The word came in this week that my company will be working from home until at least the end of the year. Although we’ve already been working from home for about 5 months now, knowing that it’s another 5 months (and that I’ll be heading back to San Diego fairly soon) changes the feeling a bit.
The first thought I had was that another 5 months of only sitting at a desk is not ideal. For 18 months I used a standing desk, only sitting down in a side chair to do some reading or serious thinking. Particularly since my new role in the company requires far less of that type of time, I’m missing a standing desk even more. However, I’m not in a spot to actually purchase a standing desk I’d be happy with right now, so I’m considering other temporary options. For example, there a table-top “sit-stand” converter solutions, which I’ve been looking into.
My other main thought is that I’m not overly bothered by the news. I’m glad I work for a company that is accommodating and wants to keep everyone safe. I’ve also been building up personal processes to improve my focus during the day.
The first of these is sitting down each morning and mapping out my day. This is mainly a matter of checking what meetings I have, what projects I need to be checking on, and filling the slots between meetings with those project tasks. It creates a personal accountability system, and doesn’t let me attention wander to other projects that I have slated for future days.
One idea I have implemented, but have not done yet, is a weekly self check-in each Monday morning. I created a workflow in Slack that has me fill out a poll about both the previous week and the upcoming week. I’ll then take the time to go through all of my projects (not just the ones on my mind), and do some preliminary mapping for the week based on various priorities. I think that will have a large effect on how my works go overall. Working from home causes days to blend together somewhat. Having a week-long view, in addition to my current day-view that I create, should help with that dissonance.
I’m particularly interested in sorting these issues out now since I’m hoping to leverage myself into a remote position sometime next year. Showing that I can still be effective (and so the can the company as a whole) should only make that process easier.