 Good morning guys, it's the Monday 16th of March and it's a beautiful quiet early morning here in Bangalore. The city is officially in a lockdown thanks to COVID-19 and I know that this week a lot of you like me are going to be staying at home and working from home. So to be honest I started staying at home and working from home from mid of last week so I have the situation kind of figured out for myself how to coordinate with my team, how to be productive and also what to do with all the extra time. So this video is going to be a stay at home with me and work with me video and I'm going to be sharing work from home tips, productivity hacks and lots more keep on watching. I've been staying at home I have stopped going you know to my gym or for that matter even to the park so the morning exercise basically now consists of a 10-15 minute walk in my veranda right outside followed by some light stretching and then 10 minutes of meditation and deep breathing and I think this is something which is extremely important right now because I am definitely feeling more anxious and I'm sure that all of you are feeling more anxious and more tensed with all the news and all the statistics that we have been constantly consuming. So the number one thing to keep yourself safe is true a little bit of meditation and deep breathing before you start your day. Now before I get up and start my day there is a very old but a very effective productivity hack which I want to share with you and that involves a notebook and yes this is making a to-do list for the day and according to me the best time to do it is the previous night that's when I do it so that when you get up you already have your day you know planned and mapped out and especially in times like this when you're working from home this is extremely important. What I use is the simple black notebook this was actually sent by cred and this is actually what I've been using from the beginning of the year. Really this is how I plan I have a monthly you know calendar I have the tasks list for the month and then you have your daily to-do. So I've been quite consistent this year with planning and it's kind of worked pretty well for me so today is 16th of March I have my task list for the day. One of the advantages of staying at home is that you have been given the gift of time and one thing which I've been doing more with this time nowadays is cooking food at home and cooking healthier food at home because we are not really eating out or even ordering food from outside. So that's what I'm going to do next and before I do that there are two things that I want to share with you. So every single day I'm now having an orange and let me show you. Amla. So every single day a dose of orange and amla to up the vitamin C and keep the immunity high and the second thing which I'm doing every single day is having a glass of white pumpkin or this is also called as ash card. So this juice is really good for your health especially for your cut health. So next I'm going to make my juice and then make my breakfast. So whenever I'm working from home there is one thing that I make sure of and that is to get out of my night clothes to get out of my pajamas to take a shower get ready and then only start working. I know that when you're at home it's really tempting to just lounge around in your comfy you know PJs but I think this is something which is going to make you feel really lazy and lethargic so don't do that. You have to wear you know very elaborate or uncomfortable clothes you can wear something totally chill and comfy like I am today but it's just important to you know get dressed and get ready. So that's what I've done right now I am ready for the day and I'm gonna head out and start working. Speaking of heading out here's another thing that I want to share with you. Avoid working from your bed, avoid working from your bedroom because this is the second thing which can totally kill your productivity and you know put you in that really sleepy kind of state. So this also reminds me that about a year ago I shot a video on my channel. This was about productivity tips when working from home. So that was the time when I was just setting up my business and I was working from home quite a bit I didn't really have an office. So this video talks about I think five ways in which you can be super productive when you're working from home. I'm gonna leave the link for that above and also in the description box below make sure that you check it out. So just started work for the day and the first thing that I do is to check in with my team and see that everybody's clear on you know what to do for the day and everyone's on the same page and since my team is small I can just do this on chat or you know on a call but if you have a bigger team to coordinate with there are a lot of useful tools which can help you do this. One of them which I have used personally and which is actually very simple and very effective is called Asana. It's available in both free as well as paid version and Asana is a tool which is basically designed for project management and for coordinating tasks among different team members. It lets you see what are the tasks that different person is handling and how much you know they have completed that task. So I will leave the link for Asana in the description box below if you're struggling with coordinating work among too many people then don't give it a try. Right now which means that it's time for lunch. Today for lunch I'm having some plain paratha and that is going to be followed by my favorite curd rice and also I was telling you earlier about including amla and orange in your food every day. So this is how I have amla. I just chop it into little pieces put some salt in it and have it along with my lunch. Currently two o'clock I finished lunch and this is the time of the day which is the most unproductive and lazy for me because this is when I feel really sleepy and lethargic. What I've done is instead of fighting this and you know struggling I take an hour sometimes 45 minutes to an hour's break at this point of time and this is when I'll come back to the room and spend this time to either read something to just lie down and sometimes even take a nap. It's the second half of the day it's three o'clock and usually in the second half I like to sit here on my couch watch the evening sun and work and I'm not gonna lie I took a short nap but afternoon naps are so refreshing so if you can take a quick par nap in the afternoon go for it. So one thing which I find very useful when you don't have a table to work with so if you're working on the couch or on the bed is to have this laptop table and let me show you so this is the one so it has a hard surface on top and the bottom of it is sort of just soft and cushy so that you know you can keep it on your lap or even you can keep it down. I got this when I was traveling but I've seen that it is available on Amazon India I'm gonna leave the link for that below if you're interested check it out. When you're working from home you obviously save the time you would have spent on commute or talking to people in your office on getting tea coffee and I've calculated that for me it's roughly about two to two and a half hours so this is the extra time that I have to get to things to get to my projects which have been pending from so many things and one of the things that has been pending for me are my plants so I have a lot of plants at home and a lot of them have needed some sort of attention for the longest time now so it's currently about 5.15 in the evening and this is the time when I would have wrapped up most of the major work for the day and I spend about half an hour to 45 minutes just getting to this you know plant project since we are not really going out and not even going to parks I think this is a nice way to still include some nature in your life so think about what are these projects that you could do from home and you know which have been requiring your attention it could be your plants it could be cleaning it could be reading something or learning a new skill and chalk our time in your day to get to that so guys it's about 5.30 and I'm almost done with the main core work for the day and what I'm gonna do now is have something to eat so evening is the time I usually like to have a cup of chai and you know sit with my husband and chat about the day so I'm gonna do that and post that I'm gonna work for maybe an hour more and get editing done and edit for an hour or it if not an hour at least 45 minutes every day so that I can keep up with all the videos so I'm gonna go do that so this was my work from home and stay at home day I hope you found that useful and I hope this gives you ideas and suggestions about how to make this time a little more easy and a little more comfortable for yourself so take care of yourself keep yourself safe and I know this is a time which can be frustrating and annoying for so many of us the pace of work is definitely slow when you work from home there is no denying that but in times like this it's just about making the best of the situation right so let's take care of each other let's keep the country safe I'll see you in the next one signing off for now bye