Working from home is no more

It’s — working with family

Remember weekends during the happy, quiet days?
There’s a super-important document left from the busy week and you have to finish it. You have to do it. You must! Your career depends on it. Well, you believe this is the case.

By Zivica Kerkez

So you cover yourself in a quiet room and start doing your shit while keeping an ear on the kids running around the house (in case they break something or become conspicuously quiet). You hear your wife talking with her mom and getting a bit angry (well, that happens with all moms). Then there’s this annoying neighbor that decides to warm up his car or cut his trees or drill a hole in the wall for a new painting his daughter made.

After struggling for about an hour and switching back and forth between the document you write and Facebook, or Twitter or scrolling through titles on Medium with hope for the noise to go away. You decide to get out of your shelter and try something different in the meantime.

Working from home is being in the middle of the action while trying to work

Preparing breakfast for your children might be a good idea. It takes half an hour to make. Kids finish eating, get quiet, grab a book or a movie and life becomes much better for you.

Another option would be waving to your wife, gently asking to get off the phone, explaining the importance of the document you write and then leaving the bread and circus to her.

By Zivica Kerkez

Happy, you get back to the hideout and give it another try. The work keeps going on smoothly for about an hour and a half until the smallest of the children breaks into the room crying for a piece of chocolate. Disturbed you start thinking about getting out of the room again. And the process continues going in circles.

Working from home is juggling between doing your tasks and helping with the family

As you are required to work daily from home (considering the situation in the World), keeping up with the same working dynamics become very hard. It is time to sit with the family and come to an agreement.

It is time to speak with the family members and agree on the rules

“OK, guys. Look. Daddy is at work. I know. This is not exactly the way you imagined it to be, and you would prefer me to play with you or go to a park, but we need to stay at home and I have to work. Mommy is here. Please give her all the questions you have and consider me to be in the office far away. I will eventually come home but till then I close the door, put my headphones on and go deep into my business. Don’t hit the door, don’t call me out. I am not available.”

In case both parents continue working, they should do it in shifts if possible — switching places every 2 hours. One starts working, another one takes care of the kids.

What are the basic rules for working with family and keeping your mental health intact?

By Zivica Kerkez

You should follow exactly the same routines you are used to. It has to be identical, which is the key, including dressing up, grabbing your lunch box, your protein shake or your salmon sandwich and disappearing in the room and not returning home until you are “back from work”.

Follow exactly the same routines you are used to

If anybody needs you — they should call you.

Even though the person is calling from another room and you are able to hear particles of the words getting through the walls. Be strong and do not get outside or the Pandora box.

There are many ways and tools to communicate with family and friends. It is suggested to keep using them — Skype, WhatsApp, Telegram, HeadzApp, etc. Each is good for a specific situation.

Draw a clear line between your “work” and your “home”. Concentrate on your work while working. As you return, change your clothes, have dinner and enjoy the time with your kids. Don’t look back and do not let anybody get into the room or next to the table.
A clear separation is very important to get into working mood (mind) more quickly.

Draw a clear line between your “work” and your “home”. It helps getting to the working mood much quicker.

What are the tricks I personally do while hiding in my shelter?

• They only person that is allowed to call me is my wife.
• She does not usually do it though. She prefers to telegram me.
• My children (they are 9, 6 and 3) use HedzApp family alerts. It is not a regular messenger. It is not a messenger at all.
  Consider it to be a family-friendly visual walkie-talkie. Big pictures are displayed on the screen instead of texts. You cannot skip them or ignore them. Messages have to be responded and the same goes for both sides of the communication.
  It is good for writing to kids that are busy with games and do not pay attention to their phones. It is great for speaking with grandparents that live in different cities or countries and always have a lot of things to do until they get to their phones and pay attention to a single message you WhatsApp-ed or SMS-ed them.
• I am officially off to work.
• I get outside to have lunch and I return back to work after 50 minutes of concentrating on my food and children.

Be safe, be calm and be reasonable.
The rest will follow.

HedzApp — alerts for family and kids