Three weeks ago, hardly any of us were aware of COVID-19. Toilet paper was easy to find. We didn’t sing songs while washing our hands.
And then someone told you that you’d be working from home for the foreseeable future. This may have been an exciting thing to hear, I mean who doesn’t want to wear pajamas and bunny slippers to work? Or perhaps you were deliriously thinking about all the time you would save by not commuting. Maybe, like me, you are pretty introverted and you couldn’t wait to not have to talk about the weather, or the game, or the show that just came out on Netflix.
Or perhaps you realized that your spouse or your roommate would be working from home, too. And your kids would be home from school. And that as much as the folks at the office made you crazy, at least it was a different group of people making you crazy. Or maybe you are an extrovert and this feels like the end of the world.
I’ve been working from home for over a decade and I have felt and/or thought all of these things (except that extrovert one….). And as I settled into what felt like a semi-typical Tuesday for me, I realized that many of you are settling into something completely new.
I’m hoping that I can help with a little bit of that.
None of us do this the same way
I know a bunch of work from home/isolation folks and none of us do this the same way. Everything I do for me is opinionated, and in many ways works for me, and potentially only me. At the same time, I’ve worked through a bunch of this for myself, and with others, and I know a small gang of people I can poll if we get some really interesting questions that come up. So, I think I can share a few things that may help.
And, honestly, a lot of this is about principles. You and I may work something out in different ways, but the underlying principle is the same. To that end, here are a few things I’d start looking out for now, if I were just starting this adventure today.
Watch The Edges
You’d have to be pretty old (like, me old) to remember the old Reese’s peanut butter cup commercials. “You got chocolate in my peanut butter!”
Believe it or not, this is what you will be experiencing every day – except it won’t be delicious candy, but your WORK and your HOME LIFE that are getting mixed together.
One of the things you will need to be aware of is how comfortable you are with blending these two things. I have a very small handful of friends who like the full on Peanut Butter Cup approach … mix it all together! It’s all awesome.
If that’s you, great! For me, and the majority of my friends, that approach is not sustainable. When I let Work and Life blend together, I find myself worrying about work when I am trying to enjoy a movie with my wife, and wondering about that movie when I should be focused on work. So I am more of a “do not cross the streams” kind of guy. If I am working, there is only Work. If I am not working, there is everything else.
Now, don’t get me wrong, one of the great advantages of working from home is that you can, in fact, switch the laundry between sales calls. Or take a nap (sorry, parents… probably not you). My point is, you may want to be decisive about that – “I am taking a break. I am ‘punching out’ to take care of some laundry, pet my dog, and have some coffee with my wife.” Then go do those things.
The thing is, neither of these areas of your life want to be limited and they will ALWAYS try to encroach on each other. Overworking and/or underworking are both very real possibilities. So, be mindful. I have some thoughts on how I do it that I will share very soon, but for now, just start figuring out where you are on the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup to Egon from Ghostbusters spectrum. Then you can start making plans and changes to make that work.
Think About Rituals
I’m not trying to be creepy here, but I have found that I often want to go into auto-pilot as often as possible. We all do this, all day long. You get to work, you hang up your coat, open your bag, put your keys in the drawer, and head to the break room for your first cup of coffee. You don’t think about it. You just do it.
You don’t have any rituals for this, but you will soon. I would encourage you to start deciding what those rituals are intentionally before they get set unintentionally. Here’s a ritual that I had that didn’t work out so great:
- Get a cup of coffee.
- Settle in my chair.
- Open my email and scan for any big emergencies.
- Open Facebook “to check on the news”.
Here’s what I found out about me: I am incapable of “just checking Facebook”. If I open that site, I lose 10 minutes minimum. Same for YouTube. Same for Twitter.
This isn’t necessarily a BAD thing, but when it was part of my “start my day” ritual it meant that I sat down to get to work at 9, and actually got to work around 10:30. And when I start like that, I tend to continue like that.
So, I made checking in with Facebook friends a part of my “get ready for work routine” (bear with me) … rather than getting comfortable with a whole day ahead of me when I open Facebook, I tend to check in on social media about 15-20 minutes before I want to be at work. It looks like this:
- finish breakfast
- sit at the kitchen table with my coffee and notebook
- jot down some ideas for the day
- check the clock
- Facebook/YouTube/Twitter whatever for 15 or so minutes until it’s time to get to work.
Then I start my get to work ritual
- reheat the coffee (if there is any left in the pot)
- settle in my office
- spend 10-15 minutes planning my day
- open my inboxes, adjusting the plan if needed
- get to work on the first big thing (or the most urgent emergency)
It’s a small thing, but just a little tweak like that totally changed my day.
Get Honest With Yourself
You are going to lie to yourself a LOT.
You might tell yourself that you will absolutely stop working at 5. (And check your email at 6, and then just do this one quick thing…)
You might say to yourself “I need something in the background for noise. It’s too quiet” and rather than put on some instrumental music, you’ll put on Netflix, but “it’s OK because I am SO familiar with this movie”
You might tell yourself you’ll take a 2 hour nap and make up the hours after dinner, and take a 3 hour nap and watch a movie that night.
The lies we tell ourselves around working from home tend to fall in two categories:
Have Some Compassion
Seriously. There is a virus going around. We’re all locked in our houses. Everything is closed.
This might be a difficult transition.
Take it a day at a time and maybe try approaching this like a series of experiments – today I am trying Strategy A and Schedule Q. If those go horribly, I can evaluate and try something new tomorrow.
You are looking to find ways to make this work, and that can take a little time. Try to make today a little better than yesterday, and forgive yourself if you don’t. This is a marathon.
