Episode 2: Day 7: March 23, 2020
As we begin the second work-from-home week, I’m happy to
report everyone seems to be handling this pretty well. We’re able to serve the
majority of our customer's needs in this remote capacity and for everything
else, we’re diligent about reducing exposure as much as possible.
I did notice something this past weekend though. I have no
idea if anyone else experienced this or not, so I’m speaking purely of my own
story.
I had a hard time keeping myself busy. I had this nagging
feeling that I should have been in my home office and working on things. I
chalked it up to Saturday feeling just like Friday which felt like Thursday
(and so on). Wash, rinse, and repeat for Sunday. I knocked out my normal
weekend chores, but I couldn’t shake this nagging feeling that I was supposed
to be working.
Blurring the line between home and office definitely has the
potential to (& did) cause me to continue to have my "work brain”
engaged whenever I wasn’t actively doing something else, which can’t be all
that healthy and could quickly lead to burnout. Without my commute as the
transition signal that I was no longer at work, I was on duty all the time. I
realized this is how I’ve felt at the end of each day since we started the work
from home thing.
This is no Bueno.
It wasn’t until Sunday that I started to really understand
what was going on. I thought I’d immediately write down these things that my
brain wants me to do, then perhaps it would relax for a bit. To a degree, it
helped. It took a little while to capture all the tasks, calls, ideas, etc.,
and by late afternoon, I was more mentally home again. I still need to figure
out how to reliably transition out of work mode. The odd thing is that I have
purposely kept my morning routine the same to help me transition into the
working frame of mind. It just never occurred to me I’d need to equally find a
way to transition back to a home life mindset.
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| Jeff Garell |
On a final note, last night was the best sleep I’ve had
since we started this work-from-home effort. I’m hoping that’s the new trend
and I can give credit to this revelation.
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