It's really only been a few weeks so far. My work-from-home routines are barely coming into focus. So, just to put it out there, what I'm about to say represents my first reflections on a subject I've had a particular concern about, but not a whole lot of personal experience thus far.
The concern is this:
How do workaholics work from home?
Well, no, that's not the question really. Because workaholics work from anywhere, all the time. Physical space is makes no difference. The answer to that question is probably, 'They just work.'
So I guess the better question is this.
How do workaholics who work from home separate work from everything else?
As a (mostly managed) workaholic most of my life, I found having an office elsewhere helpful. But now this is not the case. Now my concentrated computer work, my study and teaching preparation, my planning and praying and reflection, all still very much components of my work these days, happens from my house. Even meetings, reduced as they are now, happen at my house. My house, my home. The same place where I rest, sleep, watch movies, partner with my husband, take out the garbage, decorate for Christmas, entertain my grandchildren, have people over.....do life.
So how to keep things separate? How to keep work work and life life and play play, etc. etc.
Here's what I am finding helpful so far.
1. Have A Separate Space
This is important to me for more reasons than just keeping work and life separated. A personally-crafted work space has always been my productivity-inclined goal as manifest in comfort, concentration, inspiration and a sense of the sacred. So when it came time to move my office home, I was able to set aside two corners of a larger room, mark them off visually with furniture placement and wall decor, get all my binders and books where I could have easy access, and then declare 'Here is my new office.' This may not be an option for everyone, but if you have the room, it really beats having the dining room table or other regular living space be taken over with your work. I'm not sure about you, but what it looks like visually is how it's probably going to happen inside my brain.
2. Get Dressed
Sounds simple, and perhaps this isn't a thing for everyone, but it helps me to get up and get dressed
as if I was going to work somewhere else, like, more in public. And it's not for the purpose of encouraging me
to work. It's more for the effect of, at the end of the day, changing into 'home clothes' as a signal that the work time is done. Don't worry. I'm not clomping around my house in heels all day. Like I said above, comfort is important for productivity for me. But there's still a distinction between what I'm wearing when I'm working and what I'll put on to relax.
3. Beginning and Ending Rituals
Similar to getting dressed, I have found the practice of start-of-day rituals and end-of-day rituals to be another good signal that work is either 'on' or 'off'. Three rituals I have carried over from the days when my office was elsewhere. One is to go for my swim first thing in the morning. Beginning the day with exercise helps get the oxygen going and prepare my mind for my work. So this I still do. The second is the lighting of the vanilla candle. Anyone who ever visited me in my previous office knows that there's an aromatherapy affect for me, and in particular with a vanilla candle. And the third is a Scripture meditation/transcription thing I do every morning, just to keep my head into the original languages of the Bible and keep me learning Thai, AND because the kind of work I do is a farce without a slow, meticulous consideration of what I regard as my Source. There's one new ritual I have incorporated into this work-from-home deal; the raising and lowering of the blinds at the far end of the room where I work, at the beginning and end of the day respectively. Not only does this bring in a little more light, but it opens and closes the day in a visual kind of way. Like I said. What's happening visually is likely happening inside my brain.
4. Make the Weekends Different
Not to say that no work can be done in convenient little moments on Saturday and Sunday. But mostly,
mostly, the weekends need to have a different feel for me, or everything bleeds into sameness. That means, for me,
not setting the alarm,
not going for a swim,
not getting into work clothes. That means blocking off time for doing things around the house, (helping with that work-from-home hazard of always seeing some housework or home improvement that needs doing as you just head to the bathroom). That means running errands and longer meal times and favourite weekend foods, or whatever it is that makes the weekend special and different for you. I have a feeling this is going to be all the more important for me as the winter sets in and being at home - as lovely as it's turning out for me now - might wear a little thin.
5. Blur the Lines
This is going to sound like I'm contradicting everything I've just written. But the truth is most workaholics are also perfectionists. And the irony here, at least I feel it in me, is that by setting up some ideas for keeping work separate, I could get all rigid and stupid about it, which would be just as unhealthy as not having any separation at all. Because there's actually a lot of freedom and flexibility in working from home. And one day it might be a perfect mental break to put aside other stuff and just go cut the grass. Or one day it might be exactly what I need to not set the alarm and start the day a little slow. Or one day it might be fine to stay in my pjs all day long (only, I hope you don't come by unexpectedly that day because I'll look so lazy and that would be awful!).
Bottom line is, for some of us, I expect most of us who love the vocation to which they are called, there's really no real way to completely separate work from life. Because work is life and life is work and overlaps are often places of sacred discoveries and profound growth.
That's my list so far. Anyone working from home with other ideas, I'd love to hear about them.
But I'd better sign off now, because I just blew through lunch since there was no one at my office door reminding me that it was time to eat!
