things I knew about myself that I forgot

[orangerful]

Well, if this whole pandemic has taught (or retaught?) me anything, it is that I am a creature of habit to the nth degree.

There was a reason that I had perfect attendance all through elementary, middle and high school. There was a reason I never get any better at my instrument.
There was a reason I went to every single class, lecture and lab in college.

If I’m not in a work environment, I am awful at doing work.

I am the kind of person that keeps their home life and work life as separate as I can. I mean, yes, most of my friends are from work, but I never bring work home with me and I rarely let it bleed into my every day life. I’m lucky like that, it is what attracted me to my job. I work 9-5 (and once a week 1-9) and then I am done. When I go on vacation, I will look at my work email and scan it for any emergencies (now that I’m a manager) but my staff knows to text me if there is something urgent because otherwise I am not working when I’m off.

So being at home and trying to work from home has been a challenge. Especially since when the library first shut down, we were just stuck in a holding pattern, with very little we needed to do apart from updating the signage when our closing dates were extended. And now that the date is finally feeling tangible, I’m starting to panic? Because I know there are things I need to do and get done and suddenly it feels like I need to get everything done right now even though I have a month but the way April flew by, a month seems like nothing.

When I’m at work, I am more self-motivated but apparently at home, I have little to no motivation because I have programmed myself to feel like being at home means time to relax. And I really don’t want to throw that off?

I may attempt to create some kind of schedule for next week, force myself to get up, do work. Because here is the thing, I think I am most productive from 9am-11am when I’m at work but when I am at home and have nowhere to be, I naturally sleep until 10:30am so therefore, though I feel well rested, I have missed my productive hours and tend to not want to do anything. (normal workday usually has me in my office from 9-1, eating lunch from 1-2, and then usually working on the desk or mingling with staff from 2-5 so you can see how my internal clock is set up already).

Anyway, how are you all holding up? Hope you’ve had better luck finding your work-from-home groove. Or, at the very least, reading this post makes you feel less alone in your struggle. ❤

I leave you with the tweet that inspired this introspective post:

pic.twitter.com/6IkDgzYkYj

— David Tomlinson (@EvilSoupdragon) May 2, 2020

Comments

[silverusagi]

I seem to be one of those weird people who thrives while not on a routine. If only I could just do my work from home crap at 3 am. But no, we have to have a bunch of meetings just to fill the time. I promise you, there is nothing we actually need to meet about.

[jerusha]

I had to work remotely from Sydney when we were there, and I found that having separate spaces really helped. Even in our tiny flat, if I was at the table with the work computer, I was working. If I was on the couch on my personal computer, I was not. Here, I have the space for a home office, so if I'm there, I'm working. That really helps.

[graveexcitement]

omg, i’m the same re: perfect attendance in school! going to class (irl) is easy. doing stuff at home is hard! though unfortunately even, say, doing stuff at the library on campus is, well, i’d phrase it as “mixed success.” i’ve been struggling with juggling my schoolwork these days due to lack of structure/etc., though at the very least it will soon be over. in just a week and a half, the semester will be over. .

my uni hasn’t committed one way or the other as to whether fall classes will be online or not, but i’ll register for classes (when registration opens) and then decide whether to drop them if it turns out they’ll be online.

[goodbyebird]

I know them feels. Trying to motivate myself on my own is tough going ♥

As for home/work separation, could you try cordoning off a small area and have that be your "office"? And then you only use that area for work, to keep the rest of your home area a relaxation zone.

[bungalow_life]

So - weirdly, in a lot of ways I feel like I work much better (when I don't have loud interruptions in the house, which is a whole other story) when I can just move between things. I love being able to take a mental work break by going and putting clothes in the drier, or thinking through a problem while I fold clothes, for instance. But that said, I also have always been super leery of 'work bleed' and not wanted to be doing work at all hours, so even though I enjoy multitasking, I definitely want my evenings and weekends work free.

So the first week, I essentially set up hours I was 'at work'. 9 - 6, was what I went with, and so I try to be up and available in Teams by 9am, and then I turn things off at 6pm. And to help facilitate this, I set up a second profile in Chrome that has work bookmarks and work email and work things. I also wanted to tie my work to one location and it worked for the first week before my husband was also working from home in the same area and doinga lot of conference calls, and now I just float (I don't love it, but it's kind of a 'where can I focus today in this moment?' vibe). My schedule is somewhat looser than it might be if I were physically at work (in that I may do house things during breaks!) but I still have a basic 'work week', and it's mostly worked well. There have been a few times work crept in at other times, but it's because I looked at it on my phone and went 'oh I should deal with this', and if I didn't have work email on my phone then I wouldn't probably have had that issue lol. All this said, my mornings I don't usually get a lot done because I'm frequently helping my kiddo with school things during that time... So you know, it's a process.

Anyway - I hope you can figure out something that works. This whole time is weird and I suspect everyone's had their own way to set things up, depending on what situation they're in.

[orangerful]

Yeah, I think that I actually just don't have much to do so when we suddenly HAD things to do I was like "OMG my old life...what was it like? I don't remember!".

But I don't have enough to do from 9-5 when I'm at home to even pretend to have a work week. Really, if I just set aside 2 hours on the mornings we don't have meetings, I should be fine. It's just that shock of going from nothing to something.

[bungalow_life]

Yeah. I have like - I'm having to offer certain hours of chat, which isn't usually that busy (anymore than the face to face would be?) so that definitely requires more hours even if I don't have other work stuff to do. But I think if I didn't have those chat hours, I'd just set certain hours that I try to focus on work stuff, or say between X and X I'm going to try to get this done, and when I'm done, be done? But some regularity definitely helps me. Even if it's... also less scheduled in stone than work life used to be? LOL. IDK.

[reenee]

I'm definitely struggling without having a routine, and that separation of work/home. I'm trying to keep to it and luckily pretty much my whole job can be done from a hastily set up desk in my spare room - but it's becoming more and more tempting to just migrate to my couch. I thought it would get easier but it's getting harder the longer it's going on.

Most conversation I seem to have lately revolve around this - its interesting seeing other peoples takes. I know many people who are super productive without interruptions - but I'm missing my office coworkers and coffee break chats etc.

[orangerful]

I agree that it is getting harder and harder. I feel like a lot of people I chat with online, even professional youtubers I follow, were all showing signs of fatigue this past week of just being done with this whole thing. But we know it's not safe, we don't want to endanger ourselves but at the same time I want to have my routine again.