If you’re struggling with these things, you’re not alone.
By Kate Shipley Richey
This week’s Work From Home How-To is a revision of a previous post in our Work From Home Series, where we share some of our favorite things about working from home and have the opportunity to connect with you on a more personal level. This post originally appeared as “The Moving How-To” on October 1st, 2019. It has been edited to reflect some of the most important parts of adjusting to a remote work situation during the COVID-19 crisis.
Working from home is the best. I thought it was when I first wrote this post in October of 2019, and I still think it is. Unless you were never expecting to work from home and are neither prepared nor particularly excited about the prospect. Maybe you’re a social person and are worried you’ll miss human interaction (aren’t we all, right now?). Maybe your home is less than ideal for productive working—maybe you don’t have an office, or, if you do, maybe it’s filled with pets, kids, partners, roommates, or a spouse.
When that happens, it’s not just about moving your computer from an office to your house or taking calls on your cell instead of your office phone. The situation becomes more about creating the work environment you need with the space and materials you have available. It’s also about adjusting to a routine that is completely new, filled with new distractions you’ll have to conquer. Not all of us will love working from home (if we’re lucky enough to have that option), but I’m editing and re-posting my favorite pieces of remote-work advice to help you get through this transition.
1. Settle in & Adjust to Your Space
When that happens, it’s not just about moving your computer from an office to your house or taking calls on your cell instead of your office phone. The situation becomes more about creating the work environment you need with the space and materials you have available. It’s also about adjusting to a routine that is completely new, filled with new distractions you’ll have to conquer. Not all of us will love working from home (if we’re lucky enough to have that option), but I’m editing and re-posting my favorite pieces of remote-work advice to help you get through this transition.
With any new transition, it can be important to take a few moments to prepare and settle into the situation. This might include creating a designated workspace for yourself or setting boundaries with your roommate, partner, children, or pets. When I first adjusted to remote working, it was important to me to try out working in different spaces—at the kitchen counter, on the couch, in the spare room—to see what I liked best and where I was most productive. For a while I switched back and forth from room to room, even in the same day. Eventually, I learned that I work best with set hours, from a set space with a desk, computer monitor, and my diplomas reminding me of my purpose. (I find myself having to settle in all over again now that I share my work-from-home life with my husband, which requires us to share spaces I had previously claimed as mine.) It may take time for you, too, so even if you’ve been working from home for a few weeks, now, don’t worry if you don’t feel 100 percent adjusted, yet.
2. Get (Re)Acquainted with Your Home
The same way you’ve already gotten used to the sounds that go “bump” in the middle of the night in your home, when you’re working from home, you’ll want to know what sounds to expect at 2 PM on a Tuesday that you may never have heard because you were at the office. Can you hear your neighbor’s garage door when she takes her dog to the dog park every morning? Does the garbage crew make their rounds right in the middle of your conference calls? Did you set up your office in a room that gets way too hot? Learning the ins and outs of your home from a working perspective will help you create a remote routine that’s best for you.
3. Adjust Your Timing
One of the biggest things I had to learn about working from home is that tasks and projects don’t take as long when you’re out of an office setting. I found myself flying through my work and then twiddling my thumbs, feeling as if I wasn’t working hard enough, sitting at my desk until 5 PM even though I had completed my daily jobs. Being able to reorient your mindset from an hours-spent-at-work to a quality-project-done way of thinking will help you begin measuring the quality of your work, rather than the amount of time spent at work. Once you cut out all the coffee breaks, cubicle conversations, and water cooler talk, you may find that you complete tasks much faster than you did previously. I learned pretty quickly how efficient I could be and how inefficient I had been. This was the most difficult adjustment I had to make, and I used the following questions to help me—maybe they’ll help you, too:
Did I complete everything that needed to be done today?
Did I produce quality work today?
(If the answers are yes, don’t worry so much about the clock.)
4. Measure Your Media Consumption
When I started working from home (and stopped commuting to work), I stopped listening to the car radio, which had previously been a source of local and national news. During my transition period, I swung wildly from listening to no news, at all, to listening to news and media all the time—way too much. Particularly during the COVID-19 crisis, it will be important to monitor your media intake to find an allotment that is just right for you. Working from home can allow you to listen to news channels, talk radio, or podcasts all day long, but take time to evaluate how that affects not only your work but your mood. The same might be true if you eliminate too much media. Finding a balance between feeling overwhelmed and out-of-the-loop will help you manage some of the freedom that working from home can provide.
5. Go Outside and Talk to People
The original version of this post encouraged remote workers like me to go outside, meet new people, and create a community to support them, which is definitely not the best advice to be giving in a pandemic crisis. However, creating a community of support is still (and probably always will be) an important part of adjusting to a new transition. Just because many of us are now working alone doesn’t mean we are alone, and connecting with our friends and loved ones (about topics other than work) is an important part of feeling like our world is bigger than the home we may feel confined to. Connecting with friends and family isn’t necessarily a work-tip, but it will make your home feel less like solitary confinement, and it may help you build a community of remote workers, which will make your workday easier in the long run.
I have said and continue to say that working from home is the best, but it does take time to adjust, and some people may not like it, at all. In addition to the stress of a regular working transition, the crisis that has converted so many of us into remote workers lends additional anxiety and worry to the situation. If you’re feeling uncomfortable, unhappy, or chaotic in your transition to a work-from-home lifestyle, it’s totally normal. During this time, it’s practically expected. I hope you find some of this advice helpful or calming as we all adjust to this new-normal. Here at Plaid, we hope that all of us can return to our offices, workspaces, and communities as soon as possible. Until then, we’ll adjust to this work-from-home lifestyle together.