We, the blessed and lucky few who are able to work from home during this health crisis, are faced with a (privileged) dilemma:

When do work hours end and home hours begin?

Commuting
When going into the office, I used to take an early morning train that got me to my desk by 7:15 am each day, and I would leave the office around 4 pm to catch a train home.    Since that commute took an hour to 90 minutes door-to-door in each direction, I was reveling the idea of sleeping-in an hour later and “getting home” well before I normally did.  Depending on the train, I wouldn’t be home until 5:30 pm or later, which meant that we often had to prep dinner as soon as I walked in the door.  “Down” time didn’t occur until dinner was over and we were sitting on the couch.  In this new paradigm, my commute consists of walking downstairs and into my designated office space.  For the first week, I stuck to my old schedule, making sure I was online early and that I shut-down my computer no later than 4 pm.   We had time to decompress together and relax before the ritual of making dinner.

The following week, I slept-in on mornings that I knew I wasn’t needed right away, or continued working until I looked at the clock and realized it was 6:30 pm.  That has become the new schedule, or more aptly, the new unschedule.  Each day is different and I am finding it a challenge to be consistent.

Sleep and Healthy Living
One of the issues with this new normal is that I no longer take the 10k+ steps per day that I used to while commuting, running between offices (our team is split between the 3rd and 6th floors of adjoining buildings), or just getting up from my desk to talk to a colleague.  I have not been consistently wearing my tracker, but I can see on my phone that on March 10th I took 13,048 steps and today, one month later, I’ve taken only 232.  That decrease in movement, plus the access to extra ‘comfort’ foods in the house (not to mention access to a full kitchen), the heightened stress levels leading to eating those comforting snacks and having a drink after dinner to wind-down, all contribute to a shift in weight and in sleep cycles.  I find myself staying-up later watching “just one more episode” of something, or going down a YouTube rabbit hole, scrolling Facebook to see how my friends and family are coping, working on a puzzle, or planning a crafting project when I should be going to bed.  When I do go to bed, I do not sleep well, and end up trying to stay in bed later and later in the morning.

Earlier this week, I had to run down in my bathrobe to boot up my computer because I was later than normal and my boss needed something for a meeting she was in.  I had to find a time later in the morning to go back upstairs to shower, shave and brush my teeth before my first Zoom of the day.

Sustainable Office Space
My husband (also working from home) and I are doubly fortunate to have our own spaces to work in.  My husband’s space is definitely an office, complete with a large desk, bookshelves, printer, monitors, great natural lighting, and a carpet.  My office is a loud amalgamation of everything I love: the walls are covered in Shag prints, the ottoman that goes with the pull-out loveseat (my office is also the guest room) is usually covered in some work-in-progress crafting project, there is a record player, overfull bookshelves topped with Tiki mugs, statues and figurines, Lego minifigs over the door frames, a male dress form, a ukulele close at hand, an apothecary of herbs and bottled elixirs and tinctures, piles of books to be read on the floor, a cork board of memories and Disney pins, and a “desk” that holds 3 sewing machines (heavy duty, embroidery/everyday, and a serger).  I think my room frightens my husband with its ordered chaos.

Even though his space is designed and outfitted as an office, my husband is having a hard time configuring it to be conducive to working from home.  It was a personal office, not a work office.

My space is perfect for me for weekends and days off, but it’s not set-up for this everyday work situation.  The laptop screen was too low, so I am using a book/tablet stand that I had from IKEA to prop the laptop up, bringing the screen (and the camera) to a better angle and height.  Trying to type on that was awkward, though, so I bought a wireless keyboard and mouse combo.  The laptop, keyboard, and mouse take up so much space in front of the sewing machines, that I am cramped and have no space to write notes.  And not having a second screen, I have to take notes by hand while hosting Zoom meetings.  My colleague ordered a second screen, and I would consider it, but I just don’t have the room in this configuration, and I refuse to compromise my space.  Also, my chair was chosen for it’s design in the space, not for sitting in for 8 hours a day.  What little padding there is will eventually be depleted.

This set-up is working for now, but I don’t think it’s sustainable.  We will have to re-configure our spaces if this is going to last more than another month (and it looks like it will).  I see my colleagues (on video meetings) working from bedrooms, kitchen tables, coffee tables, or event taking calls from closets, and I think (again, of how lucky I am to have a space) how very temporary those situations are.  I have thought about moving around into different rooms, but my kitchen WiFi is too spotty, the dining room table is too close to my husband’s room (where he is filming video lessons and taking virtual meetings), the bedroom is too private, and the living room is not designed for working – only relaxing.

Thankfully, I am also lucky to not have kids or pets running around, demanding my attention when I am supposed to be working.  I cannot imagine juggling the schedule of meetings I’ve had with the schedule of a child or a dog that must be maintained.  My husband and I try to stay out of each other’s way, and close doors when we are on a call, so we do not disturb each other.  We make sure that we both take a lunch break, or at least eat something.  How do non-married roommates or groups of siblings, or whole families deal with this?

One important feature of how I have set-up my office is that I can take it down when I am done.  On Friday, at the end of the day, I close the laptop and put it, the keyboard, the mouse, and all my notebooks and files away to a corner of my room out of the way and out of sight.

Clocking-In and Clocking-Out
Of course, the hardest thing about all of this is the question: “When am I working and when am I not.”  As I said before, I really tried to keep to my normal schedule.  Perhaps after the exercise of writing this, I will try again next week, but what is the best way to do that?  Let’s break it down:

Email
When I was commuting (further than a flight of stairs), I would glance at my email on my phone as I was getting ready each morning, or on the train, to gauge how the day might go, and to check if any emergencies popped-up overnight.  I still do this (see the bathrobe story above), and even check my phone on weekends just to clear-out the spam or unimportant things so my Monday inbox is not soul-crushing.  This is the danger of having work email enabled on your phone.  I have colleagues who don’t, and I appreciate that as a tool to “clock off” and not be on call all the time, but it’s not something, after all this time, that I could (psychologically) do,.  However, unlike the music agency, this is a job where I can be offline when I need to.

Because our interactions have dramatically changed, I feel that communication within our office has suffered.  One would assume that an email, carefully worded, edited, and precisely crafted, could clearly convey a message.  As most of us know from experience, that is just not true.  This week, for example, one innocuous heads-up email from my colleague to our Directors turned into 8 back-and-forth emails between them before coming to me (not my colleague) with ‘”solutions” to a problem that didn’t even exist.  I had to then give them a full page email explaining what had already happened and why my colleague was giving them a heads-up.  If we had been in the office, those 2 hours of email (not to mention the cost of the Directors’ salaried hours) wouldn’t have been wasted, because it would have been cleared-up in a 3 minute face-to-face conversation.

It is probably best not to check email on our phones.  And if it’s a complicated or overly simple question, pick-up the phone or set-up a Zoom for clarity and efficiency.   

Meetings
Zoom has been great (especially for virtual happy hours and checking-in with friends), but it feels like we are scheduling a lot more meetings than normal and dedicating whole hour blocks to battling questions and conversations that could have taken much less time.  Perhaps we are all starting to feel starved of social interaction, so these Zoom meetings become forums where people can have conversations with someone other than those they are quarantined with, so everyone participates more.  Yet, when we schedule an office group social meeting, very few show up to chat and check-in.

We need to evaluate if each meeting is helping or hindering the work that needs to be done.

Breaks, Lunch and the Closing Bell
It’s now apparent to me how many times I got up from my desk to talk to someone, go to another office, go out to run an errand, or did some other activity other than sitting in front of my computer.  My desk was the reception area, so I saw everyone coming and going, kept an eye on coffee and tea levels, juggled conference room calendars, and found things for people in the supply closet.  This was active and interactive.  In the first week at home, I felt antsy and chalked it up to the stress of the situation.  Now, I think that it was because I was used to distractions and having many things and many people swirling around me.  I was missing that, and it was far too quiet and lonely here.

In the beginning, the days were packed with meetings, so breaks were only to grab coffee, go to the bathroom, or to grab food to eat lunch before then next meeting.  Gradually, it slowed-down and I found myself going to my husband’s office to check on him, load or unload the dishwasher, root through my fabric stash to find suitable mask material,  make banana bread with the overripe bananas, make french bread dough to freeze and have go-to bread when needed, reorganize the cabinets, swap the laundry…  I was finding reasons to leave my desk and take breaks.  I think that is keeping me sane.   I do need to add more activity to my day.  Maybe I will add to my “commute” by walking around the block each morning before work and each afternoon after.

Try to take short walks around the block (wearing a mask, of course), or find a productive use of break times, and try to actually take a lunch break instead of inhaling food when it is possible.  Also, make sure to shut-down all work activity when it is time to end the work day.

Verifiable Weekend
I had a student wish me a verifiable weekend the other day, which I thought was so perfect.  In this situation, what is it that you are doing to differentiate the days?  I hope I am not wrong when I assume that we all have days that blend together: we feel that Tuesday really felt like a Friday, or find ourselves staring blindly at the date, not comprehending how it could possibly be correct.  Did we skip a day?

In an attempt at a modicum of normalcy, my husband and I have made little efforts to differentiate the weekends from the weekdays, so I offer some suggestions:

Think of food differently: Friday nights are for pizza (frozen or delivery) or Chinese food, Saturday mornings are for cereal, Sunday mornings are brunch (mimosa or bloody mary optional), and Sunday evenings are for a roast or something special and a little bit more time-intensive.

Think of activities differently: Weekends are for puzzles, crafts, reading (for pleasure), writing, video games, naps, baking, and epic movies.  Weeknights are for shorter television programs, magazine articles, board games, listening to podcasts, virtual happy hour with friends, journaling, and discussing the day.

Think of clothing differently:  If you’ve been wearing pajama bottoms under your desk and a dress shirt and tie for your video calls during the week for work, fully dress for the weekend, or the other way around – fully dress for work, and spend the weekend in your pajamas.  People are posting about Fancy Friday (the antithesis to Casual Friday), where they dress in formal wear for the day.  Do you have clothes in your closet that you haven’t worn in a long time?  Now is the time to try them, since no one will see you in public.  During work, I’ve worn a kilt, some Haunted Mansion leggings, Black Panther sweatpants, a kimono, and I’ve changed outfits in the middle of the day to coordinate with my Zoom background or with what my boss is wearing.  Have a costume?  Wear that on the weekends, or show up to a video chat in it.

Don’t work.  That seems obvious, but it is very important.  And I say weekend to mean any two days you are not working, so your weekend could be Sunday and Monday, or Monday and Thursday, etc.  Just because you are living where you work, doesn’t mean work has to be your life.

Conclusion
To come back to our opening question:

When do work hours end and home hours begin?

Easy: When you choose.  Make an effort.  Now, more than ever, we need a healthy Work/Life balance…  No, scratch that: We need a healthy Life/Work balance.

Stay safe, everyone.

If you have any tips on what is working for you, or ideas of what others can do, please comment below.