Productivity

Work from home #covid19

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Hello friends,

This post is dedicated to all the working parents like me who are working from home and at the same time need to take care of their little ones since most of the schools are shut too due to COVID-19 pandemic. I know this is a very challenging and a tiring task since you are getting pulled into both directions.

But think about it, on the positive side, it gives you the assurance that you and your family are practicing social distancing hence avoiding the chances of getting infected by Corona virus while giving you an opportunity to spend more time with your little ones. The more people practice this the sooner we will have control over COVID-19 situation and hopefully soon, dare I say….things will get back to NORMAL.

I am not going to lie though, the first 3 days working from home with my 4 year old son were very difficult and overwhelming. But from 3rd day on wards it got better. So here are few tips/tricks that I am using to juggle both work and kiddo at the same time.

  • Start your day early…

I am usually not an early riser, if you are then you have already won half the battle. I started waking up around 4 am. I know it might sound crazy and trust me this was not very easy for me either. But that gives me almost 3 and half hours of focused uninterrupted time till my son wakes up at 7:30 am. This alone makes a huge difference and helps me accomplish more.

  • Virtual babysitting/ schooling..

I am totally taking advantage of this lock down situation. Because of the COVID-19 many people all over the world are forced to stay at home. My parents who live in India, are no exception to that. They are stuck at home and are completely bored just like my son. I just ask them to come online. They can entertain my son for at least an hour. Believe it or not my son plays charades, Pictionary, story time, show and tell with them online. My parents miss my son terribly anyways and this way they can see each other and spend time with each other every day.

If you also have any of your relatives (especially grand parents ) who are getting bored at home and won’t mind entertaining your kids on face time for some time, please ask them for help. I am pretty sure they will not mind.

If not then ask your school/daycare if the teachers are willing to hold any classes online. They can use zoom meetings and meet couple of hours every day. I am pretty sure the kids will be very excited to see their teachers and school mates.

  • Make use of nap times…

My son does have a nap time at school. So I do let him take a nap in the afternoons. He naps for 1.5 to 2 hours.

Let me know if these tips helped. Also share, if you have any tips on how to carve more time in this situation.

Health & Fitness

Meal planning

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Hello All,

Happy 2020…I wish you all a very happy new year and hope that you all will reach your goals and fulfill your resolutions. Speaking of which, raise your hand if one of your new year’s resolution is to eat out less, cook more and eat healthy home made food?

I know that is definitely something on my list. My family does well on this mostly but once in a while we all get too busy to cook and end up eating out and just give up because of the overwhelm. Also after coming back from a busy day of work, my brain is too tired to think what I want to make for dinner let alone what I want to make for tomorrow’s breakfast, lunch etc.

This is where the meal planning comes into picture. This is how I do it and hopefully it will help you busy folks out there.

I start on Friday. Sometimes during Friday lunch or at night while we are all winding down. I write down the menu for the next week. I do not include Saturday or Sunday. Although it will be a good idea to do that if you are one of those people who have older kids and have lots of activities over the weekends. We are not there yet.

I write down the days of the week in the columns Monday to Friday and then Breakfast, Lunch, Snack and Dinner in the rows. And I just write down meals in this grid. Now not only I know what I am going to make for dinner after coming for work (takes out the decision fatigue) but this will automatically help generate my grocery list that I will tackle on Saturday mornings. This way I am not wandering down the random isles thinking do I need this item or that item. This has numerous benefits. First of all it saves a lot of time, I do not make any impulse purchases so saves money as well and nothing goes waste.

Now the only thing left for me to do is to just cut or do some prep in advance for different meals over week. For e.g. if I am going to make roasted coli flower for Monday night then all I do is separate and cut the florets and pack them in zip bags. If I am going to make some lentils for later that week that need soaking, I do that and then next day I will cook it in my Instant Pot and put it in the fridge to use it later. BTW.. if you don’t own Instant Pot yet I highly recommend buying it, I am going to post some Instant pot recipes here soon. So watch put for that. Usually I do the prep on Sunday afternoons while listening to an audio book or watching some YouTube video.

That’s it. That is my whole meal prep. This way I am all sorted for the week and eat healthy all week. We do have a cheat meal on weekends. We do eat once a week out but that is not so bad. Although I am working on reducing that to once in 2 weeks and then gradually once a month and so on…

Let me know if you have any other tips or tricks that you want to share with me. I would love some. Or try out this and tell me if this helped you. Thanks…

Productivity

How to be more productive at work!!

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Productivity is so important in today’s world. Let’s face it, you being more productive at work means you are producing more results in less amount of time. And what company wouldn’t like that? But don’t forget it also means that you are more likely to get that promotion or that raise in the salary or that extra hour with your family or to do whatever that you want to do.
If you are reading this article, then you are obviously unable to get the desired output at work or at anything that you are trying to accomplish. Remember you are not alone. I remember the days I used to be like that. Getting overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that I had to get done both at work and at home. Today, I still struggle on some days as life is unpredictable and those unplanned tasks show up to give us unpleasant surprises. But I can say for sure that I have got a lot better at managing my time and at recognizing what is essential and what is not.

Here are few things that I do to be more productive at work: Continue reading How to be more productive at work!! →

Uncategorized

Why I started a blog?

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Hello Friends,

                                 My name is Shalaka Virkar. I am a wife, mother and software programmer. I started this blog to just connect with outside world and share what they know and also learn from others. Because that’s definitely what I had in mind.

There were several reasons why I wanted to start my own blog. We were recently blessed with a baby boy. His name is Arjun and he is the apple of my eye. I was on the maternity leave for a good 14 weeks but its a never enough I guess. Although it was an amazing, life changing experience. , I realized that being a mother is very demanding both physically and mentally. Before going on a maternity leave I had planned what I will do with my time. But soon realized that between changing diapers and breast feeding the baby I could not get anything done. I did not get any time to read books, could not exercise due to the surprise C-Section. Had terrible back ache. It was hard giving up on all the things that liked to do which I could not.

As days passed things changed, I started exercising again, started reading (still not as much as I should but I am trying ), started watching youtube videos for motivation and that’s when I stumbled upon a channel called “ Simple Programmer” by John Sonmez. I started following his channel and the blog. I noticed that he offered a course called How to Start A blog that boosts your career.

As a mother and a software programmer I think I have a lot to offer. How I learn new technologies quickly. As a working mom, you have a lot to do at home. But professionally you have to keep up with new technologies or development platforms/ frameworks as a software developer. How I balance between work and home. I think the is the best medium to teach and learn from others. And that’s what my blog is all about.

Since this is my first blog I cannot tell you how it  has helped me in my career I hope it does. But what I can tell you for sure is that it has given me a lot of confidence in pursuing my passion – Teaching. This is definitely going to give me that push in networking which I was always poor at.

And I sincearly hope that you guys will join me in this journey because without  your support and comments I will not succeed in my mission in life and that is to learn and keep sharing the knowledge.