7 WAYS TO IMPROVE THE WAY YOU WORK FROM HOME

IF YOU'RE FATIGUED, OVERWHELMED, ANXIOUS OR UNFOCUSED - YOU'RE NOT ALONE!

Working from home used to be a dream for a lot of people. Remember that? We thought it would be amazing to spend time with our loved ones and balance our work with family obligations like some graceful ballet set to romantic music. It turns out that round the clock togetherness time, home schooling, and animals underfoot is more like a strange form of torture for some. And for those who live alone there are different struggles of isolation and disconnection. Don’t get me wrong, anyone who’s able to earn a living from the comfort of their home is dearly privileged and should be grateful. I know that I am. That said, we’re also feeling fatigued, anxious and overwhelmed. Harnessing energy and focus is a full-time job when there are real distractions like Netflix, chores, spotty Internet, barking dogs, self-loathing and demanding humans.

My previous work schedule traveling all over the world speaking and training has come to a grinding halt.  I too have had to redesign my work as well as attitude to serve my clients at the highest level. Most of our clients are knowledge workers. The emotional and intellectual demands of their work are substantial. In the best of circumstances focus and productivity can be a challenge, but now we’re all navigating the demands of a pandemic.

Here are 7 things that can help you with energy, focus and productivity.

1. We’re living in a world without boundaries. Time and space have no lines and are bleeding into one another. Create boundaries! Don’t eat your lunch standing up in the kitchen hunched over your phone or work from bed until you pass out drooling on your laptop. Decide when and where you will work. Create dedicated work spaces in your home. Not everyone has an in home office to themselves. If you do, great! If you don’t have an office make sure that you have places in your home that are for living and not working. I also recommend your living spaces be digital free zones so you’re forced to talk to humans or read or listen to music or just sit and look out the window. 
2. Create a schedule. I even schedule my stress. Make sure you have a starting and ending time for your work day. Just because someone is e-mailing you at 11pm doesn’t mean you have to respond. Place an out of office message on e-mails and let people know when you’ll be getting back to them so everyone is clear about your availability. 
3. If you’re partnered with someone, be sure to express what you need right now and ask them what they need. Maybe you need 15 minutes alone in the morning to drink your coffee in silence or you need to take a walk at noon. These are what I refer to as sanity requests. Your energy is not infinite. You need to replenish your energy and be thoughtful about what depletes you. I used to have rolling to do lists with things that might roll over for days or even weeks. Now I just calendar when I will deal with something stressful so I’m not taking up emotional real estate on something that I can address in a couple of weeks. It's life changing.
4. Work in bursts. There’s lots of research on the advantages of working in short, focused bursts of 25 minutes and taking 5 minute breaks. I find this extremely useful. Working for 4 hours straight at my desk dulls my brain. If I jump up and have a dance party for one (yes I do that) or read a poem or make a cup of tea, I come back to my desk fresher and sharper. Set a timer for work bursts and breaks.
5. Create a morning routine. I’ve become an evangelist for morning routines. My mother died at home in September of heart failure. Working from home and caring for my dying mother utterly exhausted me. After her death I felt like I couldn’t harness enough energy to read through all of my e-mail. I decided I needed to change the way I started my day to inform the way I would spend my day. The changes have given me a huge amount of energy and focus and I’m sleeping soundly at night, which for me is akin to a miracle. I start my day slower. I don’t look at my phone until I’m ready to work. I do 10 minutes of stretching before I leave my bedroom. I have a light breakfast while I journal, read and listen to music. Only when I’ve done all of these things do I begin my day. Now this may sound wildly indulgent to you, but the return on investment is really high and the whole process takes me 30 minutes or so. If you can’t afford this much time, start slow and small. Take 5 minutes alone to journal or 10 minutes to read in the morning. Work your way up to a routine that works for you. 
6. Shorten and eliminate meetings whenever necessary. Make meetings matter! Have an objective, agenda and purpose. Begin and end meetings on time. This will prevent fatigue for you and your colleagues. 
7. Check your attitude. I’m totally responsible for how I show up. I decide before I speak to a single human being what kind of day it’s going to be. Don’t be at the mercy of things beyond your control. List all of the things that are causing you stress and cross off all of the things beyond your control. Now just focus on what you can control. This small exercise alleviates stress by limiting your focus to what’s within your power. 

There is so much we can’t control right now. Focusing on the things we can control and making some decisions about how, when and where we work can help us gain some agency in our lives. If you’re feeling tired, impatient, anxious or unproductive, be kind to yourself. You’re having a very human experience. Implement changes slowly in small consumable bites. The brain doesn’t like big, radical, quick changes. Be gentle with yourself and others. It will make all the difference.

Here are some links you may also find helpful:

Staying Energized in a Pandemic World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssupL_3539M&t=12s

Don't Talk To You Like That! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kj86OremPI

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