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I’ve been primarily working from home for the past 5 years, and for the most part it has been pretty great. The one thing I do struggle with though is distraction.
Not distraction during the working hours, I’ve got a pretty good handle on that. And a stupid guilt complex that makes me feel bad for taking a 20 minute walk around the block at lunch and being away from my computer for a little bit, while everyone else in the office takes an hour long break.
My big problem is distraction around the working hours. I wake up, cook breakfast and pack lunches and get the family going in the morning. Then a few little bit of time before I should start my day. Sometimes I’ll read, play a game, get lost in a couple quick YouTube videos, or will hear my work computer chirping with messages, and start work early.
Then it is work, and then the kids get home from school. The second I get done, I want to do something with them (we’re currently working through a few Lego sets) or help cook dinner. This leaves me feeling like I never really have separation from work. There’s no space of time between home and work, or work and home to help build those boundaries.
The one thing I miss most about working downtown is my commute. Not the drive in, because I hate driving, but I would drive halfway in, and take the train the rest of the way. It took me twice as long as if I would have driven the whole way, but I cherished the time I sat there surrounded by other people who were chatting or listening to music on headphones and had time to think.
It gave me a regimented time and place where I wasn’t with family, and wasn’t at work. It let me slowly ramp up my thinking to a work mindset and be prepared for the day, and gave me a chance to slowly compartmentalize everything from work on the return trip so that it no longer occupied my thoughts at home.
Things were not the same when we moved to suburban offices and I had to drive the entire time. Being in the car meant I had to think about driving and be alert. Being in my own quiet space meant I filled it with music, or more usually podcasts. They got me thinking about interesting things, but didn’t give me that decompression time. in musical terms, it was an abrupt transition from “I’m thinking about work” to “now I’m thinking of something else” with no gradual cross-fade in between.
The same went for time at work. The team was usually super busy, and not everyone came into the office every day. While we’d try to go out to lunch together as a group once a week, it left a lot of times where I went and ate in the cafeteria by myself surrounded by several hundred people chatting away with each other, or others watching shows on their phones. And again, it gave me a designated time and space to think.
I’m not the most social of creatures, so often I pulled out a notebook and used that time to journal. I once had someone tell me that they always saw me there taking notes, and that I should stop work for a bit and enjoy life, when in fact, I had had been writing down ideas for a short story that I never wrote.
Every time I try and do that at home, the TV is right there, my Steam Deck is just over there, my 3D printers are just downstairs… If I’m taking time away, I want to do something enjoyable. I didn’t have that opportunity to do that when I was in the office, so I found myself being more healthy about it.
When I had a frustrating morning in the office, I really couldn’t escape it, so I would vent in a journal. It was therapeutic, and helped me get those thoughts out, and move on with a better afternoon. At home, I just want to escape, and have more than enough different ways of doing that. Like a fast food meal, it sounds good in the short term, but doesn’t really help things in the long term, but because it is so easy, and less effort than doing something that would be better for you, it can be a default go-to when you’re motivation is low.
While I do have the opportunity to spend an hour a day driving into the office, it makes little sense to do. I would just be sitting in a cubicle all day talking with people via WebEx in a different office, or more likely working from home. I definitely don’t want to waste that time, when I don’t have the opportunity to take public transportation. I just need to get better at finding the discipline to act as if I were working there, and leverage some of the time around my working hours to get better at setting boundaries.
I want it. I miss it. Yet I’m struggling to make myself do it.
-af