Recently, due to the impact of COVID-19, significantly more people have been working from home.
If you are one of these people, you may be feeling grateful that your job allows you the flexibility to do that. Still, you may also be concerned about the added costs.
Here are a few tips to help you reduce your energy usage while working from home.
- Make full use of natural light
Rather than wasting energy on powering desk lamps and overhead lights, aim instead to make full use of natural light during your working hours.
Don’t cramp yourself into a tiny box room, find the brightest room in the house, and pull back the curtains to let the sunlight in.
Not only can making the best use of sunlight save you money, but this kind of light has also been shown to have an energizing effect. It can boost both your mood and your productivity.
- Put on some extra layers
One of the main benefits of working from home is being able to wear pretty much whatever you want.
When dressing a little less formally, you can also choose to dress a bit more warmly, or even add a blanket to your ensemble to make savings on your heating bill.
A further advantage of this is while working in a cooler environment, you are more likely to remain focused on what you are doing and less likely to want to head off for a nap.
Another tip here is to make sure that when you are using the heating, you are only heating the room you are in. You don’t need to be warming the whole house the entire day.
- Only power up what you need
A further thing you can do to save on energy usage is to switch off and unplug any items that you don’t need while working – lights, TVs, phones, printers gadgets, and so on.
Make sure you also unplug any chargers as these ‘energy vampires’ use energy even when they are not charging anything.
The added benefit of this is that there will be fewer things to take your attention away from what you are doing. Distraction can be a big problem for anyone working from home, particularly when you are trying to stay focused on some less than interesting task.
- Check your devices for energy-saving settings
First out, if you are using a desktop, you might consider switching to a laptop as a desktop uses up to four times as much energy as a laptop.
Then, most laptops, computers, tablets, and phones have built-in settings that allow for more optimal, energy-saving usage.
Such power management settings allow you to make changes in battery usage, screen brightness, and device standby and power-off options that will enable you to go for more extended periods without needing to charge them.
- Be smarter with your time
When you are working from home, they are two major temptations that can impact your energy usage.
The first is procrastination. It can be very easy to spend time between tasks browsing social media, checking the news, or pointlessly going through your emails. The impact of this is that they will take more time to get done, meaning that you are working longer hours.
The second temptation is to work more hours than you usually would in the office simply because you can. Time spent on your commute, or on heading out for lunch can now be used more productively.
Rather than working longer hours, aim to work smarter hours. Ban yourself from social media, step away from the screen during lunchtime and other breaks. See if you can get your tasks finished in six hours rather than eight. Over time this will drastically reduce your work-related energy consumption.
