Career
The Truth About Working From Home
#WFH #attituteadjustment #gettingitdone
Posted June 1, 2020 Reviewed by Davia Sills
Like so many of you during COVID-19, I’m now working from home.
I’ve been a freelance writer my entire professional career, and until 15 years ago, when I bought a small office building so I could better separate my work life from my family life, I worked exclusively from home.
Initially, home was an apartment. I didn’t have a roommate. Call it peace, call it privilege; it made my life doable.
My apartment office was a glorious sunroom off of my living room.
I only went to my sunroom to write or work. I didn’t even talk on the phone in my office unless it was for business. I used the landline in my kitchen for personal calls. And, likewise, didn’t take professional calls in the kitchen.
The sunroom didn’t have a door, and I didn’t clean it up for company or holidays or anything short of an impending fire hazard.
That fire hazard thing: always a danger. It was the '70s, life before computers and all that, and there was paper. Tons of paper. Every single draft of what I was working on, as well as all my notes and research material.
Before computers, computer files, thumb drives, scanners, and whatever, everything was paper. Lots of paper. Every six months or so, I’d take off a day and try to clear my office of drafts I no longer needed, etc.
The transition from living alone to getting married in my 30s was an adjustment. First, I had to adjust my working hours. Next, I had to find a place in our home that was mine. All mine. Sacred. Not to be used for anything else space.
Working from home, in a shared home, is about time as well as space. Place as well as peace and quiet.
The next big shift in my life came when children arrived. Three of them. And with children came a bigger social world of other parents with children. And that’s when I learned that if I worked from home, I needed to dress for work.
Why? Because if I dropped my kids off at school while wearing sweatpants, it gave the impression that I had the day to myself and, therefore, might be available to pick up someone else’s kids after school. Or that I would have time to bake cookies for the PTA or some committee meeting.
While working from home, I dressed up to walk down the hallway to my office, another sunroom, this one with a door that could be closed. Dressing for work made life with children and an office at home doable.
But only slightly. It took me several years to figure out that I had to prioritize the various demands of mother/wife/work/me time. For one, I needed to set real office hours. That is, not let my work-life drift into dinner, nor meal prep into work.
And manage guilt. Laundry guilt. Perfect dinners guilt. The get your homework done/diligent mother guilt. Not to mention, the Better Homes and Gardens house guilt.
Zoom forward to today.
For more and more people, our homes are now our offices for the foreseeable future. And everyone seems to be invited: your family, your co-workers, your editor, your readers, your boss, and your friends.
Which is even more reason why you should:
A) Have a place of your own to work, even if it is a corner in your bedroom or some closet you’ve gerrymandered into an office.
B) Cell phones, iPads, and computers make it easy to let your work life creep into every corner of your life and home. Do your best to separate home life from work life. Don’t try to do the laundry or make dinner during your office hours!
C) Get dressed to go to work. Be as professional as possible. Work a Monday to Friday schedule, and take the weekends off.
D) When your workday is over, leave your office. Turn off the electronics, and give yourself and your family a break. Working from home doesn’t mean you hold office hours 24/7.
WFH is, as you have quickly discovered, far from perfect. And Zoom is less satisfying than having lunch with a colleague or going to a client meeting.
But all of it is manageable, as long as you don’t let it manage you.
