My Blabbering of WFH
It’s been 11 months — from mid of March 2020, my company adopted full WFH (Work From Home) as the default working mode.
At first, it was enjoyable, I could work comfortably from anywhere without worrying about dressing up. However, as time went on, I realized the challenges it presented. Starting from hard to switch off my time, to work and live my personal life, and hard to focus at work; easy to get interruptions by family, pets, and many extra things inside and outside my home. And it brings me into a situation where I cannot have productive time to work.
Initially, I implemented a few quick fixes, such as setting clear working hours, blocking my calendar, and establishing start and end times. However, I found myself consistently drawn back to my laptop after hours, checking emails or completing small tasks. This habit led to late-night work sessions, blurring the line between work and personal life. Despite my efforts, I felt that these solutions were not enough.
How can I say that?
- In the first month, I experienced back pain due to poor sitting posture, prompting me to invest in creating a suitable work environment at home — a cost I hadn’t anticipated. But you know it’s hard to get enough of the new thing you are working on, and I spend quite a bit of time setting the right work ambient (until now).
- In the 3rd month, I lose motivation since I don't see anyone working. People say that it would be nice if we have a call session with a co-worker, like online lunch, or just doing con-call for some kind of online bonding session. I try that way, and it’s helpful, even not much. Personally, the ambient of working together, seeing someone working, and hearing keyboard sounds, that what makes me want to work.
- In the 5th month, I couldn’t deal with other kinds of interruptions and distractions in my home. My family decides to have home improvement and building construction: 5 bricklayers, 8 hours with the sound of the machine, stirring cement, and hitting walls. It’s hard to get the ideal “me time” to work, I mean productive work.
- In the 7th month, I have bad time management. Since I have a problem with many interruptions and not easy to get my space. I can’t see clearly which one is the most important to work on.
Identifying the Main Problems: There are two primary issues at play. Firstly, I long for the ambiance of working in an office setting. Secondly, I struggle to maintain focus amid new and distracting conditions at home.
Let's deep dive into the problem!
(1) The need for a working environment. What do I mean? How come? The picture explains what it is, for sure.
Yes, I miss the ambiance of working from the office: co-workers talking about their weekend plans, building construction, or a neighbor’s enthusiastic chewing and all the sound of that. As an introverted person, I still cannot figure out why, but you know what they say: absence makes the heart grow fonder.
But lucky, my random and silly searching night brings me to this website https://imisstheoffice.eu/, this is completely fulfilling my needs. If you are someone that has the same feeling of “missing office ambient” for working, try this out, I believe it will help.
The website plays all the background noise you used to work with back in the office days. (“Close your eyes and imagine you’re in the office. Beautiful, right?” the website says, encouragingly.)
Sounds from a printer, the squeak of an armchair, the glurg of the water cooler; the chatter around said water cooler. Remember those? The difference here is that you have some control over the ambient noise. In fact, you create it by adjusting the tool’s settings
(2)I cannot focus, back then to the sound that I missed from the office (I used to not have fun with that), now I have struggled with all new conditions and situations from home that may lead me into an unproductive state of mind.
It's hard to focus at work, and I've come to overtime, working late at night. When I have a good time working at night, I suddenly want to do a lot of things but cannot see clearly which one is the most important, and somehow I come to work that I don’t know what. Well, it’s not good, not only for my body but also for my mental state.
Then I found Study With Me video on Youtube and saw that someone working 25 minutes gets a break of 5 minutes, and it's called Pomodoro Study Technique.
The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. Each interval is known as a pomodoro.
You don’t need a fancy tool or guide to get started. The only “requirement” is to use a Time Timer. I use pomofocus.io.
A 25-minute Pomodoro session is long enough to get a little work done but not so long that it feels painful or overwhelming. Unlike trying to work without a break for hours, it’s relatively easy to stack small sessions on top of each other. It’s surprising how much I can accomplish in short bursts of focused work.
I also suggest some of my coworkers during our retro. I don’t know if it works for them or not. But give it a try if you also find it hard to focus at work, get distracted while working on a project, or want to understand how long a task takes.
That's my short kind of blabbering of WFH. I hope someone will find it useful :)
