It’s been awhile since my last post and the reasons are varied but it’s the usual “life gets in the way” of something I want to do. I am a fan of articles around “Work / Life Balance” but to be honest some of them are fantasies and by the end of this you might think the same.
I think the best work life balance you can aspire to is not working at all. The second best though must be working from home. Some of us do this full time and have done for a while. Some of us do this part time or at random intervals throughout our careers. Unfortunately some of us just dream of doing this. Isn’t it the dream to wake up and work in your underwear? Having an infinitely flexible work day, with lots of productivity, little to no distractions and all importantly no travel time. This is the ultimate goal of the remote workplace, zero travel time.
Or course the reality of it is somewhat removed from that for most.
People work from home all of the time as all you realistically need to work in IT (or any other information services role) is an internet connection to do what is needed.
Unfortunately to do it successfully and be productive at home is another thing as there are multiple distractions and other reasons when we do work at home that we don’t always achieve our goals of a fruitful working day. It has taken me the longest time to figure this out and these are some of the lessons I have learnt over my career.
Lesson #1 – Clocking on
I started my working from home career by getting out of bed at about 5am, logging onto my desktop, remoting into a server that sat in a dusty old storeroom attached to a dusty old office in some remote part of Africa that when you flew there took 3 days and 4 flights (where the last leg of the flight saw you with a cage with a chicken in it on your lap) to extract results out of a collection of mining equipment to generate some daily reports. To kick off the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) to this part of the world took about 5 to 8 minutes so I used to go off and make a cup of tea. I would come back, run some checks and then kick off the extraction process which again would take a few minutes. So again I would head off and get some clothes on. Come back and the files were extracted and waiting and I would run some scripts that I had written to manipulate the data and then run the reports, format them and send them via email to various parties.
Time for breakfast. Did I mention you eat more when you work from home?
So I would break my day into smaller chunks of work and take breaks in between to make a cuppa or a snack, read the news, get the mail, etc, etc. When you’re at home all day there in an abundant amount of things to be done so you do them with the justification that you started work at 5am and will make up the hours as the day goes by. You end up doing little bits of pieces here and there and try and make up a 8 to 10 hour day but it takes you to 10 or 11 at night to do those 8 hours.
This was before I had young kids which would no doubt input an influx of other interruptions throughout the day.
So my advice here is to Time box your working day. Schedule your interruptions (those that can be scheduled) around your work schedule. If you have to get kids ready for school and pick them up then book that into your day. If you like getting up at 5am then schedule to start at 5:30am and give yourself 30 minutes for coffee and breakfast and getting dressed and be ready for work at 5:30. If the kids get up at 6:30 then you know you have an hour or more to get a decent piece of work in before dealing with them.
Plan to stop for lunch (it’s mandatory in some organisations and for good reason). Plan to pick the kids up and if you can’t get a solid hour in between sorting them out then don’t bother. Waiting until they go to bed is sometimes an option if you need to make up the time. If you are like me and you don’t watch much TV then do an hour or so then before relaxing for the night.
With running around with kids and work you have probably done a 10 or 11 hour day so schedule time to put your feet up and turn off.
Remember the key lesson is to timebox your work day and not just work between interruptions.
Lesson #2 – Dress for Success
I mentioned above the dream of working in your underwear but that is perhaps best left for lingerie models and surf lifesavers. I tried it for a while but couldn’t seem to get into work mode while sitting there half naked. It also felt awkward when talking on the phone to clients.
I am now a firm believer of getting dressed for work. It may not be a suit and tie or even business dress but it has to be something different to your pyjamas or your underwear so you are actually in work mode.
In winter to avoid the cost of heating the house all day just for one person I wore my official work uniform which consisted of Ugg boots, an old tracksuit and a beanie. It wasn’t flash but it was comfortable and became my routine through most of winter.
Routine is important when starting the day and puts you into a work mode if you do the same thing every day.
Lesson #3 – Get rid of the distractions
I am the master of procrastination so if I have something within my sight that looks like it even remotely needs my attention and it’s not work related I am all over it. I will reorganise my desk, pay bills, adjust my chair, upgrade some software on my PC, read the online news, reply to a private email, etc, etc. None of this is very productive so I ensure when I finish each afternoon I maintain a clean desk policy so in the morning I sit down and am ready for work with nothing to entice me away from my work.
I make up a quick list before I go so that when I sit down in the morning I am not wondering what to do. I have a list of priority items that needs resolving and it puts me in work mode and I get stuck into them. This gives me a sense of quick achievement and puts me on the productivity path for the remainder of the day.
Know what distracts you, deal with it and if you find it hard to get started in the morning, ready a list before you finish at night to kick start your morning.
Lesson #4 – Be realistic about what you can and can’t do from home
Even as an information worker with complete remote access to all of my resources that I have at work there are still a multitude of items that I cannot do at home.
Meetings should be face to face if possible. Sorry but I am not buying the “digital workplace” with the teleconferencing as a viable option to replace a face to face meetings. So much more can be achieved in person than on the phone or via a video conference.
Workplace relationships are very important to what I do and communicating via email, instant messaging or video link just won’t cut it. Sure, for just sending or receiving some basic information and putting something specific in writing is always an option for a large chunk of the knowledge transfer that takes place on any given day but I need to be in the same room as the person I am talking to if there is a possibility that the issue is a contentious one or if I am asking for a favour.
Lesson #5 – Clocking off
I found when I first starting working from home that I forgot to clock off. You leave your PC still logged in at the end of the day. You go and have dinner, come back and read a few emails. You watch some TV and have a quick look during the ad breaks. Or you take your laptop into the lounge and half watch TV while working. You end up doing bits and pieces between doing other things and end up working until midnight without really being very productive at all. .
You go to bed, wake up in the morning, sit in front of the PC and it feels like you haven’t clocked off yet.
When you commute to and from work, there is this separation that exists. When you work from home you have to create that separation yourself. I have already mentioned about clocking on. That is the moment you are no longer at home but now at work. So you need to ensure you can break away from the work space or out of work mode completely and let yourself reboot. I find that once I break away from work I don’t necessarily stop thinking about work but it helps my brain absorb what has occurred throughout the day and put it into some sort of order.
I often work on my most difficult tasks last if I am having trouble formulating a solution to something. This then sticks in my mind and I go to bed with it and have on many occasion woken at 4am with a solution.
Many of us aim to work from home and it seems like the dream job. The reality is it actually takes significant amounts of discipline to be successful and productive at it. Without formality around working from home you are doomed to fail or flounder all day and be unproductive.