The Proactive Challenge

I’ve been talking to my friends and colleagues about the challenges that they are facing and how they are dealing with them. I’ve noticed a few trends and wanted to share with you.

Unstructured Time

The main challenge I heard for the folks who are working from home is that they now have lots of unstructured time. The morning commute is gone and going out to lunch is a distant memory. Hanging out in the company kitchen and running into a co-worker or spending time with friends during usual activities is also not happening. Those are the things which we are realizing gave us some “markers” which split our day into parts and provided some natural opportunities to socialize.

Kids anyone?

Having kids at home is an additional challenge. I love my kids, and when my daughter comes in to “get a hug” I feel torn. I love her and enjoy hugging her, but I was also in the middle of a task which was difficult and required great concentration and so I get distracted.

Melding of home and work

A lot of folks are also realizing that their home life is blending into their work life in greater ways than before. The commute that usually marked a transition from one state of mind to another and provided some distance for focus is not there.

So how are we dealing with this?

Being Proactive

The first thing I hear folks are doing is being intentional about choosing where to work, when to work, and how to differentiate one state of mind from another.

Finding places to work uninterrupted

I thought the guest room which I adopted as an office and closed the door would discourage my new “home office colleagues” from visiting. Not so.

A friend of mine escaped to his bedroom and locked the door. This mostly worked until his kids started fighting and his desire to step in to help while he was focusing on a difficult work task conflicted. He came up with a unique approach and went to the library… in his car. He would park next to the library and use the internet connection till his laptop battery ran out.

I finally managed to go down into a spare room we have in our basement and close the door. This is finally working pretty well and I feel like I have a good amount of un-interrupted time to focus.

I now go up for lunch and see my “home office coworkers”, give my daughter a hug and check in with my wife and kids if they have any technical problems with getting online for their school meetings. In case you don’t know, I’m a technical guy, so naturally anytime something does not work, I get the job!

Switching Context

The other thing we are finding is that staying on task is very difficult. We have a huge list of things we want to accomplish, some are personal like bills, schooling, family, and self care, and some are work, like 10-20 tasks in different areas of the business that need attention. If we tried to focus on all of them at the same time it would unmanageable.

Many Hats

When I was purely focusing on technical things as part of a startup I wore many hats. I was an engineer, a manager, tech support, and even the HR health insurance guy. I recall thinking how I had so many hats. The trick I’m learning is to wear one hat at a time. I.e. instead of mixing health insurance and software development I found that changing focus was the key.

This is now even more important than before because so many more things are combining together. Changing the role we are playing for the next hour in our mind is critical.

I have a friend and his son who are switching context and focusing in creative ways. They both came up with the concept independently and I think you are likely experiencing similar thinking. They both created little index cards to remind themselves what role or hat they were wearing right now so they would not drift. The son had “Studying, No Youtube”, the father had “Main Focus Area, “Self Care”, “Second Focus Area”, “Family”. When the hat changed, the sign would change and they would remind themselves what they are focusing on. This is a great technique to stay focused especially when the desire to drift with checking email, youtube, or other concerns pop up in our heads.

I’ve been using a similar system and going even further to pick one task to focus on for a period of time, set a timer for an hour, and only focus on that task. Its amazing how much more effective and focused I’ve been with my time.

Exercise

I used to get some exercise from walking part of my commute, riding a bike to/from work, or going to the gym. Neither of those are “built in” any more and so proactiveness is required here as well. In my family we gave our kids some fit bits and although we don’t usually have them compete against each other, we decided to make an exception with this one. They are regularly comparing how many steps they have at the end of the day and its motivating them to compete. They are also getting a sense of how their daily activities translate into sufficient exercise to keep them healthy. We are also making an effort to take walks on some of our local trails and ride bikes as well. This seems to be working well so far.

Putting away the gadgets and getting sleep

At the end of the day it’s also hard to disconnect. I’ve been reading a book called “why we sleep” which I will share more with you in the near future. The main point of the many studies and result is that sleep is pretty critical to being effective and staying healthy, more than I ever imagined. The consequences of not getting sufficient sleep on a regular basis are severe and to top it off, we have a hard time noticing the consequences unless they are explicitly measured which we of course do not measure.

One thing that is suggested in the book and that has also helped me is to leave my devices in my “work area” which is the basement room. Both devices stay there when I go to sleep. I’ve found this has become a transition from one state of mind to the next and has helped me be well rested for the next day.

Noticing the silver linings

Things are difficult in many ways like getting groceries safely, and for some getting food at all. We are also physically distancing from our friends and loved ones. Summer camp, to my kids great disappointment, has officially been cancelled. They just can’t see how to operate safely this summer so are going to stay closed.

There are some silver linings to this situation. We are much less distracted now. We no longer are running to 4 or 5 different meetings/places with or without our kids. As much as we miss our friends, we also don’t need to clean the house and cook dinner when we entertain. Some spouses which usually travel a lot are now home all the time and, in most cases ;-), its wonderful/very different. I saw a story about Will Smith (the actor) and his wife where she wrote that they discovered they didn’t really know each other like they thought. Their previous busy life was very different from the one they have now and they are getting to know each other all over again.

I’ve found its important for me to look at the whole picture, to mourn and process the things we have lost and the difficulties we are facing. I found it also helpful to embrace the new experiences we are having and make choices to deal with the challenges in what is a change of pace of our regular busy lives.

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