You have probably seen many WFH posts in the past week. I feel like they might be more accurately described as WTF! WFH? posts.
I’ve been doing the remote thing for a while. I hope that I can offer some assurance that it’s going to be okay and that you can do this.
My number one recommendation is to create a routine. You might have to time-shift a bit to accommodate working with kids or furkids, so take that into account.
Over the past year, my schedule has evolved into something like this:
Monday-Friday
- Wake up
- Start my morning routine.
- Make coffee and feed the cat because she is starving OMG
- Meditate with the cat
- Read with the cat
- Journal with the cat
- Write*
- Check the seedlings
- Work out
- Eat breakfast
- Feed the dogs and take them for a walk
- Get ready for work (For me, that’s hair, makeup and work clothes)
- Work 8-noon: I stand up and walk around almost every hour (thank you FitBit), and I take a mid-morning break**
- Break for lunch at noon
- I suggest making lunch a standing meeting on your calendar. Don’t skip it, don’t eat at your desk, and as a rule, don’t create meetings during lunch.
- Take the dogs outside and walk Buddy
- Give the cat a snack OMG
- Take a few turns in the game du jour (usually Splendor because it’s easy to play asynchronously, get the expansion pack once you’ve mastered the basic game)
- Work 1-5ish: I stand up and walk around almost every hour (again, thank you FitBit), and I take a short mid-afternoon break**
- Transition from work to home with what we call Miller Time (usually nachos) and feed the cat OMG***
- Evening routine:
- Make dinner
- Feed the dogs and take them for a walk
- Do something constructive/creative/fun*
- Take a few turns
- Do Duolingo lessons (Quiero hablar español)
- Check the seedlings
*I’m still working on making this a daily habit.
** If you have access to LinkedIn Learning, check out https://www.linkedin.com/learning/time-management-working-from-home/plan-meaningful-breaks on the importance of taking meaningful breaks during the work day.
***Miller Time signals the end of the work day. I highly recommend a similar ritual. Sadly, I have no suggestions for dealing with perpetually starving felines.
Saturday and Sunday are similar but my work hours are for creative work and house projects with some playtime and couch lounging thrown into the mix.
I also have a list of things that I do once or twice a week that I associate with specific days (laundry, class, coaching, updating the Little Free Library, watering plants, etc.). You might think that this feels a bit constraining but I find it to be the opposite. It actually frees up headspace to turn my to-dos into habits.
I’m not going to sugarcoat this. It took me a while to create all of these daily habits, and I didn’t add them all at once. I kept track of things in a Google Spreadsheet for a long time (nerd alert). But less than a year in, I find that many of the things that I struggled to do regularly in the beginning are now habits. I don’t know what the limit is on recommending a particular book, but I recommend Atomic Habits by James Clear if you are trying to develop habits. I love this book. Many of you have received this recommendation, so thanks for letting me fangirl again here.
Here is a list of articles and other resources that might help you as you transition from working remotely. You don’t need to read them all (although you can, you overachiever), but there’s a lot of wisdom and useful hacks here.
If you have access to LinkedIn Learning/Lynda.com training through work or your local library, there are a ton of good trainings related to remote work and virtual teams (and many other topics). Check it out! Your local library probably has an online resources section with cool offerings. I’ll share more on that in a future post.
Need face time?
I’m happy to meet with you (via Zoom, of course!) to talk through resources and strategies to adapt to WFH. Contact me!
At the end of the day, “We’re all just walking each other home” (Ram Dass). Reach out to others. Ask for what you need and offer what you can. You’ve got this. We’ve got this.