An evolving field guide to working differently
Hello dear reader. How are you?
If you’re currently working in 5 minute sprints in between meetings with your cats at the cat bowl, or sitting at the screen flicking between the 17th and 29th tabs of your browser… we empathise.
But, while we’re all in the same boat, maybe we can share some tips and stories about how we manage to work from home, mostly independently, usually remote from clients, and find time to move forwards, slowly.
/Stories we’ve heard from people newly working remote\
- “I have no time in between meetings for a walk, or to not work. No incidental time where I can just wander between work here and work there. Instead I’m in a call then I’m still at my desk and so I don’t stop working all day.”
- “I’m even busier working at home and doing even longer days than before”
- “There are so many interruptions”
- “The internet won’t support us all on videocalls at once”
\Things we’ve heard or have done that have helped/
- Setting hour blocks in the day for specific tasks
- Giving yourself a full morning tea break, full lunch break, full afternoon tea break
- Setting a start and finish time that suits you. Maybe your normal work hours have flexibility now to change to be times in the day where you feel most focused and able.
- Allowing yourself to go slower
- Allowing for meetings to go slower, or for priorities to change once you all get together in the call
- Stay simple with tech: consider offline parts to collaborative meetings or workshops, and then coming online to share everyone’s findings or answers
- If you can all be in the same shared document like google docs, or a visual tool like Mural, during a meeting, it can help to bring focus to the same placeun
- Consider low-tech collaboration too, like multi-way phone calls, group emails, group Whatsapp chats, physical/non-digital brainstorming and workshopping activities which are then photographed to share with the group
- A note on your door so people know when not to interrupt you
- Being patient with the process, taking breaks, coming back with a fresh head after walks, stretching, breaks
Of course it can still be hard, if there are many people working in the same home, or working at the table you just had breakfast at and will have lunch at shortly. Having said that, one of us works from within a tiny house.
A story from living in a Tiny House
Working and living in the same space can be challenging, as work often creeps across the mind even in downtime. After three years of living and working (from home) in a tiny home, Elise’s advice would be:
- If you have a room you can dedicate solely to your work, it can help to physically shut the door to that room once the day is done. Delineate living spaces from working spaces.
- If you don’t have room to have a separate space, you can still make a conducive environment for yourself. Set your desk space in the morning, and clear it away in the evening.
- After work has finished, remove work documents from sight if you can, and store them in a bag or cupboard.
- Have an afternoon task or ritual which signifies the end of your work day. Phone down or laptop closed, walk into the garden, take a shower or a bath.
Have you experienced any positive changes?
Are there things that would make your work easier?
We would love to know, and if possible, share anything that might help, or share your good news stories.
We do believe that new ways of living and working can come out of this time and that we are all working together to work them out.
Sharing these problems and successes helps keep us all encouraged.
We hope you are well, and we would love to hear your stories.
