The Physical Movement, Lifestyle: 5 Lessons From Over 20 Years of Working From Home.

The world’s recent events have pushed many to working from home. For those not used to working from home, this will be a major adjustment.

The world’s recent events have pushed many to working from home. This will require a major adjustment.

One of the silver linings to this coronavirus crisis is the introduction of new aspects to our lives. Many changes. Working from home, indeed is one of them!

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

In 1998, I was commuting 72km each way to work daily. It would take 40 minutes on a good day, over 2 hours on a bad one.

After 2 years of this, I started to add up the commuting time and started to try figure out a better way. The work also required as much face to face time as I could manage, so outbound visits across my territory were frequent, in addition to the commute.

The work as a sales representative was starting to use the computer more and more. With the computer and a phone , I could do most of my job from anywhere.

To bridge the gap, and increase productivity I chose to set up a home office. I saw this as a way to increase my quality of life while using my time more effectively.

I am happy to report that 22 years later, a large part of my work is still from home, although I do have an office 42km away. I manage both. Part time to both. I think this set up is mostly out of necessity.

Let me explain the lessons that have accumulated over 22 years, and essentially turned into best practices.

1. First would be preparing for the impact of being home on the others in the house. I am embarrassed to say that this was not as much of a consideration as should have been at the time. Especially for someone else in a small space, being home an extra 25–50 hours a week (depending on the week) was a big change for them. Not just for me. Selfish on my part and worth serious communication with the others in your house.

2. Then, I had to create a home office. Dedicating a space for work was critical in making sure the time was productive. This is a space where the door could be closed, with a desk and had the productivity tools that you need. Not having a dedicated workspace complicates many things, especially when others in the family are home during the day. Set up a dedicated workspace is lesson 2.

3. Defining your work hours/setting a schedule. One of the hardest lessons was setting up a schedule. My work time would often roll too late into the day and tap into what I had previously as family time. Leave the dedicated workspace, come get dinner and roll back to dedicated workspace became a problem, as I was home more often but less present for my loved ones. Weekends were also impacted as the work called me to deal with an issue that did not fit into the normal work week. This was especially difficult as someone who was a top performer in my company. What I mean by that, is my performance was built on working extremely hard. That meant many hours. Managing those hours in the home workspace required an adjustment. I learned this with a patient support team, but it was not without painful experiences.

Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

4. Closing the door to the office space and letting others know when work time was in session. With dogs and young child at home, as well as significant other, the interruptions were frequent early on. Over time, I gently (emphasize gently), set up guidelines to minimize interruption. The door being closed was one of them. It was the signal that work was “in session”. This eliminated the perception that being home was open door to deal with anything that came up during the day. Again, this step was a process, and setting these guidelines “gently” is highly recommended.

5. Consciously choose a buffer zone between workday and family time. One of the byproducts of working at an outside office is that the commute time allows for decompression and processing of the workday’s events. In B2B sales and sales team management, the days are roller coaster by nature. To have a buffer zone of grabbing a sandwich or coffee and listening to music on the ride home was undervalued at the time. Bringing work place events downstairs with me was one of the most damaging things to our family time. The problems and challenges of the day became the problems and challenges during our evening time, and that was not fair. It took me some time and some painful experiences to remind me that I needed to find a buffer zone at the end of the workday. For that to happen, I needed to realize the impact my good day/bad day was having on the family. That took some time. The buffer zone I created was workouts, quick trip to the grocery store prior to supper time, walk with the dogs after workday.

Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash

6. BONUS 6. A bonus lesson would be to make sure you set time to find energy from others in your field. Isolation was harder to break back then. Today with skype, zoom and face time it is easier, but it still does not match the power of face to face contact with your team and /or customers. If caught at home for longer than a couple of days at a time, it is easy to get caught in what I call the “isolation rut”. We are social by nature, and some interaction is critical, especially in a job where solving problems is a big part of the work. Today, we have podcasts, webinars, online fitness classes and other virtual tools to help us through this until we get back to normal. The new normal!

Working from home can be a blessing and curse. There are pros and cons.

One of the byproducts of this corona virus self-isolation, in my humble opinion, is to slow down the pace. The work carousel and demands of the day have escalated the pace of everything. We live in a drive through world, with instant gratification and response being the norm. We want our goods fast, we want our food fast, we want response quickly.

Working from home cuts down on the frenetic pace of the regular day to day. Our pace has escalated quite a bit in the western world in the last number of years. Perhaps this time will allow us to reboot and reorganize a life where we strive for a better work balance, and more reasonable expectations.

Being prepared for the challenge of working from home, and making sure the learning curve is short for your loved ones is a good investment and test to your professional organizational skills.

Good Luck!