The 4 Stages of Working from Home
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit and lockdown was imposed, many people were forced to work from home. I wasn’t one of them as I had already been working remotely for the previous two years, but listening to my friends talk about their struggles or the things that seemed strange or unusual about their new working routine, I realised that I had also experienced those feelings, emotions and reactions — I just ended up getting used to them because working from home became my new normal.
However, that doesn’t change the fact that getting used to working from home is a process and, like any other process, it takes a while to complete and has multiple stages. The following are the stages that I personally experienced (and yes, it took me a while to process and conceptualise them).
Stage 1: The Impostor Syndrome
When I first started working from home, I had trouble sleeping. I used to wake up in the middle of the night or a couple of hours before my alarm was scheduled to go off, anxious that I might not be up at the right time in morning and that the first thing I needed to do was to get online, which meant signing into all the communication platforms (Gmail, Drive, HipChat, Skype, etc.). The anxiety of being online and available at all times, during my working day, used to keep me awake at night.
With hindsight, I realise how ludicrous that fear was. I hadn’t been concerned about being late for work or not being available at all time when I was working in the office, so my obsession was nonsensical. However, it made a lot of sense at the time of experiencing it. It made sense because I felt that I was gaining perks that I shouldn’t have had: not having to commute or spend money on overpriced lunches, not having to dress, look or behave a certain way because I was under ‘office scrutiny.’ I was getting freedoms that I didn’t fully deserve. I kept wondering what made me more special than people who were working from the office? It didn’t feel… normal; it felt like I was cheating on the norm by having access to a working life that was different and I was in some form of denial that such life was… acceptable.
Stage 2: The Search for a Routine
After a few months, I settled into the new way of working. My company was not new to remote working and I had colleagues who had done it for a long time and swore by it. Seeing their behaviour and finding out more about their experiences, made it feel more normal and made me realise I was being too harsh on myself, thinking that working from home was somehow the equivalent of skipping classes in school. I also became more aware of the fact that normality is a concept, a construct to guide us and keep us all right, to help us adhere to a certain way of doing things and living, and if I changed my perspective, I could see that working from home was not that abnormal.
I also became aware of how much more work I was doing. Work was now in my house and I was at home all the time, which meant that work was always with me. It was hard not to start working before breakfast and easy to keep working right till dinner time. I had taken my lunch at the desk before, but now I was doing it without the foraging (in the urban sense) and human interaction part : leave the office, take the lift or the stairs down, leave the building, walk outside, shop for my lunch, interact with people, walk some more, prepare lunch in the office while chatting to co-workers, come back to my desk, sit down, eat and work. Now, it was just… stand up, walk to the kitchen, make lunch, come back to the desk, sit down, eat and work.
I soon realised I needed a routine. I needed to apply some self-discipline so that I could create boundaries between work and personal life, I needed to go for a walk in the morning before starting work, I needed to start taking breaks. Slowly but steadily, I introduced routine and habits back into my life and as the days went by, working from home became not just normal, but also tolerable.
Stage 3: The Right Space
I reached the point where I could actually embrace working from home and acknowledge how much time and mental space I was dedicating to my job. It was now time to make working from home enjoyable. Next step was to create a space for myself that I would only associate with work: a space I would come to in the morning and leave at the end of my working day. I started small, with a dedicated spot at the kitchen table and a nice chair nearby for calls that did not require too much typing.
Finally, after the house renovation, we actually got a real office, with walls, desks, plants, screens and a door. It improved my life so much and made working from home not just enjoyable, but also something to be proud of. I was owning remote working and I therefore created a layer of self-satisfaction that I didn’t even know I was capable of producing.
Stage 4: Advocacy
Offices have their purpose, but once you understand the fundamentals behind that purpose, you become aware that there are multiple mediums for achieving it. Working from an office is just one of those mediums, but the purpose is to have access to a space that encourages productivity, minimises distractions, fosters collaboration and helps you stay creative and focused, so that you can do your best work. I realised I could achieve all that (and more) while working from home — even the collaboration part.
Although I hadn’t been too comfortable walking up to someone’s desk and interrupting their flow, I had no problem setting up a call with them or sending them an instant message. Working form home helped me not just collaborate better with my colleagues, but also trust them, and therefore people in general, more. When you shoot someone a message or schedule a call, you trust them to read and answer your message or attend the meeting, even if you can’t see them face to face, don’t share the same space and cannot guarantee that your presence in the office will at least remind them of your message or meeting. You realise that working from home implies giving up some control in certain areas, such as visibility into your colleagues’ lives, but what you gain exceeds what you lose because you end up getting more control over your own life.
In the end, I have come to enjoy, own and be proud of working from home to the point where I could talk to people about the benefits and the challenges it presents. Working from home is not perfect, but after doing it for a while and going through some stages in order to accept, process and associate it with positive feelings, I know where I stand: I recognise that I really like it and that it improves the quality of my life, I understand how to make it better and I know I would recommend it to a friend or two :)
