Work From Home - a phase of work life

Wow, you are working from home all the time... great... you are so lucky... it's a blessing. And for women, it's a blessing indeed....

You can do house work at your convenience. No need to finish house chores and run to reach office. You have entire day in your hand. Traffic hours does not kill your precious time and energy. No need to get ready. You can sit comfortably in your pajamas and work. Maids won't bother you in morning hurry hours. Have maids do all work and you can relax. You also have kids, so work from home is awesome, as you can look after them as well. Just get one more maid and relax. If you have elders around, it's a great help. Because they do most of the house chores, plus there are maids and so, you can relax. Anyways you are working from home. You can have everything at your leisure.

Just about few months back, people used to think, that work from home is easy way of working and making money. Then the COVID-19 virus changed the life style of professionals all around the world. The concept of work place changed drastically. Everybody opted for work from home to follow social distancing. Initially, for most of the people this, change in life style felt good. But then, people gradually started to understand the pluses and minuses of 'Work From Home'.

I was working from home for about 4.5 years as a Software Test Engineer. Before that, I was completely oblivious to the concept of work from home. When in office, we come across many people and unknowingly we share energy with them. It leaves impact on us and it is essential factor for healthy work life. A day at work starts with smiles, good mornings, followed by work related discussions and news. The time when one is in the office, colleagues are available for the discussion. Over the time, we make few friends, few remain colleagues and the rest, co-workers. We are surrounded by people most of the time. Similarly, I had a big QA team in earlier offices, of more than 100 QA members working on different projects. So, working alone from home was going to be a new experience for me.

Then I joined an organization which had only 'work from home' option. Initially, me and my husband were delighted. I was looking only pluses and overlooking minuses. Most of the time, I was interacting with only one senior member. I learned how my senior member planned his day well and was able to work so hard. We used to have a chat on communicator daily, mostly only in the morning time. The chat was mostly about my task assignment and little bit of chitchat. I was not interacting with my other colleagues, friends or different team members. Also, in virtual work places, there is no impact of festival celebrations, no special day celebration or not even a lunch time talk. It took a while for me to adapt the monotonousness. I started facing issues on both personal and office front. For everybody else , I was 'working from home' and it is the easiest thing for anyone to do. From an employer perspective, certain obvious expectations were there from me, which generally any employer has from a new joinee. I was expected to prove myself. In early days, I was also tested with some early morning or late evening messages on communicator chat. Purpose of those messages might be to verify if I am responding to them or not. It was odd. It was funny to see, I was being checked if I am taking a post lunch nap. I was repeatedly informed about how hard my senior member works. After which, with all courtesy, I was asked to take out the time for my kid, health and family.

The very first week of 'work from home' was a mess and I had already started regretting my decision of putting myself in this situation. I felt like doing nothing much for the entire first week at both fronts - office and home. Soon I realized that I was the only one who could get myself out of it, as I had nobody to discuss this at work. It was a need of time for me to organize my day in order to be competitive and perform well. Despite of these challenges, I came up with some practices in order to make my day organized and I was successful. I am sharing these practices here and I hope it helps to make your life better in current situation.

Lets start with organizing office work first:

• Identify the comfortable place to do the office work in your home. While working from home, one tend to work with wrong posture like laying on bed or couch. This is not good for your back and neck. Maintaining a good posture is very important for health. 
  

• Start maintaining list of tasks you are working on, by adding a task to list right after you start doing it. It helped me to know: 
•  list of multiple tasks on my plate
• list of incomplete tasks
• what exactly I accomplished over days, weeks, months.

This daily list becomes the input for next day to start a work at office. Do not overwrite or delete this list. This is useful when randomly someone asks about your accomplishments.

• Define office hours and stick to it. When you are at home, you will feel like you are working on computer for entire day and not just for 8-9 hours. Office work or house chores both becomes a day long exhausting process which does not seem to end. Because there is no disconnecting point between work and home. You become a shutter cock being hit by both the ends. It will hamper your health physically as well as psychologically. During office hours give priority to office work. You might feel you have an entire day to work but a day finishes leaving incomplete tasks and it creates stress. The burden of stress gets added day by day. It first affects the sleep quality and then whole body clock gets disturbed within a certain period of time.

• List causes - why breaks are taken and time consumed by each break during office work. This is highly impossible to concentrate if there are many breaks in office work. We also have long calls every day and have to manage our work after those call hours. Yes, being at home - few breaks are unavoidable. But, when we are in office for dedicated 9 hours, we do take few breaks like tea break, water break, few gossips, lunch break, snack's break or special day celebrations. Yes, those breaks are taken according to work load. Let's plan breaks well at home too. Do not feel guilty of taking breaks at home, as long as you are doing appropriate office work. The way we plan work items, combine and plan break items as well. Just list break causes, do logical segregation of tasks and check if it is possible to combine certain tasks. Initially, check yesterday's break time and then minimize that time today by logically combining tasks in a one break. This combining of tasks logically reduces number of breaks and you will be able to focus better day by day. At the end of week, you will see yourself effectively accomplishing both office and house work. 
  

• Try to be self motivated. Work From home is like working alone. You will not see people working with you around. Thus, be positive and self motivated.

• Nobody is there to talk
• Nobody is there who understand what you are trying to say just by sharing a glance,
• You have to showcase everything you did by yourself like self advertising,
• No one pats on your shoulder,
• You cannot laugh together,
• You might eat alone,
• To be precise or need to explain more is difficult to decide (for example, praising someone over communicator chat for small piece of good work looks like over praising or meaningless)

You have to overcome these challenges by finding solutions to comfort you. You can play a soft soothing music while working. You can join a hobby session. You can set workout routine if exercise interests you more. You can try cooking a favorite dish once in a while. Play with kids or watch kids playing...such a stress relief :). Talk to people giving positive energy. Promptly acknowledge good thing you see in others. It will make people around you smile and will give you a reason to smile in turn.

• Watch out the time consumed by social media and television. When you are in the office, you read news mostly during early morning hours or keep a browser tab open with news and check it randomly. You also have colleagues who keeps you up to date with current affairs. But while working alone from home you have to know everything by yourself. You might start over using social media or watching more TV. But do not spend more time of office hours on reading news and surfing on social media. In office due social awareness or binding or self discipline, we keep social media time short. But, there is no one to poke you at home for this. Also, you might feel like watching a television simultaneously while working. Both TV and social media actually reduces the focus on office work and work takes more time to complete than usual. If you loose your time unknowingly, you will end up in a long day and could get exhausted. It could also impact your next day.
  

• Exercise regularly to avoid health issues and maintain basic good health. In work from home, you actually speak very less. Discussions are mostly over calls and chat. During calls, everyone tries to be precise because every team member has to share updates within predefined call duration. Over chat, you are typing and not talking. The energy required talk is much more and is not utilized, same as that you used to burn at office place.

Also, now distances are reduced. You don't commute to office from home. Distance from desk to canteen is reduced to approximately 10 steps. Same is the case with pantry where you used to fill water bottle or was having evening snack. You are neither going to somebody's desk to talk nor physically going to conference room to attended a meeting.

The energy required to commute, talk and little bit walk was helping you to burn calories. Now, by working from home, you put on a weight. And, you have to take extra efforts by exercising explicitly to burn those saved calories. Your exercise to stay fit is different than these efforts. Now, more exercise is required than before.

Now, lets plan house chores.

In our society house chores is a primary responsibility of women. So, few practices hereafter are more important for women. Men are mostly in support role or few men does not play a role at all in house chores. Because of this structure, sometime women are judged for not giving enough justice to office work while working from home - by assuming they are spending more time on house chores. If a woman is pregnant or has kids or has a health problem, then work from home is misinterpreted as a leisure. We cannot change the way some people think but yes we 'women' can focus, plan house chores well and excel in office work by continuous learning.

• Do not hesitate to hire a maid for any house chore, it's for your comfort. Sometimes, social pressure or family expectations or upbringing of a lady herself makes her feel that her office job is secondary. And, she should fulfill family expectations by herself. But actually it is not the case. Hiring a maid to help for cleaning, doing dishes, cooking or as a care taker of kids/ elders is perfectly fair, if maids are available off-course. Initially, it will take time for everybody in family to adjust with maid but things gets smoother as time passes. You can categorize the work, hire a maid for - time consuming work or work which requires less monitoring or work which you feel tiring/boring. Even after maid does assigned work, there are lots of things left for you to do.  
  

• Know your worth. Worth is not just a pay cheque you get at the end of month by the employer. It could be one factor in your worth :). You are first part of a family, then relatives ... friends... neighbors... then the entire society. There are many things other than office work, you are already doing. Some things are done daily or few things you do occasionally,
• by cherishing your childhood memories with your parents
• by sharing your life experiences with your kids as appropriate to their age
• by making kids stronger physically and emotionally for future
• by being a backbone of family members and being available for members physically, emotionally, intellectually or financially
• by planning/ cooking healthy and tasty food for a family
• by helping/ empowering maids or drivers or watchmen financially and emotionally
• by sharing your encouraging views in social gatherings

The list will get longer and longer...the point is how much money you make or you are a home maker is not a deciding factor of your worth. It will only change the amount you earn and related expenditure.

• Plan your day according to office workload. Start a day as if you want to go to the office. If you were to go to the physical office location, you wrap your personal tasks or house chores early morning before leaving to the office. Do the same with work from home job as well. Hire maids who are ready to come early morning. Get ready and start your day at office as early as possible. Your commute time is zero now, use it as office hours. It will help you to finish a day at office early. Generally, do not plan house hold chores taking more than 15 minutes during office hours. This will help you to complete office work on time.
  

• Prepare a meal plan in mind early morning, like how many meals are generally required or is there anything else going to require your attention today. We women already doing it for ages. We know food preferences of our family members. Our eye is always there on grocery stock at home. If something is required to buy, order it online or just give a call to grocer who can drop it to your doorstep. If your husband is taking care of buying home grocery, it is good for you. Just prepare chart in mind early morning about what is needed for breakfast, lunch, evening snack and dinner. We are well aware of kid's demands forehand. If you make a day meal plan ready, you can take care of kid's demand and health without disturbing office work. Even if you hire maid for every work, you by yourself have to plan and manage your house. So, if you have plan ready with you, you can easily get it executed. If maid is taking a day off, plan one pot meal. So that you can utilize time for other chores. In this way, there will be less emergency situations at home for you to attend throughout the day and you can focus on office work.
   
  All these are the practices, I found working effectively with work from home job. I am an ordinary working woman like any other Indian woman, simultaneously trying to balance work and individual life. By organizing my day well, now I am having well planned days. Hope it helps everyone working and working from home :).

But yes, social connect is really important aspect of human life. These days of social distancing is just a phase, it might take longer. We do not know how long. Yes, it will be over one day. Staying home alone and working from home all the time affects health seriously. So for now, think positive, be healthy and keep happy environment in home. Stay connected with things that truly inspire you and makes you happy. Take care !!

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