My home “office” is half of my 6 foot dining table. And I set it up to face the opposite direction of how I normally face. In addition, on my work days (M, W & Th) I wake up at my usual time, and follow my exact routine (exact). I take my lunch “break” in the living room, with my exact lunch that I “packed” as part of my routine noted earlier. I even Slack or text “I’m going to take my lunch now” - yesterday my office manager wrote me back “you’re so cute, you know you don’t need to do that, right?” and I wrote back “sure I do, it’s not like if someone needs me they can come find me on my break, and I don’t want anyone to get cricket silence while I’m away at lunch. I let others in the office know when I’m taking lunch or stepping out for errands, why wouldn’t I continue to do that?” (many people rely on my quick response time to many issues) - her response “you know, I didn’t think of that, that’s great, thanks.” My work day ends at 5, and I send an e-mail (or Slack notice) to let others know what I accomplished during the day, and what’s on my agenda for the upcoming workday. And I wait about 5 minutes to see if anyone needs anything last minute, and I log off. Today (Tues) is my normal off day, and as much as I’m itching to log in to see what’s going on (we’ve got payroll and expense payments going out this week) I’m not logging in. My work space sits there looking at me, but I’m ignoring it. My usual mentality is to “think like an owner” (always has been thanks to work ethics instilled in me by my grandmother and mother) - so it is difficult, but not impossible, to ignore the work sitting at my “desk” only 3 feet away.
'I have never understood the “working in PJ’s” ’ - LOL. When I get pager alerts in the middle of the night, you can bet I don’t get dressed before logging on to the laptop.
My team and I usually had happy hour on Wed every other week. It was cancelled when we started to working from home. Today I just asked my assistant to put it back on - virtual happy hour. We’ll each get one of our favorite drinks and pretend we are at a bar. When we used to be in the office we had one meeting after another and we usually had time for a quick chat in between meetings, but now it’s not possible. It will be nice to have a bit of down time to connect.
^^^ I just told my D1 tonight to do this with her team! She misses the socialness and happy hour is/was a frequent thing they did right in the office. Plan a virtual one!
We have a staff member whose last day at his position is this Friday. I feel bad that he will not get a send off. Was thinking about doing some type of virtual send off.
I usually have back to back meetings from 8-noon. Lately I’ve been working in PJs until my meetings are over, then I go take a shower and dress up. In the afternoon I do “real” work, and preparing for the next day meetings. It’s nice that in the PM the Europeans are off and Asia Pacific are still sleeping. And I can take a walk with my dog whenever I want in the PM, or play game with my kids.
I have a bad habit of not getting up every 15 mins, though. I am glued to the computer for hours without a break. I like working in the office much better because my coworkers would drag me out to lunch. I am fortunate that I really love my job, my boss, my team, and my company. I manage my own time and make my own direction. I have a boss like everyone else but she never tells me what to do. Our 1:1 we always talk about kids and life, very little about work. I love my team and they love me. I know that because I never had a bad anonymous 360 feedback. My boss picked various people to get feedback from as part of the process. She even said that she tried to get the people whom she thought might give me not so good feedback but she failed miserably.
I have to say that it’s tough to have 1:1 with my direct reports remotely because I’ve always do the people management piece of my job in person, at least for the important conversations (goal and objectives, mid year review, Year end review, rating, and compensation). I don’t even know if I will be able to see my non-US team members face to face this year. Probably not.
"I’ve read that a lot of employers are worried that people are chaining themselves to their desks at home. "
Pretty sure my employers are not so much worrying as expecting their people to be chaining themselves to their desks.
Today was a killer day at “work”. I might as well have been chained to my desk. I finally quit at 9:00 PM.