you successfully juggle working from home – and keeping the kids happy? Here are some tips on balancing being a parent and a professional through this pandemic: 

Give yourself some grace.

Most of us have never parented through a global pandemic to the scale of our current reality. It’s okay to feel in over your head and to go into survival mode. If at the end of the day, you managed to get something accomplished, and you didn’t lose a kid – you’re good.

Remember, there’s no award for best quarantine parent. No matter how much we strive to be the best and show our children the best, all of us are human. 

Rethink how you define a successful day.

Chances are the standard 9-5 work schedule won’t work at home. Carve out a few moments to assess the tasks you need to accomplish and block out your day. Think about what tasks absolutely need to happen during typical business hours. Prioritize them and save the rest for when the kids are keeping themselves entertained (if you’re lucky), napping (if you’re really lucky) or after they go to bed.

Your days might be longer working remotely. But incremental success is still success. 

Encourage your kids to play independently. 

Each morning give the kids two or three ideas for activities that can serve as boredom busters if needed. Short on ideas? A quick search on Pinterest will probably suffice. Have art materials at the ready and ask them to write letters or draw pictures for friends and family, health care professionals and first responders. Get them involved in cleaning their rooms or send them outside on a scavenger hunt.

Tell them it’s okay to be bored. (Like we were in the old days.)

Remember their attention spans aren’t your attention spans.

Change up the scenery every few hours. Go upstairs if you were downstairs. If the weather is nice, field calls and emails from your back porch while they play. If they’re getting antsy and grumpy, take a quick walk to get their energy out. 

Think about how the pandemic has affected your life. Remember your kids are also processing complicated emotions. They likely miss their grandparents, friends and routines.  They might need your attention or act out more than they normally do – and that’s okay. Everything is a phase, and phases don’t last forever. 

Before we know it, we’ll be back to normal. 

-----

Chelsea Schneider is a content writer for Bowe Digital based out of Bargersville, Indiana. When she’s not writing about the amazing things our partners are doing, she’s hanging out with her three kids, ages 8, 6 and 1. Currently, her days involve lots of e-learning (second grade math is hard,) lots of snacks and enough joy to forget the stress. She crafted this piece with help from Bradley Erb. Brad is Bowe Digital’s Business Development Manager and the father of two boys, ages 10 and 4. In between the repeated chorus of “I’m hungry, “I’m full,” and “Can I have a snack,” he is enjoying watching his sons use the skills he’s been teaching them their whole lives. Those include treating each other with respect, having compassion and helping others.

Wayne recently shared a couple of tips for managers who want to make sure they are still effectively leading their teams in a new remote work world. His advice was great and full of things he already does for us here at Bowe Digital.

However, the rest of our team (Alyssa, Ashley, Brad, Casey, Chelsea Dorinda, Heather and Richard) wanted to make sure we shared some of the tricks we used to help us adjust to a work-from-home environment too. Whether this is a list you need in your life right now or you think it should be passed on to a friend or colleague, we're just glad to be in a position to help make the transition a bit easier for everyone involved!

The 11 WFH tips for you from our personal experience are:

• Create or stick to a morning routine to do before the workday starts to help maintain structure. 
• Don’t feel badly about taking short rests between tasks to decompress or focus on other things at home. Set a timer if you need a tangible reminder to take a break.  
• Use at least one of those breaks to get out of the house too. A properly social distanced walk around the block may do wonders to clear your head. 
• Experiment with what kind of setup works best for you. Some members of our team have a designated work area to help them stay focused and to better divide work tasks from the rest of the day, but others have found that changing “scenery” every few hours keeps them more engaged.   
• Carve out specific work time. We all get interrupted with calls and emails all day. Dedicate chunks of time to complete the things you must accomplish that day so you can leave feeling a sense of accomplishment for at least one task.
• On a related note, remember to devote some of the workday to "passive" work, such as checking non-ASAP emails, reading articles, making to-do lists, etc.
• Schedule play/walk time for your pets as well. It helps so they don’t interrupt you when you have a conference call or video meeting. (This can apply to little humans too.)
• Do some exercises at your desk or get up and walk around the house (and not always to the refrigerator). Remember, you weren’t always in your chair in the office, and you don’t need to be so now.
• Drink plenty of water and if the weather is nice outside, open the windows for some fresh air. 
• Take your lunch break and resist the temptation of working during it. Step away from your computer and enjoy the down time. Keep a hard stop for the end of the workday too. 
• Remember to have patience. Everyone including your boss, your colleagues, your spouse and your children are adapting to a new environment.

If you have other WFH tips our team should know about or share, send them Wayne's way at wayne@bowedigital.com!

Our Bowe Digital team knows how much of an adjustment working from home can be under even the most normal circumstances. You and your staff are still producing great work and meeting customer needs, and that’s a great accomplishment by itself. As the leader of a 100% remote company for almost three years, I have been impressed with how quickly many in the title industry have made the shift amid the current situation. 

However, if you’re a manager of a new WFH squad (that’s ‘work from home’ if you’re one of the cool kids), it’s time to shift your mindset. Now is the time to make sure your employees aren’t just surviving at home – but can thrive. Continue to be a leader and check in on your team on a human level. Being remote can threaten the human element of an office – and that issue is only magnified when we’re limiting in-person contact in other parts of our lives too. 

My First Tip: I try to always greet the team in my first message of the day with a “Good morning” or “Hello” of some sort. Otherwise, all your communications can seem transactional, which may leave people drained and less connected. During this current pandemic, I’ve also added twice-daily video messages to my team as another touch point. (And as an email break for me.)  These video updates give them a high level overview of what’s to come today and what they should be prepared for tomorrow.            

It’s also important to remember the current global situation. While we’re all rightfully nervous about our economic future, make sure you and your employees are tending to personal needs too. Every part of our lives is being affected by this pandemic. Even if we’re focused on work, we’re also trying to help children, family members and ourselves comprehend this new, temporary “normal.” I’m constantly reminding my team “to do what they need to do to stay safe and support their families” and I know they’re reaching out to each other as well.

My Second Tip: Be the kind of leader who is committed to keeping a positive virtual atmosphere. Remind everyone to take “brain breaks” and plan a group event, such as a video happy hour where no shop talk is allowed. And do it during regular business hours near the end of the workday. Use this time to allow your team to introduce their kids or pets, show off their home office set up or just vent. If the budget allows, consider sending your team Grubhub or Instacart gift cards to help them juggle their new responsibilities during this time.

----

Bowe Digital wants to help you get the right messages out to customers and staff during these uncertain times. If you think we can be of assistance to your business right now, contact Bradley Erb, our business development manager, today! His email address is bradley@bowedigital.com.