Tip #10: Working from home requires as much discipline as working at the office.

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This week marks 10 months that I have been working at CETL. It’s been a great experience, and most days I go home excited about what I did and what I will be doing tomorrow. But one of the things I miss most about teaching in the Technical Communication program is working from home. You see, Tech Comm is a mostly online undergrad program and a fully online graduate program. Noise from the pedestrian mall and interruptions by my beloved colleagues sent me home when I needed to record podcasts and read through hundreds of discussion posts each week. And since my students were online, my office hours were online, too. I found myself spending more and more time working at home. For a while, it was glorious. And then it was awful. And then I found some strategies to make it great again. So this week’s tip is aimed at those of you who work from home or at a distance, either now or in the future.

On the surface, working from home is a better use of your time, it saves money, and it’s better for the environment. After all, when you’re not commuting to work, your carbon footprint shrinks and you suddenly have an extra hour or two each day on your calendar. You can wear comfy clothes because no one is going to see you except the postal delivery person and you can cook healthy, fresh meals during your lunch break. You can run errands during the day because your schedule is flexible enough to let you make up the time elsewhere. You can work as long as you want and even administrative work can seem fun. (Seriously.)

But then the dark side slips in. Your workday expands to fill that extra hour or two. It expands even more because your “office” is right there in front of you. You start losing touch with colleagues because you hardly ever see them. Interruptions start creeping in, from that load of laundry sitting on floor to kids who have the day off school. That flow state that used to appear in the early days of working at home starts to seem like an urban legend. You start to wonder why you started working at home in the first place. 

This week’s tip is based upon my own experience, advice from friends, and a Harvard Business Review article called “How To Stay Focused When You’re Working From Home.” https://hbr.org/2017/09/how-to-stay-focused-when-youre-working-from-home

1.     Find or claim a place to work. Find a comfortable chair. Assemble a kit or cart or drawer of office supplies. Bring in the books you use regularly. Your office at home needs to support your productivity. While we have a home office in the basement, I quickly realized that I need to be near the sun and moved upstairs to the living room. I found a desk at the Again thrift store, reclaimed a set of plastic shelves that held the kids’ art supplies, and set up shop in the corner.

2.     Tell people to leave you alone during your workday, whenever that workday may be. My husband used to joke that I should have a lighted “Work in Progress” sign above my desk that I could flip on when I didn’t want to be interrupted. If you’re lucky enough to have a dedicated office space at home, close the door. If your “desk” is in a shared space, create a sign to let the rest of the family know that you need to be left alone. (Sadly, you can’t leave that sign up 24/7.) 

3.     Meet up your colleagues. Sure, you’ll have meetings, but schedule some informal meetings, too. A retired colleague worked from home three or four days each week, but Wednesdays were reserved to meet with people. Committee work, coffee talks, meeting for lunch in the Union. For this one day each week, productivity was defined as connecting with her colleagues and catching up on department gossip.   

4.     Get up and stretch. When my sister began working from home as a freelance writer, I advised her to keep a medium-sized glass of water on her desk. Refilling that glass and going to the bathroom after drinking it might be the only exercise she got all day. She scoffed, assuming that I was being her usual pushy big sister. A few months later, she apologized. Thank goodness she had a dog to walk, she said, because otherwise she sat at her desk all day long. Instead of stretching out your workday, use that time you saved from your commute to go for a walk, use that treadmill that’s been doubling as a drying rack, or do yoga in the living room. Just get moving.

5.       Leave work at the end of the day. You won’t have your usual commute to decompress, so develop a routine to separate yourself from work. Empty your inbox. (Ha!) Turn off your computer. Clear your desk. Do something entirely unrelated to work. For example, I “close up” and head to the kitchen to cook. All I think about is making sure I don’t cut myself or burn the food, and an hour later, I have a clear head and something to feed the family.

Speaking of productivity, here are the suggestions from last week’s informal poll about time and task management strategies:

This year, I started using a Passion Planner (http://www.passionplanner.com/) and I love it. It's essentially a planner with short- and long-term goal setting built into it. There is a focus area for each week, a weekly personal and professional to-do list, and a blank section known as the "infinite space of possibility" where I can jot down all my crazy ideas. There are also questions at the end of each month to help plan for the next one (what went well, what didn't go well, where might you shift your focus, etc.).

Digital Sticky Notes, Outlook Tasks, Trello

I tried the app "Things" for awhile. It is the best app I have found to categorize lists. I ended up going back to paper, but if I use an app again I'll use it.

YouCanBook.Me allows students to create appointments on my calendar. I mark out the times available in 15-minute increments and they sign up for as many as they need.

       (FYI: MavConnect, the new advising system, provides the same functionality.)