Work From Home Tips it Only Took Me a Year to Learn

Welp, we’ve seen the one-year mark of the pandemic come and go, and along with it some other strange milestones. People are celebrating their second quarantine birthdays, sharing vaccine selfies, AND many of us are marking a full year of working remotely. While I’m grateful for the privilege of remaining employed this whole time, it has been a unique challenge and sometimes slogs to switch from a job-based in offices, sound stages, and live events, to working entirely from my tiny bungalow. It was a pretty massive shift, trading out loafers for slippers, film shoots for zoom calls, and team lunches for inhaling leftovers at a laptop.

There’s a lot that I haven’t figured out during this weird era, but I do finally feel like I’m getting the hang of working from home. (which is good since it looks like I’ll be doing it for the next 6 months and a hybrid model after that.) I generally love my job, but after a few (kind of miserable) spells of extreme work burnout in the summer and fall, I started paying attention to what was working and what wasn’t. If everything happening in the world was going to be miserable, I wasn’t going to let how I spend 40 hours a week also be.

Here are some things I’ve applied to establish a better work-from-home-work-life balance.

Create some “Human Buffering Time”

A friend of mine used this term and I immediately stole it. Without a commute acting as the shock absorber between waking up and plugging in, or closing up in the early evening signaling a return to your time, creating rituals that mark the beginning and end of the workday is imperative. Here are some of mine.

Ease into and out of Screen time: During the early phase of the pandemic, then again in particularly tumultuous months surrounding the election, I developed the bad habit of waking up.

Headspace Morning & Nighttime Meditations: I am a morning person but not an early bird, generally hitting snooze a few times before opening my eyes. These morning meditations help me ease into the day while still staying cozy in bed. Then again at night, they help me unwind and shift gears into a sleepy zone.

30 Day Challenge to Set a Morning Routine: Despite the click-bait nature of this link, I have found so many of these small adjustments helpful, and that it’s quite doable to practice a lot of them all within the first 20 minutes of the day

Breathwork App: I cannot praise this app enough. I downloaded it as a last-ditch effort to help with the bouts of insomnia I’ve been having since last march, and it is truly incredible how much 2 minutes of concentrated breathwork can help calm you down or wake you up. Perfect for early mornings, restless nights and even to reduce anxiety during the workday. The timed breathing exercises make your phone vibrate, so you don’t have to look at the phone to do them.

Create Sensory Cues: I light nice scented candles when I wake up, and then blow them out when I open my laptop for the day. It’s a visual and aromatic cue that separates work time and my time. (I received a candle care kit, and blowing out the candles with a snuffer makes me feel very fancy.) And, as you may have guessed, when the laptop shuts around 5, they get lit again.

Treat your skin! Ease into the day with a small splurge in your skincare. Keep a jade roller in the fridge and roll the coolness over your face while making coffee. I don’t care if the toxin-release is the only placebo effect, it is such a nice way to wake up. I also love using these eye masks while reading the morning headlines.

Practice Micro-Mindfulness: I don’t know if this is a real term, but let’s make it one. A great way to start the day is to take some time to mindfully wake up. For us that looks like making coffee more meticulously – Taking the time to weigh out the beans and do pour-over in a cone or Chemex is a simple way to consciously start the day. Go Analog: Even if we spent a lot of time on computers before, nothing compares to the zoom marathons we now find ourselves on. Creating off-screen rituals before and after work makes a monumental difference. I’m a longtime fan of journaling, so I like to put pen to paper before checking my slack in the morning. Taking even 10 minutes to do things AWAY from screens is so helpful. Other things I love include playing records instead of Spotify and pulling recipes from actual cookbooks instead of websites for dinner after work.