Working From Home

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, many employers are switching to a remote working model. At first, working from home seems like a dream come true: sleep in, work in your underwear, and catch up on your Netflix backlog; all while reaping a paycheck. Then the first week ends and you realize you’ve been operating at a fraction of your regular capacity. But there’s hope for you yet, you lazy slob. “Of these I am the foremost.” (1 Tm 1:15)

I’ve been working from home for the past six years, and I’ve got three tips that have helped me stay focused and efficient. It took me more time than I’d like to admit to figure some of these out, so learn from my mistakes and avoid the traps that remote working presents.

Set up a dedicated workspace

This is the first and most essential piece of advice I can give. There’s a temptation to say “I can take that early conference call from the bed” or take the laptop to the couch and plop down in front of the TV. The problem is that you’re letting your work creep into the spaces you need for rest and relaxation. Let this become a habit, and you’ll have an increasingly hard time establishing boundaries between work and the rest of your life.

Set up a table or desk that will only be used for work. If you have to share that space with others, make it a co-working area. If you’re limited to your bedroom, then at least make sure your work desk is partitioned from the rest of the room. This will go a long way in limiting distractions and getting into a working mindset.

Establish a routine

Remote working affords you a ton of flexibility in your schedule. Need to go to the doctor? No problem, just make up the time at the end of the day. At one point I got too close to the sun, and this benefit ended up twisting my daily schedule into a pair of shackles. I’d take extra-long lunch breaks to eat, run errands, and get a workout in midday. Because I was working from home, I knew I had the ability to work as late as I needed to complete the day’s tasks.

This was great, until I realized I was finishing up around twelve hours after I began working in the morning. Of course, I wasn’t working all twelve of those hours, but being in “work-mode” for that long quickly became exhausting. Once I began working on a timeline that loosely resembled regular office hours, I found that I was much more productive and my mental health was much better.

Take short, frequent breaks

In a normal working environment, the workday is punctuated with various diversions. When you’re working from home, striking up a conversation on the way back from the bathroom is much less likely. You can spend hours at a time without moving from your seat. But unless you’re really in “the zone,” you might just be spinning your wheels, looking over the same task without making any tangible progress.

It’s important to give yourself the chance to be distracted, to relax, or to just be bored from time to time throughout the day. Go spend a few minutes playing with your dog (or cat, if you’re a bad person), chat with a housemate, or read something non work-related. This will give you the chance to come back to the task at hand with a different perspective and renewed energy.

I hope this excursion from pondering the mysteries of Middle-earth was helpful to you, dear reader. The uncertainty of how long this quarantine will last hangs over all of our heads. But far from being prisoners, perhaps we are exactly where we are meant to be at this present moment.

Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.

The Hobbit, J.R.R Tolkien