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:
- Getting in the work mindset
- Staying in the work mindset
- 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.)
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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I feel really lucky to have been hired, because I felt like I didn’t know even how to start finding a job. I worked at the research lab where I spent my whole undergraduate career for my first “semester” post-grad, so it felt almost like an extension of school. I was still going to campus every single day. I had been going to that lab for over 4 years already. Even though I was working, I knew that my lab job was just a security blanket, helping me delay entering the real world for just a smidge longer after making some really big life decisions the day after I graduated. So, not only was I still hoping to be a child forever, I was venturing into a completely new career path without a lot to really back me up for it. I applied to a bunch of places and couldn’t even get so much as a “Sorry, the position as been filled” email, let alone an interview. My family was starting to worry about me, which translates to a lot of unwanted (and sometimes unhelpful) advice. Luckily for me, I got a referral from a friend and that referral lead to an interview! I got the notice about my interview while I was in China, which was great because I could calm my family down a bit. I was super nervous about my interview, and while practicing, my boyfriend pointed out that I tended to ramble and got bitter talking about “past obstacles or difficulties and how I overcame them”. The morning of the interview, I was pretty panicked about those things, and then I panicked about parking because the parking garage was teeny and had almost no spots open. (Turns out I was in the wrong garage. Go figure.) My interview went really well, though, and I got my offer really soon afterwards! That was a few weeks ago. This week, I had to wake up at before 6 for the first time in months. UGH XD Waking up early has never been a strength of mine, but I have a pretty long commute, one of the many things that has made the DC metro region infamous. I’ve actually done this commute before, as I used to have a research internship at Georgetown and my new office is in the same area. My new commute consists of me driving to a metro station and then taking that to DC, where I walk to the office. And then in reverse so that I can go home. BEFORE, I drove to the train station, took the train to DC, took the metro, and then walked to the office but with my hours being as strict as they are, the inflexible train schedule was wearing me very thing. Several people have asked me why I don’t just drive to work if I have to spend nearly 2 hours commuting each way, every day. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha lemme tell you why:
Sip of Starrshine 