Working from Home - Five Lessons I've learned

Judging from the analytics, my last list article about working from home did pretty well, so I guess I’ll take a page from the traditional media playbook and squeeze the life out of this whole work from home subject until it is nothing but a shrivelled and dying husk. Okay, that got dark a bit too quickly for my taste. Seriously though, there’s still a ton of stuff to write about when it comes to my current exile to the home office, so I might as well make use of that stuff. Anyway, over this last year almost that I’ve been working from home, I’ve come to realise quite a few things about the reality of this situation, given that we’re probably going to be stuck in our home offices for quite some time to come. Now, just to be clear, these are my personal thoughts and observations and your views may, and likely will, vary. So why not share your takes on these in the comments below?

Set up your Workspace

To start off, let’s get physical. No, not like that, please, put that thing back on!!! While talking about desk setups feels like going for low-hanging fruit, which is why I keep coming back to it, there is a method to this madness. Having one dedicated space for your work helps enforce a much-needed separation of your work and private life. Even if you don’t have a dedicated room in your place to use as a home office, and let’s be real, who has, especially in Ireland?, setting up a dedicated desk keeps much of the rest of the flat or house clear of work, which will do wonders for your efficiency. 

Then, there’s the whole aspect of ergonomics. While working on your kitchen table might be a quick and dirty solution, it will do a right number on your back, neck and shoulders. You’ll likely be spending eight hours or more working, so having a desk and office chair set at the right height is going to be an absolute life-saver! The same goes for a decent screen. Now honestly, I think that is something that your employer should have provided you with anyway when you moved to working from home. If not, you should definitely think about getting one, even an affordable 23” monitor will be a lot more comfortable to work on than a built-in laptop screen. Believe me, your neck and shoulders will thank you for it!

Structure your Day

When you’re working from home, the temptation to take things easy is always there. But make no mistake, giving in to that temptation and just, say, working from your bed all day will not only have a pretty significant impact on your performance at work, it will also blur the all-important border between work and your private life, something I’ll touch on in more detail later. Therefore, it is important to have a clear structure to your day. Personally, I’ve stuck to my usual pre-work routine ever since working from home was implemented in my job, though I do take advantage of the lack of a commute to sleep in a little more. Hey, I’m only human!

On a more serious note, things like getting up at the same time each day, going through the usual morning routine and sitting down to work at the same time goes a long way of getting your mind into work mode. I find that on days when I oversleep (I hope my boss doesn’t read this!) and rush straight to the laptop, I have a lot more trouble concentrating and getting “into the groove” at work. So don’t skip those morning rituals! Equally, make sure you have regular breaks throughout the day. Despite what your boss may tell you, you’re not a machine and you need those regular breaks to recharge. So take them, and make sure you get away from the laptop during this breaks. Go to the kitchen and make a coffee, tea or something else, head to the balcony or terrace for a smoke, or lay down on the couch for a quick nap, but move away from that work computer!

The same goes for your lunch break. Make sure to take that in its full length, maybe take a walk or cook something for yourself. The latter is something I try to do every single workday, as it not only takes my mind away from work  but also gives me something to look forward to. Taking your lunch break at or around the same time every work day also provides your mind with a clear break in the day and a signal that you’ve made it to the half-way point and are closing in to the end of the day. Just be ready for that mid-afternoon slump that WILL hit you no matter what. Finally, just as you should have a fixed starting time for the day, you should also have a fixed closing time when you finish what you’re working on and close the laptop for the night. It’s always tempting to stay a bit longer to just answer that one last pesky email or other task, I’ve done it myself before, but this does dig into your time off, the time you have to recharge, and in the current situation, this recharge period is more important than ever!

Set Borders

It’s a sad day when an open-borders freak like me starts arguing for borders! But seriously, cheap political jokes aside, when your office is right in your home, setting borders is more important than ever. Work, when left unchecked, has a tendency to expand until it fills out every single moment of your day, which is something you don’t want at a time when your mind is already in a permanent state of emergency. I speak from experience when I say that getting burned-out is not fun at all. I already touched on the importance for a clear structure in your day above. If done properly, sticking to a daily schedule will go a long way towards providing a clear delineation between your work and your private life. Of course, there will likely be emails that come in after work, something you’re likely to notice if you either have a work phone or have your work email set up on your private phone. Thankfully, both Outlook and Teams allow email notifications to be turned off during after work hours, something that I’ve set up on my phone and I highly recommend you do on yours as well.

On that same note, I recommend that you set a certain time aside every day for taking care of your mental health. Ever since the start of the pandemic, we’re effectively in a permanent mental state of emergency, something the human mind, adaptable and resilient as it may be, is not designed to handle. As such, having a certain time every day that is reserved solely for looking after your mind, and guarding that like a particularly valuable treasure, should be your highest priority. Personally, I use an app called Calm on my phone for a ten-minute guided meditation session every day, with additional sessions if I’m in a bad place or just having a bad day. Other apps, such Headspace, are also available, and I highly recommend checking them out.

I live alone, a luxury that not many people have these days, a sad indictment of modern times in its own right. Whether you’re living in a house share or with your family,  both can have a significant impact on your work. This makes it imperative that whoever you live with understands that when you’re working you’re not available for other things. Ideally, closing the door of your room or office should be enough, but if that isn’t possible, you should seriously consider investing in a proper set of noise-cancelling headphones to really drown out the surroundings. As I mentioned before, I live alone and as such, my experience in this particular field is limited. So if you have any suggestions about keeping flatmates or family members in check, let me know in the comments. Just keep it legal 😉

What I do have experiences with are distractions that can sneak into your work day, even when you’re living alone and believe me, they are legion! Whether it’s that pile of laundry that needs to be sorted, the dishwasher that is finished and needs to be emptied, or just the temptation of quickly checking social media on your phone, there are a million things that can, and do, sneak up on you while you work. Granted, some things may actually require immediate attention, such as me sketching out the rough ideas for this post in OneNote, but for most, it makes sense to wait until you’re taking one of your regular breaks anyway. Now it’s of course a different story if Teams has gone quiet and tumbleweeds are blowing through your Outlook inbox, but when you actually have work on your “desk”, that needs to take priority.

Communicate!

I’m not going to lie, that is a field that I personally struggle with. This doesn’t change the fact that regular communications amongst your team at work are ever more crucial these days. Now, this means actual two-way communications. The stuff I hear from some of my friends, of management simply sending scores of emails with instructions every single day, isn’t something I’d consider communication. Any manager worth their salt should strive to enable and sustain a true dialogue both with his team members and amongst the team themselves. Whether that’s regular check-in calls, ongoing threads in tools like Slack or Teams, or other similar methods. This is actually something that should have been going on even in the “olden days” before the advent of the current pandemic, however with everyone being cooped up in their won four walls day in and day out, this has become more and more important, and should be the highest priority for anyone in a leadership position.

On the same note, it is important that this dialogue provides ample space to discuss issues with mental health. As someone who’s been battling those demons for quite some time, being able to discuss this particular issue with my manager makes this whole daunting fight a bit more bearable. Of course, discussing this with someone who may not know just how to handle these discussions may not only be unhelpful for both parties, it could actually have detrimental effects on the untrained party in that conversation. As such, part of any communications plan for a team should include comprehensive training for managers on just how to deal or even recognize people struggling with their own mental health. 

Have some Fun along the way!

Yep, you read that right. Just because you need to do someone else’s bidding for a good chunk of your day in order to be able to afford what should be basic and universal human rights, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a bit of a laugh along the way! Human minds cannot live in a state of perpetual crisis without suffering damage and as such, having regular breaks from the current absurd situation, as well as the monotony of work, are crucial. In a way, this circles back to the points I made earlier about communication, and any in-team communications should have some space for non-work talk, jokes, memes and what not. As I like to say, life is far too serious to be taken seriously.

On that same note, regular social events can really help with that. Now I’m not much of a pub goer, but for a lot of people here in Ireland, having a pint and a bit of craic was a staple of their social life. Obviously, the pandemic put paid to that for the time being. The loss of this social aspect can, and should be counteracted by dedicated social events at work. Whether these are organised on a team level or on a site level is something that every company and/or manager should decide for themselves, but these events should become a regular fixture, at least until more traditional social events make a comeback.

Even when the current restrictions are eventually released, it is highly unlikely that employers, at least the responsible ones, will return return to a status quo ante that existed before the pandemic and the associated lockdowns. Therefore, unless you’re stuck with an exploitative outsourcing company, or any employer in Germany for that matter, a certain amount of remote working will become a staple of work life. As such, the lessons that we’re being forced to learn during this pandemic will likely stand us in good stead for the future and go a long way towards creating a more resilient and efficient working environment.