Being Productive by modeling habits and routines during a pandemic
Yes, you are right. This article is about being productive while working from home, and yes, it’s due to COVID-19. Now that the obvious one is out, I am here to share what worked for me so far and how I adapted few simple changes in my habits and routines to ensure my productivity is not hit during work from home regime.
I have worked from home numerous times in the past. Still, this time it is atypical given the circumstances as it’s not just for a day or two, and surely unique because I know that most of my company employees are doing so, just like various others across the globe. O yes, and then reality hits that this is bigger that everything else, this is a real pandemic, unlike anything I have seen in my life so far, something that is a nightmare out of an apocalyptic or virus outbreak movie.
Yeah, this is real, and I know that I needed to find a solution as just sitting on a couch or a coffee table with my laptop in hand won’t cut it. I needed a sustainable approach, mindset, and a setup that can work for me, my organization, and my family for the foreseeable future.
Organization Support
Many of us may be feeling anxious, overwhelmed, confused, calm, bored, stressed or rather everything at the same time. To help us cope, I believe all the organizations across the world have created some sort of well-being plan for the employees. We, at Kongsberg Digital, also received the plan in terms of work flexibility, assistance, health insurance details, information from global offices and constant reminders on how to keep safe, status updates and all the good things we could expect from a company we work for in these tough times.
Currently, Norway is one of the most affected countries based on infection rates per capita. The situation changed dramatically in Norway within last two weeks - from roaming out in cozy coffee shops, shopping, the wanderlust in nature, to self-quarantine at homes, it was too much to process in the short span of time. During these days, Kongsberg Digital made sure that all the employees are up to date with the state of affairs, travel restrictions, and with the safest and pragmatic options for the employees. The HR, Safety and Communication team have been in constant touch with all the employees and they made sure that the essential steps are taken to safeguard the health of all resources. It is one of the crucial elements of how it worked out for all of us so far, and this part indeed helped me to make necessary changes.
All our colleagues are in constant touch over the collaboration tools, primarily MS Teams, which has been working great so far. We have been sharing tips and best practices with each other on how to be productive while working from home. Two of some useful articles I read and highly recommend are:
- Staying productive while working remotely with MS Teams by By Jared Spataro, Microsoft
- Being able to work at home vs. having to work at home by Bjørn O. Hopland
Work Environment
I had given away my home office setup in exchange for the toy room for my daughter over last Christmas, and it was worth it. However, little I knew the situation we have now; I had to recollect all necessary pieces to make something work for me again. I certainly took it as an opportunity last weekend.
First, I wanted to find out a spot that is most conducive to my work. The room that I chose keeps me away from the living room where usually the day noise happens. It surely worked in my favor; having a separate workspace was a luxury, but with a little adjustment, I got exactly that with a little bit of trial and error. I started to set up a work desk and built on the top of it (literally!).
My initial goal was to ensure that I have a simple working setup, somewhat separate, and well-equipped. I didn’t need any fancy desk but a right pragmatic solution, a good office chair (which I thankfully kept), and all the necessary equipment that may help me gain momentum. Remember, you need to respect the needs of your body, so it may be a good time to invest in the right ergonomic keyboard or chair. Do reach out to your IT, in case they have some equipment for you to loan for this period.
I loved the outcome, and it has been great working here so far. But, this was the easy part.
Discipline — Routines & Habits
Any guesses how easy it was? Well, this was the hardest part of the setup, as it involved tuning the mindset. Communication and interaction with remote teams are some of the significant parts of my job, and at times the work stretches towards the end of the day because one of the meetings couldn’t be finished in time, and you couldn’t do what you had to.
I started to treat this new room as my new office, where I have to (try to) be punctual, keep up the schedules, utilize the morning meetings with the morning coffee joy!
Keep office hours
I ensure that I am available during office hours most of the time, thanks to my wife for keeping up with the energy of my six years old. I must specify that my wife doesn’t work currently, which is a blessing in disguise with the current situation. I admit that sometimes I ought to give the benefit of my presence to my daughter, and I make up for that by taking five minutes break every one hour and talk to her or even ask her to paint me something to keep it exciting and challenging for her. It is undoubtedly difficult for your kids to understand your needs and reasoning, but it’s fantastic to see them respecting your needs and boundaries if you respect theirs. It’s interesting to see how such small things make it work for you and kids both, and don’t forget to treat them for their best creative aspect at the end of your workday. My treat to her is some playtime, board games, or whatever she wants; I don’t mind as long as it works. Plus, we all look forward to having breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, which is a perk in itself, and so far, it has been able to keep us all disciplined.
Food
First, take a proper lunch break, follow your office routine. It helps you to come out of the office mode for a while, sit with your family, and have some casual chat. It will surely help you prevent the burn out for the long term.
At home, it becomes easy to eat comfort food, but I highly recommend to stay away from heavy soporific food that causes siesta. Have some light lunch, preferably brain food. I always prefer and suggest not eating at your desk when you work from home, and there is a good reason for it. What about coffee? Of course, yes, that’s the fuel. I keep a tall coffee tumbler at the desk and refill it whenever needed.
At the same time, I ensure that I never eat my breakfast on the desk; it has to be eaten at the dining table, preferably before I enter my “new” office. Though, I would be honest that I am yet challenged on that.
Be Social, virtually!
Humans are social animals (and then some), and this analogy applies to our social lives too. Feel free to dial in or prearrange a virtual lunch or coffee meetup with one or more of your colleagues. It’s fantastic to see how it fills you up with a good vibe and motivation. Its not the same, but atleast, I don’t miss talking to my colleagues for a casual chat.
Tools
We, at Kongsberg Digital, work mostly with DevOps tools that are available online. It dramatically reduces our dependencies of physical office presence for mere communication purposes. Some of the tools I work for most of my office duration are:
- MS Outlook — for emails, scheduling
- MS Teams — collaboration across organization, meetings, chat, document management
- Azure DevOps — For entire application lifecycle management enabling DevOps capabilities and CI/CD, release management
- MS Azure — Our Cloud Computing service
- JFrog — Artifactory management
It certainly makes my life easier. I must state that it doesn't address the need of a physical meetup for workshops, sync sessions or conferences which is a big part of our company profile, however in the given time it is anyway troublesome and banned due to safety concerns, so there is not much we can do.
The world is going towards virtual meetup direction, which also helps the purpose. For example, I am supposed to speak at a conference in April, and the organization committee has already decided to make the conference virtual this year, so I can avoid the travel, and yet participate, share my experience and thoughts with the conference participants. It’s exciting!
Connectivity
Thanks to my high-speed broadband, internet connectivity is not an issue. As a backup, my ISP also provides a guarantee to facilitate mobile data in case I am out of the home broadband for any reason.
Given the situation, recently, I have an agreement with my friend (and neighbor) to share the broadband connection over WiFi if any unforeseen issue happens, and we believe it would help tremendously as we both have different operators. Being said that, I always ensure my office VPN connectivity, so if any such issue happens, my official activity on the borrowed internet would not be compromised.
Inspiration
There are a lot of online resources and articles I read through on how to remain productive at work while working from home. Our HR & Communication teams at Kongsberg Digital have done a tremendous job to keep us all motivated in these trying times, and our top leadership has reminded us time and again for safety first for our family and us. It inevitably gives me the confidence, inspiration, and joy to deliver my work with utmost diligence hence work location becomes an irrelevant factor that doesn’t matter anymore.
Social Distancing
I believe it’s my responsibility to support my organization and society by ensuring social distancing. We are social animals, and it becomes difficult in these trying times as the things we take for granted in regular lives, they become challenging. Due to recent home quarantine rules imposed in the country, my family is under home quarantine as well citing safety practices. We take this opportunity by using technology to keep up with our social circle. We organize virtual tea/coffee sessions over FaceTime, and last night we tried a nice dinner with the family overseas, it went well. It’s not the same feeling, but given the circumstances, it works for us to keep sane and be in touch with our dear ones.
Your social contact does make a lot of difference in your well being and positive thought process in extraordinary circumstances like this. Needless to say this same positivity and well being help me a lot to be productive and vigilant at work.
Remember, it is not a challenge unless you make it.
