Because the reality of a Youtuber's life, is that we are weird hermits holed up in
our houses filming videos of ourselves. Oh hello. Working from home recently
because of a certain virus? Doing your part as a citizen and quarantining
yourself for the sake of others? And having your manager put aside the bottom
line and risk productivity in order to keep everybody safe? Well I have some
tips for you!
This is a very strict rule that applies to everybody that works from home.
As somebody that doesn't actually enjoy routines I'm telling you now it's
actually super important to maintain a routine. And that includes brushing your teeth,
washing your face...some people go as far as doing their makeup for the day and
I don't do that, but for the sake of the rest of this
video and so you guys don't have to see this sorry face I will be doing my
makeup today. So for this one little part you do need pants,
but the second that you come back you can take them off. Sometimes I do like to
do exercises and I either do yoga in the morning. It kind of you know sets my posture
a bit better. Thankfully I have a dog so I'm forced to go out and have some fresh
air. Okay because of all the hand washing I got a bit of dermatitis and my fingers
are a little peely. It's kind of a combination of over dried and irritated
skin and it's really bad on my thumb. Excuse my bum finger.
So I usually use my mornings to plan out my day and depending on the day it's
either I'm filming, or planning out what to film, or editing. A lot of you don't
know this but I also freelance, and so it takes a lot of organization that I am
still in the process of improving on. I find that the most effective way is to
plan the day, the week, and the month. Month is like big picture things. Things
like what kind of videos you want to upload every week. Weekly things include
Wednesday are going to be filming and then Thursday I'll be editing in order
to get the video up by Sunday, and then when you boil it down to the day, it
would include what kind of fulfillments do you have to do in terms of client
work, and you should promote this video on Instagram stories. And my personal
favorite at this time, shameless plug, is my TikTok. You can see my desk is a
little messy. I need a step stool because I don't reach the ground. The desk is not
really fit for me. Okay. This is her little desk setup. I have a laptop and I
also work on the bed a lot but then I also work on my desk. It kind of depends
on the mood of the day. This laptop table is amazing. It has three joints that you
can adjust. Also sticking a piece of velcro to your laptop. I learned this
from a friend I've had so many times where I dropped my hard drive and then
the cable yanked out the insides and then I break it. This way you can carry
your laptop everywhere, you don't have to worry about balancing the hard drive on
it. And then one more thing for somebody that works from home that's so important,
is a wrist guard. You work on a computer full time, carpal tunnel is real, and we
don't want busted up wrists. The beauty of working from home is that you can have
hot cooked food whenever you want. I don't normally have food this
good-looking but this was my last meal before we decided to quarantine so because
I eat breakfast pretty late, which is pretty much brunch I don't really take a
lunch break. So in terms of meals I'll have my brunch, and then work and then
throughout the day I snack. I have plenty of snacks on hand. I'm ready to go. I've been working from home
for shit, almost four years now. I think a hundred percent of the people that I've
talked to that are self-employed and working from home have this overriding
sense of guilt that just never goes away. I always tell myself that I'm lazy that
I'm not doing enough work. I started giving myself a day off like a full day
off, where I don't do anything well sometimes I'll like post on
Instagram or whatever just for fun. It was actually really hard for me because
I'd be itching. I'd have that guilt where I'd be like okay well you can just put
in like an hour or two right now. It wasn't a healthy relationship and I wasn't very
productive anyways. So to give myself that full day actually in turn increased
my productivity. Coming from somebody who does not enjoy routines this has been
the number one improvement for my overall workflow. Your workplace is also
very important. I'm currently very messy but I need my apartment to be clean or
else it bugs me so much. Not that this applies at this time but another tip is
that when I am working from home I like to schedule all of my in-person meetings
or work dates where I like to work outside of the office. I like to schedule
them all in one or two days of the week so that I can get it all done because it
does affect your productivity if you have a meeting in the middle of the day.
But cabin fever is so real so I have a group chat with other friends that work
from home and when we're not quarantining there are days where we'll go out
and work at a coffee shop together and we'll shoot some content, just to get
some social interaction but it's also great to have opportunities to have shop
talk. My favorite co-worker is Netflix and I let her talk all day and I don't
say anything back so there really is not a great relationship there. You have a
chance to see real humans. You've got to work on those social skills and get
yourself out there. There are certain people in your life that aren't really
going to understand what you do and they don't really, there's always that concept
of like you can set your own schedule so they're gonna hit you up on the DMs. It's
up to you. You can either set working hours for yourself and let
people know I work during these hours and I don't do anything else, but for me
I just straight-up tell people I'm working this day or I'm working at this
time and I can't do what you need me to do. And my career is very important to me
so I'm not gonna let anybody fuck with that. The last takeaway from all this is
to definitely set boundaries for yourself. A trick that I use is to look
at the clock and the clock is not usually exactly at the hour on the dot,
so then I tell myself once I finish this hour I can take a break. And a break
could mean anything. It could be going on your phone for 10 minutes, playing with
the dog for 10 minutes, or if you need like a full hour go ahead, but make sure
that you give yourself that time ahead of time, instead of just saying I'm gonna
go on a break. It's really great to see people come together and be responsible
and care for those that are vulnerable by staying in. And hey now you can see
what life is like for us. On my end I'm going to increase production for content
creation. I'm gonna do my best to put out more videos more often, do some live
streams and just keep you guys entertained. These are trying times for
all of us so if you are in a position of privilege do reach out to others and try
your best to help as much as you can and if you have any tips on working from
home let me know in the comments below. You can find me on all sorts of social
Instagram, TikTok @letitiakiu and I'll see you guys next time bye!