You Will Now Be Working From Home

With one announcement, my principal told me we will be working from home due to the coronavirus. Here’s my story as the only IT person in the organization and how I made the transition.

With our last face-to-face meeting at work, I was asked to teach the staff how to use Zoom for conducting video meetings and how to use Google Classroom for student learning. When that was done, I thought about what I would need at home. Multiple monitors. My files. Cables. Books. We would be gone for a week, or two, but I had the feeling it would be a lot longer than that.

Workspace

I knew it would be very important to set up a new working area separate from the living space of my home. The first day I set up multiple monitors to work with the laptop on with an extra card table we had recently purchased. I just happened to have the extra HDMI cable. I made sure I had a comfortable office chair. I made sure my new “office” was near a window so that in video conferences I could have some natural light. In the background, I placed a couple plants. 

Morning Routine

The biggest challenge was getting up in the morning. Previously I had to get up at 5:45am for a 45 minute commute. Now I didn’t have the drive. I still realized that I needed to make the workday start normally. I would get up early and replace the commute with exercise (either yoga or a walk around the neighborhood), then shower and make the bed, have breakfast, and report to work at my designated office at around 8:30am.

Focus

Now here’s what happened. It was tricky to stay focused and on task. I needed a solid to-do list with prioritized large tasks to get done. I figured that out after a few days. Also, I needed a way to focus when my spouse was on a conference call. I found some good headphones a station on pandora “Classical for Studying” (there are others too, Spotify’s Lo-fi playlist and brain.fm). I considered noise canceling headphones. 

Communication

I realized that not being in contact with colleagues regularly, or only through email and text, is hard and lonely. I started commenting more on work and giving positive encouragement as much as possible on things my colleagues were producing. I found this was helping. 

I also found that electronic communication can be tricky and it can skew negative, if done quickly and without compassion. I learned the hard way that you really need to over communicate when working remotely, and to give people the benefit of the doubt, and add explicit kindness to communication as much as possible. In general, bringing an attitude of positivity to remote work can go a long way.

Working Long Hours

The first week I ended up working until 7pm each night. I knew this was not sustainable. After reading some articles focused on remote work, I decided to make sure to take breaks and have a stopping time if possible. I thought about my previous working days and tried to adjust to the home environment, but not adding additional hours onto each day.

Connection

I also found that I was feeling disconnected from my colleagues. I shifted to more phone and video calls when possible to check in and also to solve issues more quickly. I’m still working to make adjustments, but hoping that this week will go even more smoothly as it seems like this may be extended for at least 2 more weeks, and likely another month.

Iteration

I still have more items to try and integrate such as finding a way to set goals and reward myself, how to set up and communicate with Slack, how to get an accountability buddy, get a small amount of meditation into my morning routine and how to experiment with things like Breaktimer.app and pomodoro techniques.

But for now, it’s time to get to work.

Alex Chaucer is the Director of IT and Innovation at a small Catholic elementary school that has just shifted to distance learning. The original article is posted on alexchaucer.com.