This is a special 5-part series designed to help individuals who have been forced to transition from on-site work to working from home. During this series I will share my best practices of being effective while working from a home office. I have worked from a home office for over 30 years. There are essential habits you need to develop in the areas of office setup, discipline, time management, organization, and communication. During this difficult time, I want to help you master this part of your work life and aid in coping with this specific challenge brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Your new working from home reality is now underway. You’ve adjusted your home office to a work specific office, or you’ve found a dedicated space in your home and converted it as your job-related workspace. Now its time to talk about you. Your work habits. You need to commit to exercising intentional discipline so you can perform your work as well as, or better than you did at your employer’s location.
This part is on you.
In order to quickly become effective working from home, you need to do 3 things immediately. First, assess your current routines and understand how well they support your work. Second, understand how those routines will change in your work from home life. Which activities can stay the same and which will need to change or be replaced? Third, make decisions and take consistent actions to establish new routines that support your success in working from home.
Start this exercise with a sheet of paper. Turn it sideways. Make 3 columns and write these headers across the top: Old, New, Change. In the left margin use some time range. You can use hours of the workday, morning, afternoon, evening, whatever. Just use some time measurement that gives you a sense of the general sequence you follow each day.
Assess your Current Routines
Think about your current workday. What do you do between the time you wake up and the time you are no longer working, whenever that is? It might go something like this: Wake up. Drink coffee. Glance at e-mails, texts, news. Exercise. Eat breakfast. Shower and dress for work. Drive to work. Do work. Eat lunch. Do more work. Drive home. Stop at store. Arrive home.
It is very important that you think about your full day in this way. What are the blocks of time that make up your available time to work or think about work? What do you do to get ready to work, travel to and from work, or get yourself refreshed during your workday? I recognize that every day is different in some way. If you need to think about this by specific day of the week or otherwise distinguish between different workdays, go ahead and do that. The point here is that in order to be intentional about how you’ll conduct yourself while working from home, you need to understand how that is different from how you are used to working.
Then take another step. Assess the relative value of each of these blocks of time and each activity. How important are they to you? Is exercise a must for you to perform effectively each day? How do you dress for work? What role does your preparation and attire play in your mental approach to your work? What about your commute? Is it a chore, or is it an important respite for you to reflect on things, talk to people, or just zone out while you’re jamming to music? What are the pieces of your day that will be present or missing when you begin working from home? What will you do with those blocks of time?
Accept that your working from home life will be different. You are not simply doing the same work in a new place. You are changing the way you do your work.
Map your New Routine
Now that you’ve outlined your current routine and assigned value to your activities, take a step back and look at your new work week. To some degree, you’ve drifted, perhaps evolved into a work routine that works relatively well for you. Perhaps your employer prescribed 80% of that routine for you. Perhaps 100%. This is your opportunity. Your chance to design a work routine that optimizes your energy, focus and results. While the circumstances that placed you in this position are not what you would have asked for, you are here. Seize the opportunity to redesign your work life.
There will be some blocks of time you do not control. Conference calls, meetings, project work, deadlines. But you will have new discretion over other areas. That commuting time. What will you make of that time? What will your lunch break look like now?
In the second column of your paper, begin outlining your working from home workday. Leave gaps for any areas that no longer apply. Pencil in activities you may need to add. Do you have small children at home that will not be going to day care or school anymore? Try your best to sketch out the new routine understanding that you don’t have an exact picture of how things will play out for you.
There are 2 tendencies to be aware of here as you map your new workday. The first is to overestimate how much free space you’ll have in your schedule now that you’re working from home. As someone who has worked from a home office for most of my career, I can assure you it is less than you think. When you live in the same house as your work, it is easy to drift into a situation where you never turn off the shop lights.
The other tendency is to try to fill your schedule with “productive” activities. In other words, to increase the work and output you can produce. Be very careful here. Before you start filling those new gaps in your schedule, recognize that open spaces in your schedule are opportunities to catch your breath, reflect and gather insights, or to sharpen your saw by learning something new. In my schedule, I never allowed my day to be fully booked with meetings or calls. I always put blocks of time on my schedule that were just for me. Time to work on a project, do some strategic planning, or just think. This is your opportunity to give yourself this productivity gift.
Make Decisions about your New Routine
Now it is time to get into the driver’s seat. And I’m not talking about your commute. It is time to transport yourself into your newly productive and fulfilled self as a working from home person.
What will you decide to do with your new routine? Will you sleep longer? Will you exercise at the same time? If you gather energy during your commute in some way, how will you replace that energy now?
I used to be the most productive when I was on an airplane twice a week. Music in my ears. No interruptions. Just me and my laptop. I could really crank it out. Where do I find that productive space now? Be clear with yourself on these times of high value in your life. Make sure you are putting placeholders in your day so your transition to working from home doesn’t simply add 20 new hours to your work week.
In that third column completely redesign the spaces in your workday over which you have discretion. Make this new arrangement one that will work for you. Our new shared reality has the potential to affect us in many ways. On one extreme, not knowing if we will all remain healthy or be faced with serious illness, either individually or for those whom we care about, can be stressful. On the other hand, the fact that we are now in fuller control of our workday adds decision making responsibilities we may not have owned before. That can also be stressful, but ideally it will feel empowering.
Take control of your new schedule by deciding to use your new spaces in a way that supports your health, your productivity, and your personal growth.
A Final Word about Discipline
You’ve now made the broad-brush strokes of your new daily routine. This isn’t your calendar. We’ll talk about that in the next section when we examine your time management. But you now have a framework to decide how your daily commitments can fit your new working from home life.
But not so fast.
Make sure you are fully intentional about your new work life. Don’t just drift into it and hope everything will fall into place. It won’t. Bad habits will. Avoid these temptations that could undermine your best intentions:
- Don’t work in sweatpants. Follow your same routine about arriving to work groomed and dressed for success. That doesn’t mean wear a suit and tie. Just make sure your physical presentation is energy producing, not energy draining.
- If you get up to walk around between calls, don’t stop at the fridge or pantry on your way back to your desk. I speak from experience. Keep a small supply of fruits or nuts around to keep your blood sugar in a good place. Don’t start grabbing for snacks because they’re close by. Stay strong.
- If you’ve got gaps between calls, don’t stream that episode you missed from your favorite series. In addition to knocking you off focus, remember that your IT department keeps statistics on network usage.
- Locate your mute button. Wear it out. When you’re on a call with a group, engage it when you’re not talking. There is no doubt your kids or your barking dog will want to join the call at the wrong time.
- When work is done for the day, make it a hard stop. Working from your home effectively depends on setting boundaries about when work starts and when it stops. When you commuted to work, those boundaries were explicit. It is different now. Create those boundaries and stick to them.
Good habits are just those. Habits. They are best practices that stick to you and become part of your routine as a result of repetition. They are not accidental.
Get off to a great start in your working from home life by mastering discipline in your daily approach.
Previous: Working from Home – A COVID-19 Guide – Part 1: Office Setup
Next: Working from Home – A COVID-19 Guide – Part 3: Time Management
Be smart. Be safe. Be healthy. Be kind.
Lead well.
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