Working from Home, A Guide for Some Very Strange Times

So We Understand Each Other

First and foremost, I hope this post finds you and yours both healthy and safe. I wish you all the best of luck as we navigate through these unprecedented times. If you’re one who is fortunate enough to be healthy and able to work from home, I am glad for you.

There are millions of people who cannot.

Please know that this post is intended only to help those who have the luxury of learning how to do this work from home thing without losing their center, and that part of not losing one’s center- for me- involves a little light humor.

But I am by no means making light of the situation.

People are sick. People are suffering. People are dying. And that’s not even getting into the economic impacts.

I truly wish that everyone was able to read this blog with a light heart and perhaps benefit from what small nuggets of wisdom it might contain.

For those of you who cannot, for whatever reason, my heart goes out to you.

Overview

If you’re one of the more fortunate ones during this insane pandemic, you’ll be able to work from home. This is a totally new thing for many people, and so it’s important to be aware that it’s not just a matter of cracking open your laptop and digging in. There is a lot of weird nonsense that you can fall victim to if you’re not aware of it ahead of time, and this post is intended to be a guidebook to help you avoid those pitfalls.

And even if working from hold is old hat to you, you may find some tips in here that will help keep you grounded during a time where nearly every time you wake, you think, for just a moment, that maybe this is the morning you’ll realize that this has all been some insane dream.

So, have a read and see what you think. Mind you, I’m not a psychologist and nor do I play one on TV… err… Netflix. So anything in here that even smacks of psychology you should probably take with a grain of salt (or, perhaps, an entire salt lick… still available from Amazon, by the way! Act now!) But these things have worked well for me, so I hope they will be useful for you. Please feel free to share your own ideas as well. We’re all in this together.

Make a Point to Use Video, or at least Pick Up the Phone

You know all that stuff about not writing emails when you’re angry? And how it’s best to handle a tough situation in the morning, after you’ve had some time to unwind? Or how you’ll opt have a tough conversation in person to avoid unexpected unpleasantness, or be able to respond to the unpleasantness in real time?

Well, all of these things come from the very real nature of us being social creatures that have evolved to interact in-person (salt lick warning!), but that have had our evolutionary line thrown into a tail-spin because we’ve introduced technologies that take away many of the key elements of that face to face interaction that we rely so heavily on.

It’s all too easily to slide into this habit of responding to emails, text messages, Slacking, etc. But don’t. Make a distinct point to use the video conferencing capabilities and turn on that camera. Encourage others to do the same. We’re going to get essentially no face to face interaction with our coworkers during these times, and it’s going to make it all harder, and- frankly- lonelier. Make the effort to engage in the most personal way you possibly can, and everyone will benefit.

The Family, Our House-Bound, Slightly Crazed Enemies of Productivity

Odds are good that most people in your family do not understand that when you are working from home… you are working from home. Toss in the fact that many of your family members have likely not left the house for the last two to three weeks, are running out of things to do and shows on Netflix, and are pretty much looking for any untapped distraction they can get involved in. So, your family is likely going to be cracking open your door on a semi-regular basis and seeing what you’re up to, and what they might be able to drag you into.

It’s normal.

Even during normal times.

It took me many very unpleasant months to get this across to my wife way back when in the calmer times known as the Dot-Com Bust of the early 2000s.

“Chris, can you throw down a blanket?”

“No. I’m working.”

“It will take you all of two minutes, versus me having to come upstairs to get it.”

“Yes… but what would you do if I was in the office?”

“Well, then I’d have to get it myself. But you’re not in the office.”

“Well, that’s the funny thing, see? I actually am.”

(repeat 1,000 times)

And if a grown adult has a hard time grasping this, just imagine the kids. My fifteen-year-old saw me playing a video game at 6:44 in the evening a couple days ago- in the same space I had been working all day- and her inevitable conclusion was that I was clearly in my office playing Overwatch all day.

When my kids were like three, they were even more baffled, so if you have young children I particularly feel for you during these times. The best strategy I’ve found with this is mostly to be patient, smile a lot, give them a hug, make a big deal about “When you see the clock hit five, we can play!”, and lean on your spouse for some additional support in distracting them. The good news is that right now everyone is in this situation, so trust me that no one is going to freak out if suddenly your eight-year-old is part of the video conference call. In fact, they may enjoy the break… at least if it doesn’t totally derail the call.

And now, with everyone stuck at home all the time, they’re also all going a little bonkers, so even the relatively clear boundaries I have established over the years have begun to crack and crumble a little bit.

“The WiFi isn’t working!”

“I know it’s a touch slow at the moment, but it’s fine enough for now.”

“But I can’t play Overwatch!”

“I’ll fix it when I’m done working.”

(repeat 100 times)

And yes, there’s a lot of Overwatch going on these days. I’m trying my hand at Zarya. She’s fun.

Make the Change of Mode a Point in Time

The key when working from home is to have relatively hard breaks between when you’re working and when you’re not, and to make sure these breaks are both conscious and intentional.

For me, I basically sit down in the morning at my computer, look at the clock and say “Okay, it’s 7:17 AM. I am now working.” And then I begin working. Then I keep an eye on the clock and sometime around 5:30 I say, “Okay, I’m going to stop working at 6:00.” I usually wind up working until sometime past that, because… well… work.  But… I am watching the clock the whole time as if my wife is waiting for me to get home in time for our daughter’s concert. And at 6:24 I reach a breaking point and say to myself, “Okay, now I’m leaving work.”

Yes, I know it sounds silly, but it seriously works.

Also be sure to resist the urge to allow work time to bleed into personal time and vise-versa. Don’t “just make one more call”, or keep reading your email on your phone at the dinner table. Conversely, don’t spend half of your workday browsing Facebook or take a random break to watch some Netflix.  Keep each portion of your life contained and time-boxed.

Watch Your Schedule

You may have noticed that I put in a rather long day in my previous section. That wasn’t just a ploy to impress my current employer. That’s kind of the schedule I fell into last week without even realizing it. (And that was actually on a “better” day- we do I.T. services, where I work, and so we’re a lot busier than usual trying to make sure everyone else can work from home.)

Which brings me to my next point…

It’s very easy to work significantly more time when you’re at home. First, it tends to be free of the various distractions that are common in the office environment, so you can get a lot more done, which can be very rewarding.

But you’re also likely used to waking up in the morning and, from the moment you wake up, you’re essentially in work mode. You’re thinking about the day to come in the shower, strategizing about that meeting while making coffee, listening to a podcast on managing stress in the car, etc. We’re just sort of used to being “on” from the time we wake up, until sometime where we disengage mid-way on the car ride home.

But when you work from home, not only are you getting more done per hour, but you’re also jumping right into your computer and tucking in as soon as you have your coffee in hand. And with no commute to wrangle and a minimum of distractions, you can easily add two to three hours to your workday and not even realize it. But work enough of those sixty-hour weeks and you’re going to start to burn out, and that’s not doing anyone any favors.

It’s also super easy to not take breaks and just work all day long. Don’t do this. Remember when you’re at the office, occasionally someone will stop by to chat, or you’ll all run out for lunch, or you’ll wind up helping someone move a desk, restock the refrigerator with seltzers, or whatever.  Make a point to take breaks at home, too, even if it’s just leaning back and closing your eyes for fifteen minutes or taking a walk up and down the street a couple times.

Dedicated Workspace

If possible, set a place in your house that serves no other purpose than to be your workspace. This is where you “go to work” and this is the place you will “leave” at the end of the day. Many of us have mostly un-used rooms such as living and dining rooms. These can be great spaces to be your place to work, so set them up as much like your office as you reasonably can, up to and including a few random fidget squishy balls, or whatever else you might find in your typical work environment. Grab a card table and a potted plant if you have to, but make a space somewhere in the house that is entirely for work.

For those that cannot have a dedicated space, find a place where you can temporarily set up your workspace each day, and try to set that environment up at the beginning, and break it down at the end. Seriously use a cardboard box and pack up your office every day.

If you’re like me and you have a dedicated workspace that you use for both professional and personal needs, be sure to change the mode of that space. For example, in my case, even my monitors and keyboard are connected to both personal and home computers. I just have a switch and a docking station for the laptop. I lay out a bed on my desk for my cats so they won’t sleep on my keyboard, but during the day I won’t even let them in the room. At the end of the day, I make a point to undock my laptop, put it in my bag, and put my bag behind the chair in the family room- the same place I put it at the end of every normal workday.

The key is that you do not want the workspace to persist in the middle of your daily life “outside of work”. If your laptop sits on the kitchen table all day, you’re going to see those alerts, be tempted to open that email real quick, etc. Just its mere presence is going to make you think about that thing you must do when you start first thing tomorrow. Your brain will never fully have a chance to relax and unwind, and your stress will steadily increase.

Clean Your Workspace

Our homes are often cluttered, because life happens. This is fine and understandable, but sometimes your home gets cluttered in ways that you would never allow in a workplace, and so you must ensure that your workspace is just a little bit cleaner.

I make a point at the beginning and end of every day to just tidy up, put things back, throw things away, etc. This also helps you to have a specific breakpoint in your day, which is good, but you may additionally feel more productive during work, because you’re not stressed out about the pile of seltzer cans and the two soiled napkins sitting atop a plate full of crumbs, all of which would be perfectly fine while you’re sitting around playing Overwatch and watching your cat knock everything else off your desk.

Put Your Phone Away

Even during the best of times, our society has gotten a little too used to casually checking our work email at various odd times throughout the day and night. I’ve written an entire blog on the origins of all of that (not yet posted), but I won’t go into it much here other than to say… it’s all Blackberry’s fault.

I would advise all of us to make a point to resist this behavior even more now than I would normally. This is not to say that you cannot read your email now and again. Some of us have to. What I’m suggesting is that you make sure that it is a conscious choice and not a casual behavior.

Every time you grab your phone and are about to look at your mail, stop for a moment and ask yourself if you’re doing it for a specific reason, or just because you’re still for a moment, and it was a compulsion. If it was the latter, consider putting your phone right back down again and go find something better to do with your time.

That email will still be there tomorrow morning.

You can deal with it then.

Don’t Constantly Watch the News

I am a Bostonian. I watched as planes from Logan International Airport crashed into the twin towers in New York City. And I was less than a mile from the Boston Marathon Bombing when it happened… and then I spent the next several days working from home and glued to the news feeds as they chased down the culprits.

Awareness of world events is important, particularly in times like these, but constant awareness is not good for you. (salt lick warning!)

Certainly, make a point to check in on the news a few times a day, but please do not leave CNN (or anything else) running constantly in the background. Nearly every single story in the media right now, including “This American Life” and “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!” is going to be focused on COVID19 right now. Trust me when I say you need a break from reality for a bit.

Get Dressed

People working from home are often tempted to not take a shower, bypass shaving, and wear little more than a loin cloth and a potato sack when working from home. I knew one guy that bragged about wearing the same underwear all week. (Ew.) This is such a bad idea. (Not just the underwear thing.) Firstly, the behavior contributes to your work and home lives bleeding into each other, which is problematic. But second, getting dressed and presentable has a psychological effect on your work. (salt lick!)

If you’re really new to all this working from home craziness, you may actually want to wear exactly what you would wear when going to the office, and then changing back into your comfy clothes when you “leave work”. This may sound a little silly, but you’d be surprised at how effective it is.

However, for most of us, making the point to dress presentably is probably good enough. No need to put extra miles on those dress pants if you don’t absolutely need to, and if you’re like me and you have as many animals in the house as you have people, it avoids the occasional mishap with a set of claws tearing those expensive pantaloons. And denim is much better armor to protect the skin from a suddenly startled eighteen-pound cat that saw shredding your legs as a secondary concern to panic-avoiding the vacuum cleaner that your wife just turned on in the hallway.

Take Small Advantages Where You Find Them

Lovely day and the birds are singing? Great. Open the window. Hell, work from the back porch if you can. Take a walk. Grab lunch from your favorite take-out place. Kick up your legs and take a brief nap if the mood strikes you. In past years, I made a point to take a mid-day bike ride for an hour just to get away and get some fresh air. Obviously every job has different requirements, and you’ll need to let your coworkers know when you’re going to evaporate for a bit, but these are some of the great things about being able to work from home, even- and perhaps particularly- during these freakishly weird times.

Be Patient, Take a Breath, Take Stock

Even during normal times, it’s easy to get frustrated with people who you do not see face-to-face. Toss in that everyone is weirded out and stressed by this semi post-apocalyptic world we’ve suddenly been thrust into.

Basically, everyone is just a little on edge.

And a great many people are a lot on edge.

Some people have all but cracked.

People are grouchy, irritable, afraid, frustrated, tired and lonely.

Some people are worried about loved ones.

Some people are grieving.

So not everyone is going to behave in the most ideal way right about now.

And the very best thing you can do is to keep that in mind, try to take a deep breath when someone upsets or frustrates you, and see if you can just move on. Any small piece of negative energy that any one of us can avoid feeding back into the system is one small way we can majorly contribute to everyone’s relative sanity during this very very weird time.

And as I sit here thinking about what the actual “end times” might be like, and wondering how bad this situation is going to get, some things occur to me… I am alive and well. My family is sleeping in. I’m sitting here on a Sunday morning, drinking my coffee, listening to birds singing outside my open window. I am starting to think about what I might want for lunch, and writing this blog post.

Things for me could certainly be worse. And knowing that, taking a deep breath of that spring air, helps me ground myself just a bit more, which helps me to not react to those who are clearly having a harder time with this situation than I am at the moment.

If such is the case for you as well, take stock of that. Take your deep breath and do your best to be patient with those around you who may be in a worse situation, or not handling things quite as well for whatever reason.

We’ll get through this. We’ll get through it together.

Good luck and good health.