Working Remote in the United States

 

Today I want to talk about working remote in the United States... Will this apply also to other places in the world, tell me your opinion in the comments.

Since March 23, 2020 we have been trapped indoors, taking care of our homes and family, but also some of us have had the pleasure of trying to work from home.  But is this a pleasure?

One of the most important things for us to effectively work from home is discipline.  With discipline we were able to complete our work, home, bill tasks among other things in our lives.  However, work always brought the advantage of giving us blocked hours for its execution, which obviously does not happen at home.  Some of us could wake up, whether or not have breakfast, and not worry about food until noon or one in the afternoon, because this would be the designated time to eat and then only after six o'clock in the afternoon we would think again of anything other than work (not disregarding the fact that on average we were interrupted in our work routine regularly at most 20% of the time, or even less if we do not have children, because the rest of the world is also in routine).

Nevertheless what happens now with our routine at a ruckus, children, pets and other things going on at any time, Saturday and Sunday seem like weekdays, it appears that we do not even have time to look at the sunset anymore, and we are in summer and there is no sunset until eight o'clock at night.  Between laundry (which seems ironic to me because how does the pile of clothes do not decrease!  We do not leave the house), prepare lunch, dinner, endless snacks, and bedtime seems to be no longer a clear time which disturbs us also getting up in the morning, it seems like this train that does not stop going and we are always trying to catch it , it is so close but cannot catch it.

During this pandemic weather we are working or not came to show each one of us our ability and resilience, how many of us have stopped to realized how much we have learned since the beginning of the year.  We learn to cook, take care of our children, do laundry during the day (Saturday will never be the same after this pandemic).  Each of us in our own time has learned to discipline ourselves in some way to achieve our primary and even secondary goals; after 5 months they do not only include things like to eat, to stay clean, and not to expose ourselves to dangers – survival instinct; Nour days, we need affection, comfort, moments with the family, moments of happiness, and other emotions too, to become better human beings every day and even more resilient.

This is the subject of today, how to organize yourself among this new chaos that has become our lives.  Prioritization  remains the name of the game.  Remember to first create your individual to-do lists that are mixed with work, home, bills, and projects.  Then use a priority criterion for everything on that list.  And with that go organizing your day according to the time required of each activity.  For example, washing and cooking are things that can perhaps be done together.  We put the clothes to wash, prepare lunch, eat, put clothes to dry while the children or others finish eating, because we are the ones in a hurry and we always seem to finish up faster than everyone else.  Take care of the cleanup in the kitchen and follow with the next item on that list of things to do. 

That's the point, instead of focusing on trying to have a normal eight-hour work day, which won't happen.  Give yourself the right to work for tasks. Ten at night is no longer too late to read and send the emails of what happened during the day.  Our deadlines are no longer as rigid or immediate.  Our priorities have changed in-and-out of our homes.  Let's adopt this new way of thinking and at the end of the day include several other tasks in our list of things we were able to accomplish today and with that be a little bit happier every day.

Claudia Nunes

claudia.v.nunes@gmail.com

 

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