The New Self-Care in the World of Working Remotely (#WFH Series, Part 2)

In this new series on Working from Home (#WFH), we’re opening up a conversation with the community about the challenges and opportunities of working from home and how to invest in your well-being, mentally and emotionally. Last week’s post was about how to deal with distractions and stay productive and this week’s post is about investing in your well-being and maintaining your equilibrium while working from home. 

If this is your first experience working from home, you might have been (like I was for years), secretly envious of all of those people who worked from home.

You pictured their idyllic life: luxuriating in their pajamas all day, with easy access to a full fridge of goodies, and in constant peace without interruption by annoying coworkers.

You’d think, “Man, if I only worked from home, I would get so much more done.”

But you’re probably quickly discovering, as I did too, that those supposed freedoms and laxity you imagined are not (entirely) a liberating reality.

Sure, there are perks, and working from home has a hint of that laissez-faire atmosphere you dreamed, but it’s not the relaxed and productive environment you envisioned, in large part, because you struggle with the biggest impediment to consistent, productive work: your mind and emotions.

In my last post, I talked about my struggles with productivity and how to gain mastery over the myriad of interruptions that can consume your working day; in this post, I want to share four vital “don’ts” and “do’s” that are crucial to maximizing your mind and balancing your emotions:

(I) Don’t Hibernate but Do … 

The truth about working from home is that you will suddenly feel like you are on a deserted island without even a volleyball named Wilson to keep you company.

In an office environment, where everyone congregates in one building to work, you’re privy to many subtle moments in a day to remind yourself that you are not alone. All animals herd by nature for a reason; we were not meant to be alone. Working from home isolates you from those little touches that warm our day. From running into a colleague at the coffee pot to birthday lunches, these collisions are where we might hear about a colleague who is sick or news about a customer who just had a baby. We forget how much these seemingly unimportant moments matter. Even if we work in an office with a closed door, those little moments when we emerge among the flock, inform our days and imbue them with emotional touchpoints. A simple hallway “hello” can make you feel a sense of solidarity.

When it comes to transitioning from this gregarious office environment to sudden isolation, “It’s easy to feel left out while working from home,” said Sam Kates, our VP of Sales and a #WFH veteran.

The secret?

Don’t hibernate but “do reach out proactively,” said Sam.

Slack helps some, but it’s not a replacement for face-to-face communication. Those office collisions we relied on to stay in touch with our coworkers are a lifeline for our emotional well-being and express more than emails or text ever could. You’ve probably heard that the majority of what we convey to others through our communication is mostly non-verbal. One study revealed that only 7% of our communication is the actual words we use, 30% is tone, and 55% is body language, which is why it’s vital to be seen and heard. 

For those new to work-at-home, you’ll discover that very few people are going to reach out to you each day to provide that once-needed reassurance that we are all in this together; it’s vital you become the proactive one and assert yourself back into the social stream of the day-to-day. We often might fear that someone else is too busy, or perhaps we leave the proactive “ask” up to our boss or our more outgoing colleagues, but the responsibility really lies within each of us, to reach out, listen, and overcommunicate. Google hangouts and Zoom are power tools for liberating you from that loneliness: use them. Frequent visual communication will help you and your fellow colleagues feel included.

Now with virtually everyone working alone, that shared feeling of isolation should unite us, but it’s going to take some work from everyone. 

And the golden rule? Be honest and vulnerable if you need to reach out to someone and chat. You’ll often discover they feel the same way.

(II) Don’t Blaze but Do ...

The most important person in your world of work is not your boss, not your clients or your colleagues; it’s you. If we don’t take care of ourselves (“parent ourselves,” as some say), you can’t ever be your best self.

Working from home introduces you to a host of roadblocks and challenges, but not making your own needs important is probably the most important daily habit that gets discarded. 

For example, don’t blaze past breaks and lunches. We’ve all heard the advice, get up from your desk on a regular basis, take calls while walking, but some of the simplest but most powerful tools in your toolbelt are your physical breaks from work and a daily mental break for lunch. Force yourself to eat a lunch. And not that “ram-a-tuna-salad-in-your-face” kinda lunch, but a real, healthy lunch with actual time to savor your food. 

In other words, don’t just blaze and burnout. “Block your time for lunch and exercise,” said David Shultz, commonsku’s Vice President of Supplier Partnerships. “It’s the most important thing you can do for your daily well-being, block it off on your calendar so that no one else can occupy that time.” 

Remember that daydream you had about people who worked from home? How in command and in control they (seemingly) were of their day? You’ll learn that it’s shockingly easier to ignore your physical health, working from home than it is at the office. At the office, you might have had a coworker invite you to go to the gym or to go for a walk during lunch, or, when deciding where to lunch together, you both leaned on each other for healthier habits, “we should really eat healthier.”

There is a built-in accountability at the office that we take for granted. At home, it’s largely just up to you. I was shocked when I discovered that my fellow work-from-home colleagues had the same challenge I did when it came to stop working and making a healthy meal. Many of us were making heat-and-eats and quickly ravaging them while peering into our computer screen.

I know it feels productive to work non-stop, but it’s actually detrimental. Think of your brainpower like an engine: you can only hold a limited supply of fuel before you require refueling. If you insist on pushing past the limits, you will sputter and stall. Or, think of breaks from work like sleep: your body, your mind, and your emotions need pit stops to refuel.

While reading Mason Currey’s book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, I discovered an interesting trend behind the daily disciplines of some of the most creative artists: walking. Dickens, Darwin, Georgia O’Keeffe, Rachmaninoff, and many more, took daily walks (often in the middle of the day) as a way to allow their mind to release its grip on the work at hand so they could reflect, refresh, and reset.

Seeing this pattern in so many famous artists lives reminds us that for optimal output, taking time for yourself during the day isn’t an optional activity, it is something you should protect for yourself, rather than make false promises to yourself at the outset, like “If I have time today, I’ll get a run in.”

The most important meeting you have on your calendar today is with you.

(III) Don’t Work Blindly, Do … 

One significant (subconscious) benefit of commuting to an office to work and then returning home, is the physical separation.

Even your commute, which you might have loathed, served a subtle purpose, one to ready your mind for work in the morning and also, preparing your mind to relax at home.

In the new world of #WFH, you no longer have that visible distinction to aid in the mental transition. Since your “office” today might be the desk in your living room or bedroom, not cutting off work to be “at home” is a pernicious danger. 

If physical walls of separation are not possible, you still must erect boundaries. It’s obvious advice to try and separate your workspaces from your living spaces, but many of us, in this sudden #shelterathome environment, might not have been prepared for such a shift. 

Instead, set virtual boundaries. It’s easy to drift into laundry or dishes during the day. Though some of us might struggle with our home tasks being swallowed by our work tasks, most of us will struggle with our home life being slowly consumed by our work life. Example? It’s easy for me to decide in the evening, “I’ll watch a movie on Netflix and just open my laptop to work on a few things,” only to find out that it took me three times as long to complete that task and I barely know what’s happening in the plot to the movie.

The painter N. C. Wyeth would sometimes tape a piece of cardboard on the side of his glasses when the work was going bad, to limit his distractions and make himself concentrate, but this forced blinder made him moody and difficult to live with.

Allowing work to bleed into your home life hours, or multi-tasking work during the evening, robs your best self from investing in the moment. At the end of the day, you must set boundaries and be aware that you need your personal space, now more than ever. 

Bre Redmond, Customer Success Rep at commonsku has a great lifehack for this, “I always make sure I have something to do. That may be taking a walk, shopping, or reading a book, but this ensures I pull myself away from my computer.”

Losing oneself in the passion of work is a blessing and a secret to high productivity, but losing yourself entirely to your work, day after day, only leads to exhaustion. And if you are new to working at home, you will be shocked at how you can sit down at your desk at 7:30 AM to begin work, only to find yourself at 7:30 PM “just finishing up this one last task.”

Don’t work blindly beyond your day, separate work (at least in your mind) from the sacred space of your home.

(IV) Don’t Drift Into the Malaise of Days, Do …. 

The news is overwhelming right now and as many have stated, the past few weeks in self-isolation have felt like a year. Each day drifts into the next and we’re all stunned by how quickly the time passes, how days blend into days. 

If you’re new to the world at work, you’ll be surprised to discover that this isn’t just a result from the coronavirus forcing everyone to self-isolate, but rather, it’s the uprooting of vital routines in our lives that had once helped distinguish our days. 

In the past, each new day was ushered in by the force of habit. Maybe you rose at 6:30, showered, then stopped to get coffee on the way to work. Even the drive, or the simple act of saying “hi” to the barista, was a part of your routine. Maybe you always shared lunch with a colleague, or, perhaps you hit the gym near your office after work. You held routines like these for years and now they’re ripped from you, leaving you somewhat rudderless and unmoored from your (former) reality.

This “malaise of days” you’re experiencing is quite simply the obliteration of old routines and habits. To help us understand how significant these seemingly banal tasks are, I’m going to refer to these habits as rituals. A ritual is any customary observance or practice, but it carries a heavier connotation than a habit, as it has a subtle power to prep our minds for the mental condition to take on the next task and unlock the next action. A ritual is a trigger and a reset button.

It’s time to establish new rituals.

Bre Redmond shared that a “pre-work ritual ensures that I'm ready to go and feel great about my day .. this might sound excessive but I have four rituals I complete every morning: coffee, yoga or gym, smoothie, and then turn on diffusers with my scent of the day.” 

If this thought about rituals sounds too simple, that merely creating new rituals in your life might liberate your work, provide boundaries, and inspire creativity, consider what Twyla Tharp’ wrote in her book, The Creative Habit: 

“I begin each day of my life with a ritual: I wake up at 5:30 A.M., put on warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron Gym at 91st Street and First Avenue, where I work out for two hours. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body through each morning at the gym; the ritual is the cab. The moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the ritual … I repeat the wake-up, the workout, the quick shower, the breakfast of three hard-boiled egg whites and a cup of coffee, the hour to make my morning calls and deal with correspondence, the two hours of stretching and working out ideas by myself in the studio, the rehearsals with my dance company, the return home in the late afternoon to handle more business details, the early dinner, and a few quiet hours of reading. That’s my day, every day. A dancer’s life is all about repetition.”

It’s crucial we don’t drift into the malaise of days, a worker’s life is a daily dance with vital habits.

In closing, Annie Dillard once wrote that “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days … it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time.”

How’s your work at home life going? Have your discovered new mental habits that liberate your work? How about new rituals to replace the old? Share them with us on the socials @commonsku!