7 Things I’ve Learned Working in Quarantine

This article examines one person’s experiences and lessons learned during the last few months of working from home during quarantine. In it, we will look at practical, social, and psychological advice for managing yourself and your time at home. By reading this article, we hope that you will come away feeling better prepared to not only survive but thrive while working from home.

1) A Time and a Place

It is important to designate not only a workspace in your home but also work hours. Doing so can increase your efficiency and your quality of life.

Work hours

I have found that while working from home, because your home is now also your work, it can be difficult to either know when to start work for the day or when to turn things off and enjoy being home. The simplest way to combat this is to set and keep “office” hours. For me, during the first few weeks of quarantine, I found that I was consistently starting my day later. It wasn’t because I was sleeping in or slacking off, because something in the home would distract me from starting my workday. Regardless if it was my kids wanting to play, a home project I had been meaning to start, or some food I wanted to get into a crockpot to cook all day for dinner, I was frequently distracted and not online and working at my usual time. After a couple of weeks of this, I decided to set work hours for myself. I decided to get to work every day by 9am and work every day until at least 5pm. In doing so, I found that it was easier to know when to turn on and off work and to be more productive during my work time.

Workspace

In a similar way, it is important to not only establish work hours but to designate a workspace. This can be anywhere: the kitchen table, a basement, a bedroom… I even have a colleague who is working from their laundry room right now. The key thing is that you designate the workspace, and you keep work there. By doing so, you allow yourself to turn on and turn off the workday by physically moving to that place. This, coupled with work hours, will allow you to have a better work-life balance while working from home.

When I was first working from home, I set up a desk in the basement as my workspace. However, it wasn’t long before I was working some mornings from the bedroom and almost every evening from the living room couch with a laptop on my lap. I previously thought to myself, “What’s wrong with working from the couch with a laptop on your lap? I mean that was the idea when they were invented, right?” I have since learned that when any space can be a workspace, every space becomes a workspace. For me, it became really difficult to know when to turn off work. By designating a workspace and leaving my laptop there, I was able to escape work and better enjoy my time “at home”.

Designating work hours and a workspace work hand-in-hand. By incorporating both into your work-from-home plans, you can work better and more efficiently during work hours and can still enjoy your relaxing downtime at home.

2) Set limits

Now that we have a designated time and place for work, we need to set limits with work. What I mean by this is that you cannot treat working from home the same as working in an office with others, because they are simply different. Each one has its own type of distractions or lack of distractions. As a result, it is important to set limits for yourself as you work and for others living with you while you are working. I recommend doing this by taking mental and physical breaks.

Take mental breaks

Let’s face it – the last few months have been exhausting. Couple that with needing to continue to work (for those lucky enough to still be able to), and it is a recipe for mental fatigue. That is why it is important to take mental breaks. I recommend doing so in the following ways.

Socialize

Socializing will look different to different people, but the important thing here is that just because we can’t physically see each other, it doesn’t mean that we have to be socially isolated. Take the time and put in the effort to socialize with people. For me, this includes calling friends who I haven’t spoken to in a while, checking in on colleagues, and a weekly, guys video chat with my close group of guy friends (Wednesday night video happy hour). For you, it may look similar, or it may look different, but maintaining social connection is going to be crucial for everyone to get through this.

Enjoy the little things

When there are so many BIG things happening in the world, it is hard to remember to enjoy what is good. This week, we welcomed our 4th child and our first baby girl. The time in the hospital (where I am actually writing this article) has been a great chance to remember how lucky I am in so many ways and to stop to enjoy things that are easy to take for granted. I know I am lucky to have an amazing wife and 4 incredible kids, but it is often hard to stop and spend time enjoying that fact. However, last night, I spent 15 minutes just looking out the hospital window looking at the moon, holding my new daughter, and thinking about how good the little things really are.

Escape (turn off the news)

This is one I stole from an article I read early during quarantine. It was an encouragement that when the news is bad, it is okay to take breaks from reading the news. I found myself obsessing over the numbers and where the disease had spread to. I was obsessing to the point that I could physically feel the anxiety from everything that was happening. My shoulders, neck, and back were tight and in constant pain. This may or may not be you too, but it was me. To fix it, I forced myself to take breaks from the news. Since then, I have limited myself to reading about COVID-19 for only 30 minutes per day, and I take Sundays completely off from the news. The truth is the news doesn’t really change more frequently than that, and if it is important enough, you will hear about it somewhere. The difference this change has made for me has been incredible.

Take physical breaks

Mental breaks are critical, but physical breaks are great too. In fact, I have found that physical breaks add directly to my mental well-being. For physical breaks, I recommend that you:

Get out of the “office” for lunch

Remember in Tip 1 where we set up a workspace? That was so we would have a place to leave and physically escape from work. If done right, leaving the “office” for work should be easier at home than in a physical work building, because you don’t have to leave the building. After a few days of going upstairs to make lunch and then eating it back at my desk, I realized I needed more of a break. As a result, I started eating breakfast earlier, so I would be hungry for lunch when my kids eat. Now, I am able to escape the office for 30 minutes each day and enjoy lunch with my kids. This has actually been incredible for my mental well-being and will undoubtedly be one of the things that I miss the most as our office starts to reopen and I begin returning to work.

Go for walks

When quarantine started, my 6-year-old had just gotten into playing Pokemon GO with one of his babysitters. He asked me to download it and play with him on walks. Mind you, this was winter in Chicago, but I agreed, and it has since become a daily routine of going for a 30 minute to 1-hour walk with him and my almost 4-year-old. The three of us get time together, I get exercise, and they get entertainment from extra screen time (way more than we typically allow). Overall, this has been my favorite part of quarantine life.

3) Use video

This is a silly one, but take advantage of the fact that we live in a world where we can do things like remote meetings and telecommuting. Video makes these meetings so much better and makes you feel more like you are connected with the people you are chatting with. I have actually already been impressed to see how many people do use video during meetings. Some do it so they can show off their fun new virtual background. Some do it out of a sense of obligation. I say to do it because it connects you with the people you are talking to. On our daily leadership calls, we may see one person walking on a treadmill, one person driving to pick up lunch, one person with a cat on their keyboard, and one person working from a laundry room (that part was real). It connects us all and allows us to better communicate. Everyone has heard it before, but 93% of communication is non-verbal. So, why have a meeting where communication is only 7% effective?

When quarantine started, I got a better webcam and put it on top of a second monitor. That way, people aren’t looking up my nose from my laptop camera if I am looking at something on the second monitor. It was a little thing, but it went a long way toward making my home setup a bit more professional for video meetings. I have encouraged all of our people to make sure that they have what they need for effective work-from-home meetings as well, and we even sent out an email offering to get anyone what they need if they don’t have it. What I consider a nice 1080p webcam was less than $30 and came same-day from Amazon. For that price, even if your employer won’t cover the cost, I highly recommend you get one.  I know what you may be thinking -

“Well, what about my kids/animals?”

“What if my significant other comes in the room?”

“My workspace at home is a mess.”

“No one wants to see my quarantine beard.”

“I haven’t had a haircut in 10 weeks.”

“I am eating, and I don’t want people to see me.”

I have heard all of the excuses. I get it, but it is okay. We are all going through this. Share your video. It is better to have the 93% extra communication than to lose it out of fear that people won’t understand your situation. People will understand, and you should work to understand others’ situations as well.

4) Be flexible

This brings us to our next point. Flexibility during this time is crucial to success while working from home. We have to all accept and even expect that there will be challenges. People may be more likely to be late to meetings, an animal, kid, or significant other may come walking through a video call. Someone may have to miss work time due to issues arising from the worldwide crisis. It could be anything, but it is important that we all remain flexible with each other. Accept the fact that home is not going to be the same as an office. Expectations should be adjusted, and grace should be extended to people because everyone is always dealing with something. It just so happens that we’re all dealing with the same thing in addition to our regular stuff right now.

Prior to the lockdown starting here in Illinois, PMsquare made the decision to expand our sick policy to unlimited and allow for sick family members and flexibility to work from home. During this time, we have had people only able to work as little as 50% of the work week due to lack of childcare. However, we are being flexible and allowing people to work however they are able until we all get through this. On the other end of this thing, people are going to remember how supported they felt when things were crazy all around them. Being flexible is an easy way to support others during this time, and it is something that we all have the power to do.

5) Help Others and Accept Help from Others

When everything around us seems to be falling apart, sometimes it is hard to remember that it is okay to ask for help, and it is rewarding to offer and give help to others.

Ask

Everyone is struggling in different ways, and if you find yourself struggling, reach out to someone and ask for help. This may look a number of ways. Perhaps, you need aircover while helping watch kids due to schools being closed or another form of childcare being shut down. Maybe you need supplemental income or an advance from an employer. The worst thing you can do when you are in need is to not ask for help. In the early weeks of the quarantine, we had a few of our clients need to postpone project starts or cut hours as a precautionary measure. That week, I was on the phone with an IBM executive who was offering to help any of our clients who need support from IBM. His approach was amazing. It was simply that IBM is not focused on making money right now – they are focused on helping clients to get through this time. The money will come later, but for now, it is all about helping. He extended that to us and I mentioned a couple of clients that had delayed projects. Within a couple of days, he had helped plugged us into a project and effectively helped to offset our lost work. I have a similar story from our partner Incorta, who elected to keep two of our resources allocated to a project, instead of replacing them with internal resources (undoubtedly coming with a cost for them). At PMsquare, our core values are Ethics, Partnerships, Innovations, and Capabilities. These are perfect examples of the importance of strong partnerships that put the P in EPIC, and we couldn’t appreciate these and our other partners more. Luckily, since then, we have already started to see many of our clients become more comfortable with the new reality, understand that data and analytics are going to help them through this time, and get back to business with moving projects forward.

Offer

On the other hand, if you find yourself in a position to help others, you should go out of your way to find a way to do so. We have a few friends that have come by our house with fun gifts. One of my good friends and colleagues started making homemade gin during his quarantine time, and he brought me a bottle. We also have had people drop off cookies. We try to do the same for our friends. It is a small thing, but there is a great pie shop by our house that is doing curbside pickup. Once a week, we get pie from there, and I always pick up a few extra pieces and drop them off with friends who live near the pie shop. My father-in-law started printing face shields on his 3-D printer for hospital personnel when this all started. My barbershop started a GoFundMe for their barbers, which I gave to. We sent care packages to all of our employees with hand sanitizer, toilet paper, and whiskey or coffee (depending on preference). There are countless other things that I can think of that we have done or seen people do. It is a beautiful thing to see how people are coming together through this crazy time. While it may be easy to look inward and focus only on taking care of yourself and your immediate loved ones during times of crisis, my advice is this – if you are able to, be a part of making this time easier for someone else. Don’t miss out on the intrinsic reward of doing so.

6) Make the most of this time

Never before in my career have I had this much time in one place… sitting at home. As many of us are now living without a commute, each of us who is used to traveling to an office away from home has freed up some amount of time in our day. Make the most of that extra time. For me, that looks like an extra 1 hour and 15 minutes each day. For you, it could be more or less. Regardless, it is extra. Here are some ideas for your newfound time:

Pick up a new hobby

As I mentioned, I have a good friend that started making homemade gin. I have others that picked up an instrument and started learning to play it. I know others that started learning a new language. I know others that started teaching themselves a new workplace skill. Any new hobby is fine. You really can’t go wrong. Just pick something and come out of this when we start to get back to normal with a new talent to show off.

Develop better habits

I have spent a lot of this time trying to work on my physical health. For me, that has looked like running a couple of times a week, walking every day, spending time in meditation/prayer, and going to bed earlier. For you, this may look different. Personally, I found that all of the extra time with myself allowed me to focus on the aspects of my life that needed to be tweaked, and I started working on tweaking them. Start slow and build.

Spend more time with family

If you live with your family, this is a great way to spend your extra time. My family has developed a few new habits that were challenging (if not impossible) before. We do family movie night now every Saturday. We have family dinner together pretty much every day (this has been a huge plus for me personally, as I often get home as the kids are finishing dinner if I am at the office), and we do our daily Pokemon GO walks. These new traditions are fantastic for our family dynamic. Your family will undoubtedly look different, but I highly-recommend finding new ways to spend time together during this time where you can more easily do so.

7) Just keep going

Finally, just keep going. We are all in this together, and we can all get through this together. If you find yourself struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel or to find the good in an ugly time, please reach out to someone that you trust and talk to them. No one should be going through this alone. If you are, please know that there are people you can talk to and things will get better. One day, we will be back to our offices. We will be back to hanging out with our friends. We will be back to team lunches and company parties. Life will go on. Things may look different for a while, but things will get better. We can do this. You can do this. Just keep going.

Next Steps

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