The COVID-19 lockdown is continuing and looks like it will for some time. While last week proved difficult, week three of working from home has been much better. I’ve gotten into a routine now and the days are no longer blurring together.
Up until this week, work has pretty much carried on as normal and I’ve remained as busy as ever. Juggling multiple projects that were still proceeding as planned and dealing with last-minute requests of a few customers still struggling to iron out all their remote working glitches.
This week I’ve seen a noticeable downturn in the volume of work customers are willing to push on with remotely. A couple of the bigger projects I have been working on have been put on hold indefinitely and the engineers I’ve been engaged with have been furloughed. I still have enough going on to fill my working days for now, but I can see the pipeline drying up eventually if the major carriers don’t resume provisioning new services.
Finding a routine and sticking to it has helped me adapt to working from home full time. I no longer sit down at my computer first thing in the morning, I wait until 8:30 to 8:45 to start work. I’ve also started to ensure that I don’t work on much past 5:30 pm. It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re at home and no one else is getting up to leave for the day and end up working until past 6 pm.
Another thing that has helped is getting showered in the morning and wearing my work clothes. It helps to keep the mind focused and in work mode. It also means that at the end of the day, I can get changed into my normal clothes and switch off from work.
Even though I’m normally office-based, the majority of people in my team are remote, so working from home hasn’t had too much of an impact on how I work. The only real difference is the social interaction with other people in the office. The only social interaction I have during working hours (telephone and conference-calls excluded) is with the two dogs that are home with me. The company is good, and I’m sure they’re enjoying having me home all day. I do find the conversation somewhat lacking though.
If you want more tips on how to work from home successfully, there are a plethora of articles popping up on the internet. Read as many as you want and take what you can from each of them to shape your routine.
Time for me to get to work, thanks for stopping by.
Stay safe everyone.