At the start of this year I worked remotely twice per week, reporting to the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. With an individual office space in my office building and a home-office in my apartment, I was well on my way to mastering working deeply in both locations, my home and my workplace. Nevertheless, I did not anticipate the drastic changes I would encounter during the course of 2020. In January, my car was totaled in a car accident, which put a halt to my transportation for a season. This is where the consistency of my work began to dwindle environment as I went for an extended stay at my mother’s house and transitioned to working from home temporarily. My work environment began to shift, impacting my productivity, my capability of working deeply and my work-life balance.
During my stay at my mother’s, I learned that it was necessary for me to have a designated workspace to further support my progress at work. Initially, I attempted to work from the couch, the dining room and my bedroom at times. It wasn’t long before I realized that the quality of my work had shifted. Instead of seeking to accomplish solid work, I no longer desired to do my best. Instead, I sought to simply meet the assignment requirements. At times, I delayed work for the sake of less important tasks, even though I had the time and space to complete my work. Additionally, I found myself dictating my own work hours within the day, deciding to work later or start earlier or even delay my work and cram it in upon the realization that the deadline was swiftly approaching. I started making unnecessary mistakes within my work — a typo here, a wrong dimension there, a missed direction elsewhere. I felt as though I had begun to lose my love for working well, choosing to be unproductive, lazy, careless and negligent.
A few weeks into my stay, I decided to set up a desk in a separate room and create a makeshift office space in the house, in hopes of improving my work. I found that waking up and acting out my day as if I was reporting to the office benefited and improved my work. I would shower, get dressed, do my hair, report to my newly developed home office and be sure to turn on my camera during virtual meetings to ensure that I was present and accountable. This turn of events boosted my productivity, causing me to work even more than I anticipated. I got a great deal of work done and I felt much better about myself as and my contribution to my company.
The stay-at-home order in mid-March aided me further in my efforts to improve my work. My mother works in a hospital, so I chose to distance myself from everyone, including her. I stopped borrowing her car, I no longer ran errands and I shifted my time in person with friends to FaceTime sessions. I went from my room to the bathroom, to my home office, all on the same floor of the house. I only went downstairs to the kitchen when I was extremely hungry, during the hours that my mother was at work. I stopped searching for a car and the rest of my team at work transitioned to join me in working from home. Soon enough, I was enjoying my home office space once more, powering through my work so much that I started forgetting to take lunch breaks or go outside for a breath of fresh air. I was cooped up in the house, laser-focused on the computer all day and all evening, taking more time on projects than necessary. My work-life balance was thrown off, yet again, in a different direction.
The spring and summer of 2020 only brought additional change into my life, as many things took an unexpected turn. In May, my now husband and I decided to get married, in June, we began planning our wedding, in late June, I became remote full-time, and every month since has presented new challenges to navigate. As everything around me has been shifting, so has my quality of work. I am now married and my husband and I just moved into our new home yesterday. We are both working from home as full-time professionals, part-time entrepreneurs, and graduate students, and, although I am excited to set up yet another home office and get to working deeply, I am also a bit nervous and a bit unsure about how working from home alongside my spouse will be. Furthermore, since my life activities have been extremely transient this year, and I am still getting accustomed to a new home environment, I have to be extra intentional about working developing a ritual that works for me.
We have already determined our designated office space, however, with all the work on my plate, I have yet to figure out how long I will work, how I’ll work, how I will structure my work or how I’ll support my work. One thing I am sure I would like to put in place is downtime. I want to cultivate the practice of coming to a hard stop and recharging for the work ahead of me in place of thinking and dreaming about my work until I open my laptop once more to complete a “quick” task. To say the least, this year has been an interesting one. I look forward to closing this last quarter of 2020 by developing a routine in which I can get back to working deeply.
Sola's Thoughts 