8 Things to Remember When You Work from Home

pearlsanthana
Mar 25, 2020
8 min read

Updated: Dec 6, 2021

Here it is, the time all working souls had always dreamed about, since they had to wake up every morning to be on a commute to work. The chance to work from HOME. The number of what-ifs in our minds were unimaginable. However, once we are finally given the opportunity to do it (i mean apart from trying to prevent this fast-acting fatal virus from spreading and infecting more people aside) we find ourselves being carried away. Why? because it’s a dream come true moment with strings attached. Strings in the form of caring for loved ones + work + self + pets + food + toilet paper + etc. The strings are endless and it comes from all directions. The blatant reality is, once you are at home, you have to merge all sides of you into one and that is not easy. That’s why when you are on lockdown and need to work from home, the first thing that goes is the MIND. Just a disclaimer, I am not a psychology expert. I'm writing this solely from my own experience thanks to my genius idea to leave a full-time job and begin working from home. I struggled with a few things that I wished someone would warn me about, so here are some obstacles I've faced.

1. THINK to be SANE

The mind loves to wander. However when it’s forced to stay in a place with family, loved ones or even yourself as a company for long hours, it gets a little messed up. By putting that mind into a situation where you force it to work, It gets annoyed. Old memories will rise to the surface and past bitter incidents will come to mind. The next thing you know you will be in a war with someone or yourself. It’s inevitable.

So do something about it. Let the mind wander, and feed what it needs. Read something, watch something, or do something that is not work-related, something you’ve never done before so that the mind feels like it’s on an adventure. Instead of being cooped up in a room with people or lying on a bed with no other motivation or objective but your own thoughts drowning you with emotions.

Keep the mind occupied.

2. Find Your Space

It’s always wise to create space. A communal space, where you can spend some quality time with your family or loved ones, it can also be a space for you to have your pastimes at e.g. watch tv, eat, play games, draw, paint, or even sing. Make sure all these activities never follow you to the other spaces of the house.

A working space, where it’s far from your family and you are free to do your work. Make sure this space is optimized and ready for you to get down to business. Cleanliness in this area is important. If it’s not optimized and clean it will mess with your time and focus. So make sure you tell yourself the importance of this space. It is common sometimes that you are bothered by the wonky chair, uncomfortable table setting, slow-moving internet or even by the crappy computer. We are human, one thing we can do best is adapt. Always remember that there’s a solution to every problem. So every time you get stressed-out by your tools, try to talk to someone about it and ask for advice. Or borrow the tools from someone or even ask your boss if you can borrow your office computer. The main idea here is to make your working space a space to help you stay focused and complete your work, do everything in your power to make it so.

Lastly a sleeping space. Time moves slowly when you are at home and working, the mind gets heavy when it knows a comfy bed is nearby and no one can stop you from taking a nap on it. So make sure the bed is made up and if possible slightly farther away or out of sight from your view when you are working.

3. Discipline Yourself

When we are at home, we are used to letting loose and just be ourselves. But being our relaxed and entertaining self doesn’t help us to get the work done. Time always moves slower in the whirlpool of your home when you are working. A task that takes you 20 mins to be done at work usually takes an hour to be done at home (maybe it’s just me?), we can blame it on the tools and everything else, but the truth is we are too relaxed at home. We think slower because we lose sight of the urgency that we feel, when we are at the office watching a group of people working to get things done. So what should we do?

Don’t laugh, but the only way to do it is by self-disciplining and motivation. If you are like me and not very good with self-discipline, hold on to your seat because it’s gonna be a bumpy ride! I had to force the child in me to listen to my plans and get things done. Even though there are a lot of other things besides work we are responsible for when we are at home, we have to hold ourselves accountable to get the deadlines right.

The first step is to create a Schedule of your day. Test out this time management method the professionals calls time blocking. It helps you divide your day into blocks of time specifically to do a group of task at a time. Meaning you don’t have to schedule yourself according to the clock, which tends to make you overwhelmed as the clock ticks. Instead you will be doing one task after another in your own pace, and it helps you recognize which to prioritize and give your utmost focus to. I will leave you some links below to read up on how the experts explain time blocking- if you are interested.

By time blocking you will naturally have some window of time to enjoy snacks, light stretching, chase your pet around the house, or just staring out the actual open window. These activities are crucial because it energizes us from staring at a dull screen or sitting in the same position for a long amount of time.

4. Make It Worth It

The one person that never listens to you, is always YOU. Principles and disciplines usually are thrown out the window when you are at home. When you want yourself to do something, set a reward system for yourself.

For instance, If you make your bed, you get a cup of coffee. If you finish 2 tasks, you get a snack. If you finish 5 tasks, you get to take an hour long nap. Nothing too addictive, like Youtube. Everybody knows, once you start it, you can never stop. However once you have done all the tasks you set up to do for the day, you can think about rewarding yourself something indulging. Like a movie with a nice dinner or a sinful dessert, anything that will make you think... Aaaa~ it's worth it.

5. Sleep Is the Key

Working from home, we often lose track of time. Especially at night. We are so used to scaring ourselves every night to sleep on time, if not we are going to be late for work the next day. Let's face it, it's usually a motivation for us to sleep on time (isn't it?). But now since there’s no need to scare yourself to sleep anymore. You tend to just do whatever you were doing till dawn. It does help you feel like you were being more productive. But it is harmful to your body and your mind.

It’s always wise to follow the sleeping schedule that you had before the lockdown. If not it's easy to develop irregular sleep routine that will lead to heart problems and other health risk. There's also a big chance to suffer from insomnia and your circadian rhythm (internal sleep clock), will tell you to sleep and wake up at the wrong hours. All these will contribute to messing up your mind. A mind without rest is a tortured mind.

At time like these, try not to stress about it (talking to someone usually help), try to limit your caffeine intake, try meditation or yoga, and expose yourself to sunrise and sunset. These activities help send your brain some sense of time, some oxygen love and introduce some positivity in you. Try apps like Daylio to keep track of your mood and thoughts as well so that it helps you process your thoughts better. But to be honest, nothing beats the sense of relief you feel when you talk to someone about what you are going through. Who knows, by talking about it, it might tire you out just enough and help reset your circadian rhythm as well.

6. Call Another Human

Social distancing is important right now, but thanks to the internet we don’t need to worry about losing touch with anyone. For the past 2 weeks I’ve been hearing, now that we need to practice distance from each other, the world is going to be an introvert's heaven. Yes, it is, for the most part, but every human needs some kind of contact with another human one way or the other. As much as we introverts hate to admit, we need to be around someone too.

It is an ideal situation to be left alone, but we have to hold ourselves responsible to contact people who are important to us and do what Ellen DeGeneres did with her friends, talk. Just call to cheer each other up. Even better, video call someone and tell them you want to see their stay-at-home tired faces. Just a 5 minutes conversation with someone will shoot your mood back up and you will be motivated to do any task you have to do.

7. The F Word

Family, you can’t live with them for long hours per day, and you can’t live without them either. They are always there with their constant annoyance; calling your name while you are in the middle of work, with their loud voice trying to grab your attention while you are trying to focus on the task at hand. In a nutshell, they are there to help you and annoy you at the same time.

That being said, to be honest, I have no tips or tricks to overcome this obstacle. Just the other day my mom barged into my room screaming for me to get down and eat, while I was in a video conference for business. Because I wasn't responding when she shouted my name and she didn’t believe me that I was working, she stormed into my room because she cared. I mean it was embarrassing but it wasn't the end of the world.

I can suggest the idea of telling your family about your schedule and communicating to them that you will be having business calls and stuff. In my case, it didn’t work. But who knows it might work for you. Give it a try. Never try, never know.

8. Take Care.

When you work from home, there's a high possibility you won’t be alarmed to drink more water or eat & sleep at the right time. Because when you are at home, you tend to care too much about everything else & work, and neglect your own well being. In this case, maybe set an alarm to remind yourself, when to stop working and when to prep for sleep. Set up a system where you and the people you live with to remind each other to drink more water, find the right time to eat together. If you live alone or know someone who lives alone, video call them and have dinner together, this way you might make their day, and you might make yourself feel better as well.

To the people who hate routines (give me a virtual high 5). There’s no way around it, all you can do is tell yourself, there’s nothing wrong in keeping these essential activities as routines because it helps you and your body to think and rest right. Yes, it’s gonna be a struggle but make sure you give yourself that gentle push to complete those work for the day, then give yourself a treat after that.