The Various Challenges Of Working From Home During The Pandemic

You roll out of bed, smooth down your tousled hair, make yourself a heaping plate of pancakes that you enjoy while attending back-to-back Zoom meetings in your pajamas. You’ve got so much free time, so why not dive into a new hobby or lose yourself in a great book If this idyllic life is what you’d imagined working from home would be like, the reality might have left you reeling. With the unprecedented rise and spread of COVID-19 across much of the world, over 70% of American employees found themselves working from home. Many parents were sheltering at home with their families, while others were required to continue going to the office despite these trying times. Your children might be homeschooling for the better part of the year, if the recent uptick in cases after the gradual reopening of schools is any indication. Working from home is no easy feat. Not only are you always on the clock, you’ll find yourself battling unforeseen challenges every day.

Unexpected outbreaks

Adjusting to this new normal comes with its own challenges. With the entire family hunkering down in the same home with no respite, new trials and tribulations keep coming your way. One of these challenges are pesky parasites that crawl around on your heads, stealthily sneaking just beyond plain sight, using your strands of hair as their own personal jungle gym. We’re talking about none other than lice. Small, wingless insects that hold on to your hair with their feet and gain nourishment from tiny amounts of blood they procure from your scalp. If you’ve ever received a warning note from your child’s school, you’ll know the sheer panic and dread of knowing lice are crawling freely in your home. If you’re heading out for essential chores or are required to visit the office a few times each week, you run the risk of bringing home these tiny lice that’ll soon infest every family member’s scalp. Before you know it, your entire family that’s sheltering together will be scratching their heads and picking off pesky louse from the couches and beds. The good news is: there’s no need to panic. Delousing your home—and your head—is made easy with our at-home head lice treatment kits and prevention products that are dropped off at your doorstep the very same day. Our most popular products include our lice treatment shampoo, leather cleaner, lice extraction comb, lice repellent, and our client-favorite complete lice treatment home kit. Your home seems like the only safe space during these difficult times, the last thing you’d want is for lice to mar that. During these trying times when stepping out of the house seems like a challenge in itself, our clients have been loving our in-home professional lice removal services in Port Washington, NY. Call in our team for a home lice inspection and we’ll make sure every surface and item is completely lice-free and ready for your family to enjoy some quality time together in. We use pesticide free, chemical-free lice removal treatments and products that are safe and effective in ensuring you’re free of all nits and lice. Brushing a child’s hair with a lice removal comb

Time management

When the boundaries between your home and work life are blurred, you’ll find yourself wondering how you can manage the two together. With a pile of dishes stacking up, laundry waiting to be folded, and children popping in to distract you, it can be tough to squeeze in time to get anything done. Remote employees struggle with time management, often finding themselves working longer hours than they would in the office. A major reason for this is that you just can’t keep track of time. Without the cumbersome daily commute, morning rush to have breakfast, and scheduled lunch breaks with your colleagues, you can feel a little disoriented. When you’re always on the clock, you tend to lose track of when your work should begin and end. In worst-case scenarios, working from home can leave you exhausted and burnt out much faster than office-based work might. To avoid being spread thin, make sure you’re unplugging after the day’s work and detaching yourself from any work emails that come in late.

Dwindling motivation

With everything going on in the world, it’s difficult to focus on office work. The crippling fear of stepping out of your home or the constant dread you feel with every cough or sneeze can leave you in a state of disarray. You might even be wondering how you ever managed to wake up so early in the morning, get dressed, and head to work. Where can you find motivation when all you’d like to do is curl up in bed and adjust to this new normal? Finding your groove in a remote working situation can be difficult, especially when your productivity and motivation are so intricately tied together. The stress and fatigue bogging you down aren’t just a result of the work-related tasks ahead, it’s a combination of personal and professional challenges. Helping your children out with their homework or making sure you get rid of any unforeseen lice infestations can leave you drained of any motivation to work. A man lacking motivation while working from home

Technology troubles

Have you ever spent an entire Zoom meeting struggling with poor connectivity, grainy images, and distorted audio? Has an unexpected internet outage resulted in losing the work you’d been doing all day? Technology can trip you up unexpectedly—especially when you’re working from home. Business-grade office personal computers, high-speed internet connections, and a support team of IT experts keep your business’s technological backbone upright. Without these at home, you can find yourself combatting connectivity challenges all day. Not only does this slow you down, it affects your motivation to keep pushing forward. Tech headaches are one of the leading challenges to working from home. Since your home office isn’t equipped like your business office might be, you may require constant and prompt technology support to address any hiccups or security concerns.

Collaborating challenges

When you’re in an office space, it’s easy to roll your chair over to your colleague to ask a question or give them an update. This becomes doubly challenging when you’re not in the same vicinity. In fact, working from home may mean everyone’s working according to varying time zones and schedules. This results in miscommunication, confusion, and a lack of collaboration on projects. When you can’t just walk down the hallway to make an announcement to the team, you must find ways to work around it. One such solution is utilizing the tools at your disposal to stay connected. Business communication is vital to most business operations. Smoothly-flowing correspondence between team members and the hierarchy is essential to meeting deadlines and ensuring productivity. Regular team meetings and one-on-one feedback are necessary to make sure team morale is maintained. It’s easy to feel isolated and disoriented when you’re working with your colleagues without actually socially interacting with them—and this is one of the major drawbacks of working remotely. A collaborative video call meeting

Feeling invisible

Do you feel like you’re a cog in a large machine? If you struggle to feel heard and seen in the workplace, working from home can make this fear a reality. Remote work is often overlooked as a less-productive, fun-filled alternative to office work. However, with most people being forced to stay indoors after the COVID-19 pandemic, these assumptions are shifting. This doesn’t make up for the fact that your accomplishments, work, and productivity may go unnoticed. Justifying the work you’ve been doing may seem like overkill, but it might be necessary if you’re feeling invisible in the virtual workspace. When handling large teams remotely, it’s not uncommon—or always ill-intentioned—for your boss or manager to forget about some employees. After all, it’s possible when you’re not on their visual radar every single day. This unconscious oversight may cost you promotions or lucrative projects, though.

No supervision

Griping about your boss and their hawk-like attention on you may have been a major peeve for you before. However, working from home may make you realize just how inextricably it was tied to your productivity. Bosses and managers play a vital role in providing a sense of direction and helping you navigate through the challenges along the way. That’s why working from home may feel directionless—it’s almost like someone pushed you into the deep end of the pool without any support. Remote work may feel like you’re flailing around and trying to get your bearings. Your boss doesn’t just provide you guidance when you need it, they’re also a great source of over-the-shoulder supervision. Without them, you might be finding it difficult to stop scrolling through Instagram.

Dressing down

One of the many exciting features of working from home is getting to do it in your pajamas. Who doesn’t love the thought of rolling out of bed and attending an important conference call—all in the comfort of your coziest clothes? COVID-19 social distancing orders and lockdowns have been incredibly challenging, but it did come with the silver lining of pajama work. But anyone who has been working from home for a while knows this is a trap you don’t want to get stuck in! Your clothes don’t just affect how your clients and colleagues see you, they also impact how you feel about yourself. Since pajamas are associated with sleep and rest, you can’t help but feel drowsy and lethargic in them. If you’ve been wondering why you’re not feeling fresh and wide awake in the morning, it might be because you’re still in last night’s clothes! Your professionalism, hygiene, and performance rely on putting on a fresh, new outfit every morning—and you might not even realize it. A woman working from home in her pajamas

Combating isolation

We’re living in unprecedented times. This time last year, you couldn’t have predicted that you’d be under strict work from home guidelines as a pandemic takes over the world—but here we are. Uncertain times lead to feelings of loneliness, isolation, and doubt. Even when you’re living with housemates or your family, being disconnected from the world can sow the seeds of despair. At times like this, it’s important to reach out and check in with your colleagues and friends. Blurred work and personal lives can make you feel like you’re running on autopilot, simply getting through one day to get to another. However, it’s important to remember that you’re not alone. We might be socially distant, but we’re in this together.

Feeling lethargic

If you have a 9-to-5 job, you might find yourself sitting at the same desk for over eight hours a day. With motivation on the decline and your increasing tendency to overwork, your physical health can bear the brunt. Since the past few months, a typical day for you might look like this: You get out of bed, switch on your computer, get your breakfast with you to your work station, and begin working. Besides a few 10-minute breaks, you might find yourself hunched over your computer for an inordinate amount of time. If you don’t include some form of exercise or movement to your daily routine, you’ll notice it’ll start taking a toll on you. As a result, your posture suffers, your health declines, and you may be incredibly unhappy. Without the daily trips to your colleagues’ desks for the usual morning chats and team meetings, you might need to turn to other physical activities.

Overcoming distractions

Domestic distractions are a major cause of disruption to your everyday work life. Even the smallest task like emptying your dishwasher or vacuuming can cascade into several other things that are waiting to be done. When there’s so much to be done—both related to work and home—you can’t help but be distracted. This is doubly challenging if you have young children who require constant attention and assistance. Imagine if your child contracted lice during their last few days of school, bringing the pesky parasites to your home. Surely, a distraction like this is bound to take up so much of the time you could’ve spent working. From combing their hair and dousing lice removal products on their scalps to disinfecting the entire house. Lice removal can take up a lot of time. You’re in luck, though. Lice Troopers is your one-stop-shop solution to everything related to the pesky intruders.

Lice Removal Services in Port Washington, NY

Getting rid of a lice infestation is one of the most frustrating tasks, especially when you can’t seem to rid your home of all the tiny creatures in one go. Instead of heading out to buy ineffective OTC products or dumping toxic chemicals on your child’s head, trust the experts to handle everything! Whether you visit our lice treatment center in Port Washington, NY, or avail our in-home lice inspection and removal services, you’re guaranteed to be free of them in just one lice treatment. If you’d like to tackle the situation on your own, browse through our lice extraction products online. We offer a range of home cleaning products and personal care items that’ll be delivered to your doorstep the same day! Lice removal has never been a smoother process than with Lice Troopers. Call us at (516) 213-4540 for more information about our head lice treatments in Port Washington, NY.