Before March, I had never worked from home for a day in my life. It wasn’t just that I didn’t have a job that would allow me to, but I would frankly have been terrible at it. Since then, through many hours of teaching, meetings, and work on nestria.org, I’ve had to make do and learn to get work done from home, without the physical presence of colleagues, students, or anyone else except my two roommates. Though I haven’t become perfect at it, I’d like to share the basics that I learned to make myself more productive from home. These few tips should be usable not just for those who are currently employed, but for anyone that might need to find a little bit of productivity working from the same place where they live.
Tip #1: Work from one place, and one place only
For anyone getting the wrong idea here: my apartment is not large; I don’t have a study or any work-specific rooms. My 3-bedroom Brooklyn apartment has a living room/kitchen, single bathroom (I know), and 3 bedrooms. Even without the luxury of space, I’ve found success dedicating a small portion of my bedroom to work.
Though it seems like a small enough change, my less-than-two-foot-wide desk and uncomfortable chair allow me to mentally separate “work” from everything else I do in my apartment. This mental separation becomes important at all hours of the day- when I sit down at my desk, I’m “at work”, and when I’m anywhere else, I’m “at home”, helping create that separation that is so easy to achieve with an office and a commute creating real physical and temporal separation. I use my desk for nothing else, and I don’t work from anywhere else. As long as I’ve kept this rule hard and fast, I’ve felt much better.
Tip #2: Create yourself a routine
I am incredibly driven by routine, and in my experience most people prefer to have a daily routine. It makes your day predictable, reducing personal stress and creating a sense of what’s “normal”, even in our current unprecedented times. This doesn’t need to be the same routine as everyone else either. I’m usually most awake and productive between 8am and noon, so I make sure to start work on the earlier side. Many people are the opposite, or have other commitments during the day. Whatever your schedule can be, if you can create any consistency you’ll be more comfortable and probably get more done.
The other side of a schedule is just as important- creating a routine and work schedule allows you to turn off afterwards, or whatever time you’ve decided isn’t work time. As someone who has a hard time disconnecting from work if there’s work to be done (there always is), having a set hour that I finish, and *knowing* the next time I’ll start up, allows me to avoid burning out and focus on other, non-work things. It also allows me to focus more on work when I’m working, since I know I’ll be able to stop later.
Tip #3: Go outside, see the sun, and take the occasional break
Especially with winter coming up (at least in New York), this is one of the most important things I’ve learned. We have daylight until maybe 4:30pm, and even then, it looks like late afternoon sun all day. If you’re working from home the whole time, it’s very easy not to leave, to get caught up in work, or feel like you should be Near Your Computer until later in the afternoon or evening. Experiencing the outdoors for even a few minutes can have a huge effect on my mood, and gives a little bit of time to decompress from whatever you’ve been working on all day.
As a minimum, I make sure that every day (at least when it’s not raining), I can at least get up onto my roof for a minute or two just to see the sun and have left my apartment. It’s not going to completely change your life, but the slight change in location and mood can make a noticeable difference, especially with no commute forcing you out and away from your apartment. As someone who has a 36 inch journey from bed to work, instead of a 40-minute subway ride, it’s quite an improvement.
Tip #4: Stay connected
As a former in-person instructor working in a small office, I’ve never been able to listen to music while working, and now I honestly find it distracting most of the time. When the office was filled with students, coworkers, and the energy of other people, this wasn’t a big problem. Now though, unless Zoom is up I’m constantly surrounded by the deafening silence of working alone. It can make focusing a little harder, and so I’ve tried staying plugged into whatever social channels I can use during the workday. The collective energy of an office, and the presence of others working, isn’t really something you can replace at home (unless you work in the same room as others), but any little bit can help.
This may sound counterintuitive, and take this part with moderation, but if you have some time, make sure to interact with others. Send your coworkers a meme, message Devarsh about a midday soccer score, share an interesting article, or check the group DM with your friends or family once in a while. There’s obviously a point where this can sidetrack you from work, but for the most part, my friends and coworkers are doing the same. They need to get work done too, but the occasional laugh can add a touch of the missing social interaction. This is very much dependent on who you are as a person, but staying in contact with others has definitely helped me focus and get work done.
Hopefully a few of these small tips can help you work from home; it’s not an exhaustive list, but simply what’s helped me through the last 9 months. I’m the last person I’d expect to be able to work from home, but this has been what’s helped me adapt the best.