Work in a time of COVID-19: Week 3 - getting comfortable, paring back and looking forward

Each week during lockdown I'm bringing my weekly reflections, observations, musings and tips on the experience. I'd love to hear yours too - drop a comment at the bottom of the article with your own thoughts.

Week 3 done. 15 days of working from home. I've worked from home on and off since 2007 and have done continuous stints of working from home previously (including when I (unknowingly) fractured my spine in 2011 and after I had my appendix out in 2018) so initially I was quite looking forward to working from home and not being in pain!

What I hadn't appreciated though was that whilst those stints were physically painful, I could still see my friends and family and have visitors. The shops were open, I could (hobble) to a restaurant or cafe and everything else was totally normal outside of my house. Therefore, it didn't force the level of reflection that this time has.

Paring back

The reflection I've been most surprised by this week was how I've slipped into 'this is how I live now'. My daily routine is pretty much set, my week is structured so I don't end up with weekends looking too much like the weekdays (other than the location of course) and it's all become quite... comfortable.

I've forcibly pared back my life to it's essential parts. Which it turns out is;

• daily exercise
• work (although how I spend my work time now, compared to "Life BC", looks different)
• cooking (and not having to batch cook every week, ready to always eat on the run or to save time in the evenings that's spent elsewhere)
• eating
• drinking tea
• talking to the people I want to talk to
• listening to great music
• learning through podcasts, books and online courses

I've suddenly found that I *do* have the time to do the things I most enjoy and didn't have the time / energy for before.

And as someone who finds the idea of a 'content' life a bit uncomfortable, I've been surprised at how quickly I've become quite... comfortable. This morning I even wondered if I'd bother leaving the house again after all of this is over - turns out I can do everything from right here.

Maybe it's the context that matters; nothing fun is happening 'out there' so there's no FOMO to be suffered.

Looking forward

I've seen this quote doing the rounds on social media this week:

“In the rush to return to normal, use this time to consider which parts of normal are worth rushing back to.”

– Dave Hollis  

The travel, the networking events, the social gatherings, the live music, the comedy shows, the commutes, the miscellaneous roles we play, the routines, the exercise classes, the work, the friends, the hobbies...

Some of these I'm dying to do again (the call of going to see some live music is very strong).

But I'm starting to think about "Life AC" and what that could look like. And I feel that we have to do that now, whilst motivation and the real feelings are strongest, and not wait until we've slipped back into old ways to then look back and think 'oh yeah, I was going to start/stop doing that thing'.

How much we will even be able to go back to old ways though, is yet to be decided.