TELEWORK: GET UP.GET GOING. GET DRESSED... By Jon Weinstein

Many people opine about things that they think that they know about. Many other regularly opine about things here that they know about, but their expertise may be secondary. Few live what they write about.

I have been largely home-officing it for the past 16 years. I started “Teleworking” and using crude GoToMeeting earliest iterations since 2004. I have had a fully stocked home office with reliable( well…? Not always…) internet connection, land line, fax, multi-purpose printer, and at least two operative computers, a larger monitor, plenty of supplies, and the proper furniture conducive to office work.

I have been living it /doing it/ being it for a long, long time. So, I have a few pointers that are more appropriate than ever now that we have seen a sudden, radical transformation of how we work from physical work site to remote office , and from group cohesion to atomized yet interconnected groups.

GET UP EARLY. If your prior start time was 7:30—be at your desk by 7:30, or whenever. Maintain your office structure. The ease of slipping and sliding into slower, casual work attendance is obvious when you are working form home. Let’s say that you don’t have a sign-in/check-in policy going where you work. Self-check-in at your regular time. Maintain start discipline, because three things happen when you don’t:

1.      Once you deviate, you deviate even deeper.

2.      You will feel more stressed, dislocated and morose because you are falling behind. You will find yourself with more crunch crises of completion than you ever had before—or even needed to have.

3.      When and if you ever go back to a worksite, you will possess some new, bad habits.

GET GOING: The temptation to noodle around online, on your phone, delve into news and other sites, etc. will be huge. But it’s your work time that you are frittering away, and you are creating both degraded work quality habits as well as needless rush/stress. The largest cause of stress is stress from the feeling that you have so much left undone, done poorly, and knowingly put off. The largest stress factors come from realizing that you could have/should have but ...didn’t.

AVOID HOUSEHOLD DISTRACTIONS: Let’s face it. For most, a home office is not an ‘Office’. There are kids, pets, and outside distractions. Ease of access to all sorts of media and personal distractions abound. Wall.Them.Off. If you can’t have a dedicated, set-off room for workspace, make as much of a sharply defined WORK AREA delineation as possible, then create boundaries nonetheless. Establish rules and systems that will put the quiet and professional ambience needs of your workplace first.

SET DEADLINES: Be ever more vigilant and about time management. Assign deadlines. Break for meals and breaks for the same, exact amount of time and frequency as you used to do in your former environment. One exception: Get up mid-day and WALK. Go outside , safely, when you can—of course, observing the social distancing rules. But: WALK.

MAKE FLEXIBLE WORK RULES: Okay, instead of closing up at 6 on the dot, run late; or start a half hour early. In short, reward yourself by making flexible changes so that you can actually squeeze out a little bit of the sunlit workday form your more relaxed working quarters.

…AND ANOTHER THING: GET DRESSED! I am not saying that you should dress in work attire for solitary at-home telework. Of course not. But, get dressed. Your work mindset suffers if you loll about in sleepwear, or less.

IDEAS?.... SUGGESTIONS? I have more ideas for how to maximize time and re-craft your home working life. As I said, I’ve BEEN THERE/DONE THAT. For a long time.

And will likely be doing it for an even longer time.

JON WEINSTEIN is a business commentator, author, and supply chain/business development executive and business owner.