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.
You’re off to a good start in becoming an effective working from home person. You’ve done the physical work of setting up your dedicated workspace. You’ve assessed your overall daily routine and adjusted that so you can sustain your personal energy and master your new work reality. Now it is time to get a bit more granular. It is time to master your calendar and the decisions you make about time management.
Many years ago, I used a paper planner book for my daily calendar. I tried them all. Day-Timer. Day Runner. FranklinCovey. Each of them worked for me for the most part. They seem archaic today. But these paper systems had one intrinsic advantage compared to today’s electronic calendars.
They forced me to think.
Today’s electronic calendars on our laptops and smart phones are great at scheduling every available minute in our schedules. You can schedule a meeting that ends the second another meeting is set to begin. How efficient can you get? But the drawback is that other people can schedule your time. Right onto your calendar. You get an e-mail invitation to a meeting. It is on your calendar. You have tentatively accepted that invitation. Now it is up to you to come up with a good reason why you can’t make it. We’ve gotten so conditioned by this electronic feature, that we’ve passively become controlled by it. We assume all of those invitations should be accepted by default.
The paper planner was different. I controlled it. I wrote my appointments into that book. Nobody else picked up my book, looked at my calendar, and wrote appointments in it for me. In fact, nobody touched that book. It was low tech. But it was high intention. It was a planner. It required planning.
As you take greater control over your work location, your work routines, and the time commitments you make, remember one important thing. You have a new opportunity to take greater control when it comes to your time management. Start by focusing on three areas.
Scheduling Calls and Meetings
You’re not going back to a paper planner. But you can take this opportunity to think and act differently about your time commitments. Block off sections of time on your calendar that are not available for others to book for you. I’ve always considered it a best practice to schedule myself for dedicated project work, or reading, or planning, or thinking. These blocks of time are not available for anything else, or for anyone else to book your time on your behalf. It is the equivalent of preventing anyone from picking up your paper planner and writing an appointment in it.
While that automated scheduling capability still exists and working from home in the current crisis hasn’t prevented this practice, one thing has changed. Your mindset. You are now in a different mental place. You are thinking more clearly about being intentional about the things you do. About the groceries you buy, the way you wash your hands, and how you interact with others. Carry that new assertiveness over to the way you make yourself available for work commitments as well. Commit to the most important things. Don’t drift into the trap of getting pulled into low priority work just because others have visibility to your calendar’s open spaces.
Be intentional about your time and play a little time management defense now that you are taking more control of your work habits.
Increase your Effectiveness in your Meetings
Since meetings are often scheduled back to back to back these days, an unfortunate phenomenon occurs. The last 10 minutes of the current meeting and the first 10 minutes of next meeting are usually wasted time. People end meetings by packing up to head across campus and stumble into meetings they couldn’t get to on time. That effectively reduces the meeting time by 20 minutes. So now we have a 40-minute meeting. But wait. There is an inevitable occurrence of the person who needs to be refreshed on what they missed by being late, or the topics that get discussed twice for the same reason. Now we are effectively down to a 30-minute meeting. Or are we? For the leader, the last 10 minutes that were intended to align on next steps are corrupted by commotion. Now that leader must spend that 10 minutes outside the meeting to decide on next steps, and additional time and energy to communicate that to the group after the meeting.
For a 1-hour meeting, we end up spending almost that same amount of time in duplicate work because the scheduled meeting was so inefficient.
There is a new opportunity here. In a traditional onsite meeting, even if some people are phoning in, you are subject to this inefficiency. If just a few people are physically onsite, they still must come from and go to other meetings. I’ve been on countless conference calls when you can hear that stampede beginning in the conference room. Check out time.
In our new reality, everyone is calling in. Nobody is onsite. Recognize this. Be prompt. Coming and going. Challenge your colleagues to be prompt and efficient in their meeting attendance and participation. Call on participants to come prepared to begin the meeting work in the first 2 minutes, not by minute 15. And get everyone crisply focused on next steps in the last 10 minutes, so the leader doesn’t have to chase everyone down for them after the meeting.
There is a level of empathy that everyone needs to carry here. We’re all in a new reality. This is a very simple contribution all can make to make our work lives as positive and productive as we can in our new situation.
Set Hard Stops and Build Boundaries
You’ve heard people say it. “I have a hard stop at the top of the hour.” That is code for letting everyone know that the team’s ability to end meetings on time and respect everyone else’s commitments is atrocious. Maybe the person that articulates this gets a side eye as if they’re not a perfect team player. I don’t buy that. Organizations that don’t demonstrate respect for the time of their people create cultures that don’t respect their people. Period.
Begin treating every end time of your meetings, your personal work appointments, and your workday segments as hard stops. End your meetings on time. If you’re doing scheduled project time, end that work at the appropriate stop time, regardless of whether you’re on a roll or not. When it is time for your lunch break, or the end of your day, make those stops clean. Respect yourself and your family time. Don’t let work overrun the gaps in your day that give you the energy you need to be effective.
On that note. Don’t eat your breakfast or your lunch at your desk. Don’t weave bites of your meal between and around your work. Now that your job lives in your house with you and your family, maintain healthy boundaries. When it is time to eat, stop working. When it is time to work, stop eating. Keep as much distinct structure between your work life and your home life as possible. You’ll find you’ll enter each with the energy you need to be good at both, and you’ll anticipate each with a positive mindset.
We didn’t need a working from home mandate as a result of a global pandemic to understand that we can all get better at time management. These tips won’t make you an instant time management ninja. They are just a few small changes you can make in your new situation that will help you to avoid slipping into bad habits and support assertive choices about your work life that are now under your discretion.
Develop these good habits as you begin working from home. Keep them when things begin shifting back to the way they were. You’ll improve your own effectiveness, and you might just move your organizational culture in a better direction.
Previous: Working from Home – A COVID-19 Guide – Part 2: Discipline
Next: Working from Home – A COVID-19 Guide – Part 4: Organization
Be smart. Be safe. Be healthy. Be kind.
Lead well.
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