Working from Home

Intention

The challenge to working from home is to find limits so that you don’t go stir crazy, or overwork yourself to the point of burn out. With a bit of intention work from home can be a rewarding experience.

The following thoughts were put together in cooperation with Emily Ruth and a friend who has worked from home the majority of his career.

Organizing

If you don’t have an organizational system, electronic or physical, get one now. It will save you ton of headaches.

Keep track of what you did during the day. It's easy to lose track.

If you know there's a part of the day where you are particularly productive, try to do any more technical or challenging work then.

I learned that I actually work best in the morning, so would save all of my writing and applying for the morning and do less involving tasks in the afternoon. – ER

Over time, learn your own productivity curves and the best times for certain types of work. For me: Visual/Conceptual whiteboarding is best early in the day; High Accuracy engineering/mathematics/formulas/extrapolations are best in the mid-day; monotonous tedious crap, near the end of the day. – Friend

There are bound to be unusual interruptions, so, find a way to "park" your work such that you can come back to it later and resume right where you left off.

Scheduling

Stick to a schedule!!

Practice self-care intentionally and aggressively. See more below.

Decide on a definite start time and a definite end time to your day, just like you would be doing at the office. You have to have structure to your day (see note on time passage later.)

Have a plan for your day as soon as you get up

Plan in breaks to get up, walk around, and try to get some fresh air if possible - at least ten minutes every hour.

Plan your social media interactions. They are liable to be a time suck, so planning discrete times for them will put guard rails around that time.

At the end of your work day, fully stop working. It will be tempting to just keep going, but that's a good way to burn out quickly (yes, that point was worth repeating.)

Time passes differently if you are not used to working from home. It will either drag or zip past, depending on how you feel about what you are doing. Without external stimuli to give you clues, it's easy to lose track of time. Keep an eye on the clock until you get a feel for the time passage in your own particular situation. Don't obsess on the clock. Just keep an eye on it.

Self Care

Make sure to actually get up, get dressed, and go work somewhere in your apartment or house. Don’t just work from bed in your pajamas, so that you have distinct separation between “working” and “living.”

Eat on a schedule, drink water on a schedule, exercise on a schedule.

Take a real Lunch Break IN A DIFFERENT ROOM focusing your eyes at a different distance.
If it's not part of your normal job or you live alone, find a way of interacting with human beings at least once a day.

While face to face interactions are best, Messaging, Chat, Virtual Meeting spaces are all good alternatives in these times.

Plan on interacting with your co-workers regularly to make sure you stay on top of developments. Staying in touch with your manager/supervisor and co-workers will help keep you on top of your work world.

Practice self-care with your consumption of the news. It can be really tempting to either avoid the news completely or obsessively consume it. There's a happy medium somewhere in the middle. Just breathe through the anxiety.

Make sure to keep yourself safe, but also check in on the people around you! We've got to look out for each other, even if only virtually.