6 Tips to Unlock Your Best Work from Home Self
By Badassery member Kerry Hoffman, Senior Project Manager of Marketing at ClassPass, planner of everything, bridge walker, food crawler and dress renter.
When the quarantine period started, the work from home tips were everywhere. “Get dressed every day!”, “Set up a permanent workspace” and “Socialize with co-workers on Zoom'' were all shouted from the rooftops, except rooftops were closed and shouting could spread the virus. We took note of some of these hot tips, but without knowing how long we needed to stay home, some tips did not seem worth the investment. Why buy a new $300 desk chair if it is just for a few months?
Some will return to their offices soon, but many people are home for the foreseeable future. The hot fix you put in place to get you through a few weeks or a few months may not scale to a more semi-permanent 2020 lifestyle. It’s time to create an at-home work culture and set up systems in order to stay productive, focused, and motivated in this new universe.
Here are some tips to press the reset button on quarantine and unlock your best WFH self:
1. Create a room schedule so you and your housemates can productively co-work in your space.
Channel the classic board game and film Clue: “Mrs. Peacock, in the study, with the candlestick.” Plan out your day by room and by activity. By setting this schedule, you build variety into your own day and can peacefully share your space with others. This schedule will free you from shouting “I am on a call!” to others in your house and may even provide peaceful lunch breaks with your housemates.
2. “Pack a bag” each day so you have all of your work tools handy.
Normally, you would pack a bag for work with your wallet, your keys, your lunch and your laptop. When you work from home, your stuff is everywhere! Set everything in its place at the start of your day, or “mise en place” as a Chef would say. Pack your lunch in Tupperware so you can retrieve it from the fridge when hunger strikes. Keep your chargers, headphones, notebooks, and pens in a bag or box so you can easily grab what you need.
3. Invest in structural changes to your living space to save time with daily setup and breakdown.
If you keep folding over the rug each morning to make room for your yoga mat, permanently move the rug over. If you keep moving your Mac charger from room to room, buy another charger. Even if you scale up your space and return to the office in September, at least you’ll have a workable space to return to in the future.
4. Build intentional transitions into your day to create separation from your work life and your home life.
So many people feel like they are “on” all of the time. Pick a time to start your work day and don’t open your computer until that start time. Change out of your “work” clothes into your hangout clothes at the end of the day. Start making dinner when you are done with work, instead of in between meetings. Without these transitions, you can easily swim in and out of Slack in the same exercise pants while roasting cauliflower with your team meeting playing in the background.
5. Make a list of recurring home tasks, and set aside time to complete them to avoid distraction during work hours.
Working from home means you’ve swapped water cooler talk with replacing the water filter in your Brita. Your home tasks have increased as you’ve used more of your own resources. Make a list of all of the tasks you do at home and set a cadence for those tasks. Put it in your favorite project tool too! This will free you from distracting yourself from busy housework when you have a plan in place for ordering your groceries, washing your sheets, and running the Roomba. And really, the Roomba does all of the work.
6. Pick a fun theme for the week to break up the monotony.
Living out my 12-year-old Backstreet Boys fantasy.
We have to find ways to keep things fun and spicy in these humdrum times. Pick a theme and try to incorporate it into your activities for the week. Do a 90s week and workout to 90s music, eat 90s snacks, throw on some 90s style clothes, and dabble in some Full House reruns. Do an alphabet month, and eat a food that starts with every letter of the alphabet, or watch movies from A-Z. It might be silly, but you’ll have just as much fun trying to match everything to your theme as you will dancing to the Backstreet Boys while eating Bagel Bites.
The most important thing to remember is to go easy on yourself. The world we live in is throwing us so many curveballs right now. Our instinct is to duck or dodge so that we aren’t hit. Dive in instead. The world is changing, so change with it. Some changes you make will be temporary, and some will be more permanent. But we can no longer live in limbo. Give yourself permission to make changes to your life today, even if you have to undo them later. We are all on this boat ride together. We’ll figure out what to do when we dock.
Check out more about Kerry on her Badassery page and follow her on LinkedIn and Instagram. We encourage you to also share your tips using the #RedefiningBadassery hashtag!