Category: How To

Work From Home Strategies (6 months late)

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I kind of hate working from home.

There are a variety of reasons why working from home has never been ideal for me: I’m an extrovert who thrives better in social environments, the external (if imagined) accountability of people around me keeps me too guilty to slack off, my home environment is full of tempting distractions like tidying and organization.

In simplest terms, being at home puts me in a home mindset, and personally, going to a physically different location for work helps immensely with putting me in a working headspace. Ever since I started working full time, I keep work and home very separate, very rarely touching work after leaving the office.

So the last 6 months have been, admittedly, a huge challenge. If you’re like me, they may have been a challenge for you, too. I have long understood that trying to be work-productive in the space I strictly reserve for my home-headspace is really difficult. But I’ve had to do the best that I can, given what I understand about myself. It’s been 6 months, so here’s hoping that we have learned a little bit about how we work from home, even if it’s just what doesn’t work well for us.

My personal strategy boils down to 3 main things:

  1. Getting in the work mindset
  2. Staying in the work mindset
  3. Leaving the work mindset

It seems straightforward but it’s hard, especially because I really don’t want to be in the work mindset at all when I’m in the comfort and safety of my home. I don’t hate my job at all but I don’t want it in my home. The hardest step of my strategy is step 2: saying in the work mindset. (I sometimes struggle to get properly or quickly settled into my work mindset even when I go into an office so the struggles I have at home are not new, and I shut myself off from work so strictly ordinarily that it comes more easily for me to do so at home.)

man in white sweater sitting on chair using Microsoft Surface Laptop 3
Photo by Charles Etoroma

Note: Alice Goldfuss has written a really great guide to working from home during this pandemic, and she wrote it at a more helpful time at the beginning of the shutdown. Honestly, I recommend reading that before reading on here, but if you want to know more about what works for me, personally:

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Pizza + Quesadilla = Pizzadilla [recipe]

Starr3 Comments

Did you hear chain emails are coming back into vogue? I got sent one the other day, but the intent was more wholesome than I remember them being when I was 11. It was a recipe exchange, and here’s the simple but satisfying one I sent as my contribution.

Pizzadilla! (Pizza + Quesadilla)

Pizza Quesadilla – Quick & Easy 4-Ingredient Recipe
Photo: Parade

Ingredients:

  • 1-2 tortillas
  • Sauce
    • I usually have some kind of pizza sauce just for this occasion, but you can use anything depending on the kind of pizza flavors you’re going for
  • Mozzarella cheese
  • Toppings of choice
    • Pepperoni and spinach are usually on mine
  • Oil (if frying)
  • OPTIONAL: Flavor garnishes of choice
    • I like red pepper flakes and roasted garlic/garlic powder
  • OPTIONAL: Something to dip the whole shebang in
    • Can be extra pizza sauce, can be ranch, go wild

Steps:

These depend a lot on how you prefer to make quesadillas. You can either do two tortillas stacked on each other OR fold over one quesadilla. I like doing the first way, so I’ll be focusing on that method, but you can more easily seal up the second way and I do like doing that for when I want a smaller portion. I’ll put those instructions in (parentheses)Read More »

COVID-19 Supplies

Starr2 Comments

With the worst of my husband’s condition behind us, I thought I would take a little bit of time to talk about how we were able to get through this at all. Here is a short list of supplies I am incredibly thankful for having or having provided to us over the past 3 weeks. Most of these we already had, even before the pandemic hit, but some we did need to get replenished during the worst bouts of fever.Read More »

How I Weaponize My Pride to Stay Productive – My C/D System

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I know that I’m in good company when I say that I have a really hard time staying focused and with procrastination. Recently, I’ve bungled together a strange system that works for myself and figured it might be worth sharing it in case it can help anyone else out.

Essentially, I guilt/shame myself into staying on task.

woman writing on notebook
Photo: J. Kelly Brito (Unsplash)

C/D System Instructions

Step 1. Using either a sticky note or a notebook (one that you will be using daily), designate a space and split it in half. You can use your entire sticky note if you have one, but I often like to draw a circle or a square about 2 inches wide and tall.
Optional. Write the date. This can be a good way to start your daily notes for the day if you are using a notebook/planner for your day-to-day.
Even more optional. Write your start-time.

Step 2. Split your designated space in half. Usually, I draw a horizontal line across the middle, but sometimes I do it diagonally. (Maybe that means something…? I wouldn’t know haha.)

Step 3. Label one half with a “C” and the other with a “D“. These stand for “Considered (a distraction)” and “Distracted“.

Step 4. Begin working and add tallies to the appropriate halves if needed. In action, here are some example scenarios would lead to tallies:Read More »

Gift Guide: Fun w/ Amazon Prime

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(Note: I am working on a slightly different format for my New Orleans recap but in the meantime, I’ve been doing a lot of gift curating lately and wanted to share some guides in a timely manner while we’re all scrambling to find presents for the holiday season!)

Happy Chanukah! Are you remembering that Chanukah involves gift-giving and you are scrambling? Do you have a White Elephant gift exchange coming up? Maybe you need to find something for a Secret Santa you don’t know very well?

I was recently tasked with finding some fun gifts to raffle off at a holiday event, with my only real constraint being that it had to come with Amazon Prime free 2-day shipping. While I am conflicted about using free 2-day shipping when it’s not necessary, the holiday season is one of the better times to use it for those of us who procrastinate or haven’t found the right thing in stores.

Without further ado, a list of gifts that were available on Amazon Prime for no more than $20, whittled down from perusing a lot of other online gift guides.

Note: Some of these items may no longer be in stock by the time you go to purchase them. The links included below are affiliate links.

For the doughnut lover: Set of 6 doughnut candles (also comes in a few other varieties!) $14

For the skincare fan who sends you silly face selfies: Elizavecca Milky Piggy Carbonated Bubble Clay Mask (super fun and effective face mask I personally love!): $11.80

For the low-maintenance self-care fiend: Set of 16 Korean face masks (enough to last a few weeks or throw a spa party) $11.99

For the land-locked mermaid: Mermaid tail blanket $14.99

For the cat + food lover: Pusheen plushie! (this one is holding an ice cream but there are other variations of food for this lil’ cat to hold at different prices!) $19.15

For the taco lover: Dinosaur taco holder, ’nuff said! $8.64

For the adventurous eater: Miracle berry tablets (you eat them and sour food tastes sweet!) $14.99

For the home cook with a soft spot for design:
Basically anything from the brand Fred & Friends
Known for things like Manatea tea infuser ($6.74) and the nested hen and egg measuring cups ($12.99)

 

For the on-the-go audiophile: Super highly reviewed earbuds (almost 52,000 reviews and a nearly 5-star rating!) $7.99

For the chef with a naughty sense of humor: Fifty Shades of Chicken parody cookbook $15.99

For the seasonally-appropriate sweet tooth: Bag of “reindeer farts” (cotton candy) $10.95

For the plant parent: Set of 5 succulent plants! $13.99

Let me know if you buy any of these gifts and what the reaction is!

Do you have any requests for gift guides? It is late in the year to be asking but I’ll do what I can for you! (And if all else fails, I’ll have it ready for you by next year, or at the next gift-giving holiday of your choice…)