Build The Wall

You don’t have to wake up as early anymore. You get to sleep in. You don’t have to sit in traffic. You don’t have to go away for days on sales meetings anymore. You don’t have to see any weird colleagues around the office. You actually don’t have to see anybody you don’t like anymore. Yes, you get to work from home now. And life should be easier. But as my grandpa used to say, “Can’t stand prosperity.”

Now you’re working from home and you can’t get in a groove. You can’t get anything done. You start scheduling home maintenance appointments during the day. They bail on you. You spend more time calling them back. Now you get even less done. You’re messy and disorganized. You miss the camaraderie of the office. You really wish you could go back to the office but your company has announced a “work from home indefinitely” policy and now you’re not sure what to do. As in the words of the great Rod Tidwell…

Let me offer just a few tips for how to up your home office game and reclaim that work/life balance that you so desperately crave when you used to be gone from the house 50 hours a week spending 40 of those hours on some combo of ESPN, social media, fast casual restaurants and happy hours. 

Time Block – open a calendar and look at your week. Figure out how many hours you actually need to work. Now block those off. The rest of the time you should not work. You should get out of your office, turn off your email on your phone and go do something else – productive or unproductive. Don’t sit there and play office just because you think you need to. Commit to it for two weeks and see how it works. You can always add more time to your work blocks.

Try and set boundaries – Time block your days where you are unavailable and can’t be interrupted and then block off time where it’s okay for the kids to check on you.

Utilize a family calendar (Link Jordan’s article) – This has already been tackled beautifully by my colleague. The main point is that as close as you and your wife might be, it makes sense to get a shared calendar going and both agree to hold those time blocks sacred.

Invite your kids into your office to see what you’re doing – There has to be a small part of them that can’t quite understand why you’re home but you’re not playing with them or giving them any attention really. Show them what you do, however boring it may be. Unless they can already read and your job happens to be writing blog posts about how you use reverse psychology to jedi mind trick them into doing what you want (LINK reverse psych article). Then don’t do that and in that case…

Keep your kids as far away as possible – you have a tendency to want to help and since you’re right there, your spouse has a tendency to politely ask for help “if you’ve got a minute.” It’s natural – biology and child-rearing were here long before work-from-home. Establish boundaries/times of day when it’s solely work time and you can’t be bothered barring emergencies.

Music/White noise – Sometimes it’s comforting to hear the kids running around the house and knowing that I get to be so close even though I’m working. Other times I need to focus and there’s nothing harder than trying to focus when you can hear your kids getting into all kinds of things the room over. I like to put on a playlist – currently Classical Focus or Focus Flow on Spotify. You can try what you want here. I’ve also heard of people putting white noise machines just outside their office door to act as a barrier to any inbound sound.

Standing desk – I recommend picking up one of these and trying it out. I find I like it quite a bit for going through more routine work or when I’m on calls and just need my computer for reference. More focused work I like to sit, but to each their own. 

Exercise – Every day pick an exercise – pushups, situps, pullups, body squats, grip strengthening, etc. Set a timer on your phone or computer for every hour or two. Do as many as you can of that exercise then get back to work.

Take breaks and get out of the house – In between your time blocks, go on walks and get sunlight. Get some alone time. Meditate. Call your boss and quit your job. I don’t really care what it is but you gotta take breaks. If you spend all day in your house working/browsing your computer and all night eating dinner, playing with your kids and sleeping you’re going to go stir crazy. Run some errands, but do it in a structured manner. Don’t just wake up and spend your day being a combination of fickle and reactive.

Take breaks and hang with your kids – You work at home. Take advantage of it. Relish is. Be grateful for it. This sounds so easy, but I’ve found at times it can be hard to disengage from work. The truth is there is always one more thing you can do. It can wait. Do whatever sort of quick ritual you need to do to get present for those minutes. Have your kid punch you. 

Your office is now at home. Still, don’t take your work home with you – when you’re done with work, be done with work. Go be with your family, be silly, be present, and be happy that your commute was five second. Never forget that you used to sit in rush hour traffic.

Try putting a few of these in place and see how it goes. Instead of getting angry, maybe next time you can laugh when you’re on an important zoom call and your kid is in the adjoining bathroom shouting “I’M ALL DONE GOING POOOOOOP!” while you desperately try to find the mute button.