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| Wigs: a necessity (Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash) |
It’s bewildering, and nowhere more so than in the working environment. Most of us are working from home now, but what does that mean, and how can we do it effectively? Newspapers, blogs and broadcasters have all rushed to offer advice. Here, we summarise the common hints and tips that have emerged.
Create a home office
‘Although it's tempting to stay in bed or head to your sofa, you're best off setting up a station,’ suggests Good Housekeeping. ‘Besides making you feel like you're at an "office," this helps you maintain good posture, avoid distractions, and leave your work behind at the end of the day.’
Research Professional, meanwhile, gets more specific. ‘Get a self-adhesive whiteboard. You won’t regret it,’ it says, before waxing lyrical about the benefits of an uncomfortable chair. ‘It forced me to sit up straight, improved my posture and gradually cured my aches.’ Hmm.
The Financial Times goes further, with advice on every element of your home working environment.
‘Under no circumstances try to make a “home office” out of a hopeless space that cannot be turned to any other use...It is better to be in a decent room with natural light than an ad-hoc corner beside the vacuum cleaner,’ it dictates, before going on to dismiss Ikea desks as substandard (‘they will never feel of high-enough quality’), praise windows (‘the visual umbilical to the real world’), and get all Marie Kondo on the walls (‘do not confuse your home office with a dumping ground’).
It might be a little bit too hardcore for most, but it gets the basics right: ‘coffee maker: no aesthetic parameters here, just make it good.’
Dress for success
Most suggest that you should make yourself professional too. ‘Get dressed,’ says the BBC. ‘It will not only improve your state of mind, it will psychologically prepare you to start work.’
‘No pyjamas!’ squeals Good Housekeeping, more succinctly. This is echoed by the gloriously tongue-in-cheek New Yorker: ‘don’t get sloppy!’ it advises. ‘Be sure to dress each morning in power suits and elaborate wigs.’
Set a routine...or not
With a non-Ikea desk and a hard chair, together with a suitable wig, you’re ready for the next step: setting a routine.
‘You'll probably have set hours of work, and it's important to stick to these when you're working from home,’ says the BBC. Good Housekeeping says the same: ‘If you typically work nine-to-five hours, keep doing it at home. It's easy to lose track of time and if you can't stick to a typical work-life balance, you may find yourself getting easily burnt out.’
‘Working from home isn't an opportunity for friends to come round,’ admonishes Sky, while The Guardian takes its cue from famous writers.
‘Writers in full throttle will have a schedule that wouldn’t look out of place in the military...Even interaction can be scheduled. As Graham Greene wrote in The End of the Affair, “When I was young not even a love affair would alter my schedule. A love affair had to begin after lunch.”
However, others take exactly the opposite view. ‘You may need to be flexible,’ says Research Professional, ‘particularly if you are simultaneously caring for children or parents.’ Good Housekeeping puts it simply: ‘If you have kids, prepare for disruptions.’
Times Higher agrees. ‘Having a rigid routine might feel like a good thing for one's mental health, but failing to stick to it can be quite devastating. Acknowledging that things are likely to change really helps me personally.’
As ‘our Graham’ used to say on Blind Date, ‘the choice, home worker, is yours.’
Keep in contact
While there might be disagreement over routine, all the commentators agree that keeping in touch is crucial. ‘The worst aspect of remote working can be feeling ignored,’ says Sky.
‘Maintain virtual contact,’ suggests Times Higher. ‘Loneliness during self-isolation can be debilitating...Also, long-term loneliness can induce “fight-or-flight” stress signalling, which negatively affects the immune system, so people who feel lonely have less immunity and more inflammation than others.’
So use the technology at our fingertips to keep in touch - but be careful, warns Sky. ‘Group meetings in-person can be difficult, but over the phone they can be absolute chaos...participants can end up speaking over each other for minutes on end.
This can be compounded by any lag on the line which amplifies misunderstandings about who is speaking and who is listening.’
Yes, we feel your pain.
While virtual contact is important, be careful: the internet and social media can be a killer to productivity. ‘If you are going to be effective you’ll need to quarantine yourself from social media and phone calls with friends,’ says The Guardian.
‘Writers have long seen the internet as the enemy of productivity...Novelist Zadie Smith doesn’t have a smartphone while Jonathan Franzen writes in a room without wifi and tapes up the ports on his computers so he is not tempted to connect.’ Extreme, but probably very effective.
Take a break - and be creative
‘It's important to take regular screen breaks and get up from your desk and move around just as you would in an office,’ says the BBC. ‘Regular breaks help focus, they don’t disrupt it,’ agrees Research Professional.
Its Research Europe news editor, Craig Nicholson, says, quite sweetly, that ‘I force myself to stare out of the window for five to ten minutes every once in a while.’ Aw.
He’d better watch out for Good Housekeeping, though. ‘Don’t just sit there...stand up regularly to stretch or move around...it’s a good opportunity to exercise.’
Many go one step further and suggest mixing it up a bit, being creative, and remaining mentally and physically agile.
‘We have to remember to take joy in small things,’ says Times Higher. ‘We could take this time to rediscover some of those hobbies that have been languishing in the bottom drawer, and reignite our creativity. Creativity is really good for our mental and physical well-being, and all of us are creative even if we have been led to believe that we are not.’
...Or ignore all this
If you’ve had an overload of hints and tips, don’t worry. They may well be meaningless anyway. Darius Foroux on his excellent blog suggests ‘all those ‘working from home’ tips aren’t working.’
‘Have a separate home office—Almost everyone recommends this. But do these people live in mansions? Most of us don’t have a spare room we can turn into an office. Sure, it would be perfect to have a comfortable home office. But we need to work with what we have, not what we want.’
He goes on: ‘Dress the part: Look, maybe it works for some people. But c’mon, really? Wear whatever you want’. And, more deliciously: ‘You work from home so you don’t have work hours. You can work whenever you want. In fact, the people who work for me also don’t have work hours. Just get things done. I don’t care when you do it.’
He suggests that we should focus on what work we have to do, not where we do it, how long it took, or what we were wearing at the time.
For me, that’s the take-home message. Do what works for you, and just getting through this will be an achievement. If all else fails, remember The New Yorker’s final, one word tip:
11. Wine.
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To find out more about any of the recommendations above, have a look at the original posts below.
- Acas: Working from home
- Good Housekeeping: 7 effective ways to work from home during the coronavirus outbreak
- BBC: Five ways to work well from home
- Darius Foroux: Why all those ‘working from home’ tips are not working
- Financial Times: Working from home - in style
- The Guardian: From Hemingway to Haruki Murakami – great writers’ tips about working from home
- Research Professional: Home working in the time of Covid-19
- Sky: Seven essential tips if you have to work from home
- Times Higher Education: Tips on working from home with children
- The New Yorker: 11 tips for working alongside your partner in the global pandemic
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