5–9 to 9–5: The Importance of Creating a Schedule when Working Remotely

(Photo by XPS on Unsplash)

As a college student, I am never working “normal” hours but this has been exacerbated by the shift to working from home resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the Spring, I was studying abroad in London and when I returned home in early March, I continued my London classes remotely from my home in New York. My first class of the day began at 9 am in London (4 am EST). While we were given permission to simply watch the recordings instead of attending the live classes due to everyone being in different time zones, I found that less engaging and — for the first few weeks at least — woke up to attend class live.

I was also delivering groceries for platforms such as Instacart and Shipt — a job that one could do from when the stores open until they close. And finally, at the same time, I was searching and applying for summer internships which led to a handful of phone or video interviews with companies in New York and on the West Coast (PST).

After completing my London classes and countless job applications and interviews, I was offered part-time roles from two companies. Given that the time commitment would approximately total a full-time position, I accepted both offers. In my first few days of working, I immediately noticed a problem. Despite the total hours I committed to both of these companies being fewer than 40, I felt I was working non-stop. Whenever I would receive a Slack message or email, I felt the need to respond immediately. I felt as if I was juggling two full-time jobs at the same time and not giving either what they deserved. I also found myself to be answering messages at all hours.

While of course I am dedicated to my work and take pride in what I do, I do not see a reason that a first-week intern needs to be answering messages at 7 pm on a Friday. I am sure whatever is being asked of me can wait until 9 am on Monday.

I sat down and asked myself: Why is this happening? Why do I feel this way? I realized that when working from home, there is no start or end to the workday. My “office” is adjacent to my bed. There is no real distinction between work and non-work hours, weekdays, and weekends. And this problem goes the other way too. While I am “at work” I am still in my home. I receive calls and knocks on my bedroom door asking for help with things around the house.

Then I asked myself: Why? Why am I answering messages at 7 am and 7 pm? I’m not “clocking in” to briefly answer a message or to quickly send over a file. It is almost as if I’m working for free.

There are a few potential answers I could come up with:

1. When working from home, especially as a newly hired intern, you don’t want it to seem as if you aren’t doing what you were hired to do.
2. Due to social distancing and other restrictions put into place, I am home near my laptop anyway. I am not frequently seeing friends or attending events outside of my house. When I get a message, it means someone else is working. Why shouldn’t I spend 5-minutes to respond?
3. Without a physical office location and a commute to differentiate work and non-work hours, they start to blend together. One can kind of justify taking a two-hour break in the middle of the day because they started working earlier or will work later than they would’ve had they been in the office. One can easily be tempted to complete household tasks during work hours and work tasks during non-work hours.

This reasoning all seems to make sense to me. Because there is no physical barrier between work and home, there is no mental barrier either. Work from home has given us an opportunity to eliminate inefficiencies in our days such as commutes.

We technically don’t even need to get dressed before starting work. For example, the other day after working out, I hopped online for an hour before showering and getting dressed for a video call. What would you have said 6 months ago if I said I went to work directly from the gym and took a shower in the middle of the day at the office?

There is no question that we are living in a new world and different behaviors will be constituted as normal even when we are on the other side of this pandemic.

However, with that, an entry-level intern does not need to be answering emails at 7 am or 7 pm. Juggling two-part time jobs makes this situation a little more complicated than one full-time position because now I am using my space for three things. There is no physical differentiation between Job 1, Job 2, or my personal life. It is so easy for all three of these to blend together.

Here is what I did to handle these issues:

I reached out to my supervisors at both companies and explained my concerns. I told them I wanted to give both of my roles the attention and time they deserved and at the same time needed to take care of myself. 12-hour workdays are not sustainable for me.

Even after just a few days, I was feeling burnt out. I proposed 3 full days to work for one company and 2 full days for the other (this corresponded with the hours agreed upon before signing my contract).

On Monday, Thursday, and Friday I will be working for Job 1. On these days, my supervisor for Job 2 knows I will not be working and will not expect responses from me. And vice versa on Tuesday and Wednesday. I will be working normal work hours of 9–5.

During work hours I will be at my computer with email and Slack open but after 5 pm those tabs will be closed. I decided against downloading Slack on my phone because if I am away from my computer, I am not “at work”. Of course, if there are any urgent matters outside of my designated work hours for a specific company, my supervisors have my cell phone number and can call me. But as I mentioned earlier, I don’t think there are going to be frequent urgent issues for a part-time summer intern.

The lack of a commute will definitely be a time saver and allow me to sleep a little later and exercise in the morning. At 5 pm I will go for a walk to get moving and get some fresh air. These pre-work and post-work rituals will differentiate work hours from non-work hours even though both are occurring in the same space.

I know my solutions will not work for everyone but I hope everyone who has taken the time to read all the way to here can look at this situation I noticed myself in and take a look at your own.

Make sure you aren’t working all the time. Take some time for yourself. And at the same time, try not to get distracted with household tasks during the workday. There are many benefits of working from home and definitely try to appreciate those. Just make sure to be aware of issues that may arise and have a plan to combat them.

For further learning about this topic, I would recommend the course “Time Management: Working from Home” on LinkedIn Learning with instructor Dave Crenshaw. I found this course gave me a jump start on these actions and proposes many recommendations on how to maintain this balance and create differentiation between work and home life when working from home.