How to work from home

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro, and things are definitely very weird right now for some people. For a privileged slice of the population that doesn’t have to show up to work in person, the coronavirus means working at home for the first extended stretch of their professional lives.

I am somehow an expert in this field. As terrifying as that thought might be, it’s actually true: I’ve worked from home for over a decade. I have made every possible mistake that can be made as a home office dweller — originally mistakes I made only to hurt myself, but that I can now say happened for the benefit of science and the public good. It’s good to know that the disastrous “I can work while simultaneously watching every season of Breaking Bad, and that is definitely a thing that will work” experiment of 2012 didn’t happen in vain.

I have also had successes, and made it work. I cannot imagine going to the office now, or even thinking offices were a good or smart thing to have for companies to have. I also now have a long beard, have not worn a tie in over eight years, and talk to plants like they are people.

Chances are you’re not going to get to my extreme point of enlightenment in the time you’ll be home. But we can get through this. I might even convince you and your boss how stupid keeping 20th century office life alive in the 21st century is, and how offices just turn professional life into 28th grade — a huge, poorly run school complete with rows of desks and a communal lunchroom.

Maybe we’ll get you to grow a fledgling beard. Pioneers had them, and now you, alone in the American wilderness with just a laptop and a dream, can, too.

This is a series of very simple rules and suggestions for working in the original open plan office where no one cleans up after you: your home.

Get dressed. This is a roadmap, and every map needs boundaries. I’m not telling you how to get dressed. There is a full-suit psychopath somewhere out there reading this who doesn’t feel capital-P Professional without a tie on and a belt around their waist. There is someone out there pondering their multiple options in dress sweatpants. There is no one-size-fits-all sweatpant, and there is also no universal sizing for plans.

What I do know is that without an office to drive to and away from, the boundaries between work and home disappear. That is a very bad thing for anyone’s mental health. Being at home and at the office at the same time is asking a person to be in two places at the same time. It’s impossible, stressful, and unreasonable, and it gets no better over time as days wear on into weeks.

The first line to draw is between what you look like asleep, and what you look like awake and moving around. Put your pajamas or sleepwear away. Or, if you insist on wearing pajamas, let me talk you into this: Put away your sleeping pajamas, and climb into clean, fancy new work pajamas. You know, LIKE THE ARISTOCRAT YOU ALWAYS KNEW YOU WERE. Doesn’t even have to be pajamas, really: A smoking jacket, a Viking helmet, or a sleek vintage Halston dress you’ve been wanting to swan about in for a bit? A full University of Oregon football uniform? I don’t care. Just change modes so you can keep your boundaries clean and tidy.

Just get something else on to set a boundary. Those of you with suits and ties on can also clean up your kill rooms, too. You know, for an extra bit of helpful, soothing routine.

Have a morning routine. Don’t really care what it is. You like to run, well, run in the morning and keep a time limit. (Alone, preferably.) Coffee person? Hit that first thing when you wake up. Go for a short walk, listen to some music, take the dog out, whatever. Sit and read for thirty minutes or meditate.

Just do something to let your lizard brain know that THIS IS NOT A DIFFERENT DAY. You will want to get work done and keep an even emotional keel. Your lizard brain will want to eat an entire bag of Flamin’ Hots, watch Netflix documentaries all day, and start drinking at 11 a.m. Don’t give it even a hint of a signal that this could happen. Stick to the routine.

Don’t worry about having too fixed of a workspace. It is critical to have a workspace to draw boundaries between you, the responsible professional who accomplishes things, and you, the person who sometimes drinks beer in the shower and sings to your pets when you get bored.

That said: It’s also not too important that you stick to it like it’s house arrest. I’ve worked on couches, on the floor, in chairs, and occasionally in the bathtub. (Tub-blogging is a crucial element of maintaining my sanity. I will not be accepting questions about it at this time.)

I’ve even spent a shocking amount of time at the kitchen counter with my laptop perched atop multiple configurations of kitchen items shaped into a very bootleg standing desk. Why didn’t you just get a standing desk? Because when you work from home, part of the war is always tricking the brain into thinking you’re not working, and in fact have been allowed to skip school — not for a day, but for forever.

Hit 45 minutes of work and then do something else for 15 minutes. The office has natural ways of breaking up the attention span: Co-workers interrupting you to discuss things you don’t care about, some cake in the break room, going to the snacks fridge not because you are hungry, but because you’re bored and want to see if they got the good flavor of bubble water this week. (They didn’t. THIS COMPANY USED TO BE SOMETHING.)

There is nothing to break the silence at home, so do it yourself. Laundry is one great way to break up your day into manageable little cycles, but other chores could do just as well. Call your mom.

Lunch. You will forget it, I promise, and end up trashing the cabinets at 9 p.m. like a raccoon raiding a vacation rental. Be the person who remembers to eat lunch, or be the night creature inhaling Sour Patch Kids straight out of the family-sized bag you swore would last for months.

Nap. Oh god there are so many absolutely stupid things about offices and this is the first one. Nap. Just take a short nap if you need one and it fits the calendar. No one will miss you, and you’ll feel better for it every time. Note: Two hours is not a nap. That is a siesta, and you’re not Zorro and do not deserve one unless you are Zorro. Apologies to my close personal friend Zorro, who is definitely reading this in his splendid hacienda before a restorative two-hour nap.

Socialize as much as you can. FaceTime, group chats, vintage old-school messaging, whatever, just talk to someone besides the pets. Twitter gets a terrible and deserved rep for being a cesspool, but sometimes it can be a cesspool custom-made for your particular kind of swinedom, and make the day a bit less lonely.

There are people for whom this will never, ever work, and I get that. I would be happy working from home for the rest of my life, seeing five or six close friends and family members, and only texting people in between playing with the dog, lifting weights, and reading about death and sports. There are others like me, and we have no meetings, ever.

There are other people who actually have a sick need to “see and talk to other people.” Though I can’t cure you of this disorder, I can suggest mitigating it with technology and pets.

The TV is your call. This depends greatly on the kind of work done, but whether or not to have the TV on is a personal choice. I can’t do it. I write, and if it’s on in the background it either starts to bleed into what I’m typing, or I give up and watch whatever is in front of me. This is how I miss deadlines, and also how I once wrote an ACC preview in the voice of Bear Grylls.

If you can and your type of work allows it, go ahead. If not, then don’t.

Watch your conference calls. I once had to pee so bad at the end of a conference call that I put in my headphones, muted the call, and went to the bathroom. In the process of fumbling around to adjust the thundering volume, I unmuted and broadcast the sound of me pissing in a very echoey bathroom to the whole call. For an instant I tried to will myself to explode on the spot, but a German guy on the call broke the tension by saying “WELL I GUESS ZAT IS ZE END OF THIS CAHL IZN’T IT.”

So yeah: be attentive, clothed, and don’t try to multitask during them. Is this me asking you to do as I say, and not as I do? Absolutely. Sometimes you’re an example, and sometimes you’re a warning, and lord knows I’ve been both. (By about a 30/70 ratio of example to warning, I’d guess. Batting .300 gets you in the Baseball Hall of Fame, right?)

Exercise. Even pretty strict self-isolation routines allow for exercise, so take it. Go for a run, get on a bike, or just go do one of those YouTube fitness routines where half the comments are about how they really enjoyed the workout, and the other half are about whether the instructor farted at the 17:48 mark. (They did, and will never, ever admit it.) Endorphins are an amazing mood stabilizer. Go get some.

Turn work things off. Not muting or turning things off at home LITERALLY MEANS YOU ARE CHOOSING TO SLEEP IN YOUR OFFICE. Turn them off and do anything else, or you’re setting yourself up for dumb football coaches’ work schedules, but without the exorbitant salaries as a reward.

In summary: You are now both the bear and the park ranger. The problem and the solution, that’s you at home now. Be kind to the park ranger by understanding what you need in a day, and what rules you need to follow to keep the park in order. Be kind to the bear by understanding that rules applied to an animal have to take into account the needs and limitations of the bear.

In other words: Messy desk at the office, well, messy desk at home. Plan against your worst tendencies, forgive them when they inevitably surface again, and occasionally let yourself eat out of the trash cans.

Allow that, because in truth there isn’t a higher level of productivity to be found anywhere. There is a finite and pretty steady amount you’ll get done anywhere. It’s not a hack, it’s not a superpower, and, while pleasant, it’s still very much work. Being at home really only cuts out the commute while introducing all the other very necessary things one might do instead of drudge work.

And these are sometimes things you need to get done! You will lose a day to the dishes and the laundry and housework, and sometimes you will lose a day to Stardew Valley. IT’S SO RELAXING. That’s fine: You lost days in the office to bad meetings, to inane trainings, to IT outages and whatever other communal work issues derail whole hours of the day. It washes out in the end. The bad news is that you’re the problem, and the good news is that you’re also the solution.