Working from Home: Organizing Your Time and Space

In the days since self-quarantine and social distancing began I have received some questions regarding how to effectively work from home and create your own schedule. Many of us who are either finished with graduate school or in the later stages often joke that we have “trained my whole life for this,” which is true, learning how to manage our projects and organize our own schedules is one of the key skills that anyone who completes their Ph.D. has ample experience in, but one thing I realize as I engage with people in online communities is that there also many graduate students just beginning their journey. At the beginning of graduate school the Ph.D. or M.A. is much more structured, and it makes sense that self-quarantining (amongst its many challenges) also means tackling early the challenges of time management. So, this one is for you, and I hope other people who have “trained for this” will create their own resources or jump in and give suggestions in the comments as well. Personally, I like working from home, but I want to acknowledge there are many people who are more productive at libraries, cafés, campus offices, and basically any space that is NOT the personal space of the home, and I respect that. I think now might be a good time to check in with yourself, as we begin to try to establish how to plan, and consider whether you flourish working from home or if you are someone who needs the social space of an external workspace to work most productively. Recognizing the ways in which working from home is either going to aid or challenge you is important starting out because perhaps most important to organizing our own schedules and managing our projects is knowing ourselves and negotiating with ourselves.

1. Forgive yourself and take it a little easier. Even for people like me who work at home, COVID19 is an adjustment. I’m used to staying at home, not being confined to my home, and I think if we’re paying attention we’re probably experiencing stress, so don’t expect everything to go smoothly. Even when conditions are “perfect” work days can be easily derailed, and I fall off of all kinds of task wagons on a daily, weekly, even monthly basis, but what always gets me back on course is cutting myself some slack. I let go of what may seem like past failures (and even thinking of them as failures rather than as a necessary part of the process) and reset the way I want my schedule to look. Every day of managing your own schedule is a process of refining and getting to know what works best for you/dealing with whatever surprises or crises emerge so don’t be rigid, try to be flexible, and most of all, be compassionate with yourself. Personally, self-flagellation will leave me in an absolute state of paralysis so I advise against punitive methods and go with positive reinforcement and self-compassion wherever I can.

2. designate a workspace in your home and clear it. Pick a chair, a desk, a kitchen counter, a place to stand, but have a clear place that you can go to every morning and do your work. That being said, when I read I stand up and walk around, but my preferred and most productive place to work at a desk. The problem with beds, sofas, and soft chairs is that they provide no back support and are quite unhealthy for your back so if you’re trapped at home pick a chair with more firmness and support, a chair that fits at a desk or table is good, obviously anything that is ergonomic or even a desk that can be moved between standing and sitting are ideal setups for anyone spending a lot of time at a desk, but we’re trapped in our homes now, probably with limited budgets, so just do your back a favor and limit your time on the sofa.

3. I use the Pomodoro method. Pomodoro is a time management method that breaks the day down into spurts of working with brief breaks between. There are many ways to configure the Pomodoro. For example, many academics swear by extending their writing pomodoro to at least 45 minutes, stating that it takes longer to get into the rhythm of writing and it is better not to interrupt that rhythm with such short bursts and frequent breaks. Some people use Pomodoro as a way to get the day started, but taper off as they find the workflow that works for them. Some people set their Pomodoro clock all day. Some people extend or shorten the time. Any way you can imagine it, the Pomodoro method can be altered and reshaped, but I think it is absolutely necessary to start testing and experimenting with time management if you are beginning to configure your own schedule. Part of what this does is allows you to track what you’re doing. The breaks offer an organized time with a clear deadline so that we don’t binge work and then in a state of burnout simply quit. I recommend beginning with the basic pomodoro and then you’ll figure out what works from there.

4. Set your Pomodoro clock to 25 minutes, it’s time to make a plan. Now that we have the Pomodoro method and hopefully a clear, fresh space ready for work, it’s time to create a plan. Using the Pomodoro method is great, and odds are in your mind you already know what tasks are the most pressing ones you need to take care of, but holding all of that information in our brains is inefficient and stressful. There are many planning methods out there. Some people like to make a daily to-do list (Raul Pacheco-Vega recommends creating your to-do list for the following day the night before, that way when you wake up in the morning no time is wasted creating the to-do list. If you’re like me you find drawing a line through tasks immensely satisfying but making the list daily feels like a waste of time. There are two hacks to this: 1. use a digital list making app that allows you to set up tasks and designate days/times/intervals in which to do your work or 2. use some type of planner. I personally use a bullet journal because it’s adaptable and I tend to be constantly changing what I want to track and know.

   But, before you can start planning you need a list of tasks. Write down every task you can think of, don’t bother yourself too much about separating the personal from the work, just write down everything that it is essential you accomplish. This is going to look different for everyone depending on your family commitments, where you are in your program/what type of work you do, but once you have this list it’s time to rank your tasks from most important to least important. Of course, maybe everything feels important. You’re still going to have to pick what to do and when and settle on some kind of order. One thing that can help with this is establishing how many hours every day you plan to work and then figuring out what times work best for you.

   Again, this is a process. The way you configure things on the first day may be vastly different by day 2 or a week from now or a month from now. Again, we’re all in a process of constantly figuring out what works and what is most efficient. This is a learning process.

5. When do you work best? I am the most energetic right after I wake up and with my first cup of coffee, so I put my hardest tasks (writing/editing) during that time. I tend to be the least energetic right after I eat lunch. For me, this is a good time to read research because reading is much simpler than writing, the material is organized for me. Not everyone works best when they first wake up, so during these first few weeks of organizing your schedule it is vital for you to listen to your body and your mind and figure out what works for you.

6. Start establishing a method of regaining concentration. I get overwhelmed. I get overwhelmed a lot. Whether it’s the mounds of research I feel like I need to do in order to write an article, the incoherent, unorganized words on the page that are my rough drafts, making a meal, organizing the apartment, COVID19, moving your classes that weren’t designed to be taught online online, there’s a lot to be overwhelmed by in life. During my pomodoros I pick an object that I find inspiring, a bottle of ink, a fountain pen, a beautiful pair of scissors. I put one single object near me on my desk and if I feel myself losing all sense of proportion during my pomodoro I look at this object and try to reconnect with what inspires me. I love to write by hand, but it’s not practical for me to always write by hand, so sometimes just looking at handwriting materials helps sooth me. Maybe for you it’s meditating, stretching, looking at a family photo, playing with your dog. Whatever it is that can be turned into a quick handful of breaths that get you back on course, have that thing, take a look at it, change your mindset and try to return to your task with a renewed sense of focus. Sometimes just looking away from a task for a few seconds makes a big difference in resetting how I feel about it.

7. Keep a daily log of how many pomodoros you’re doing and what tasks you are working on. I’m doing this in my bullet journal. I think as academics it’s easy to feel like you’re never doing enough. Keeping track is a great way to combat this feeling. It can also tell you what you’re spending your time on and how much time you’re spending on each task. This is helpful as you continue to refine your work schedule. Maybe you’ll realize it’s taking three pomodoros to read a chapter for class and that’s not how much time you want to be spending. I don’t know if there is any helping that, but now you know. I used to feel like I was spending my entire day on job applications but when I tracked I realized it was actually a very small portion of my day, so that helps also put the work that you’re doing into perspective when you think it’s overwhelming your day. Perspective and distortion aside, knowing how much time you spend on each project is great for setting future goals because it will help you better track your process and what is working for you, so I recommend starting a fresh page, writing the date at the top and start writing down each Pomo , the category of work/task you did and some bullet points on what you accomplished during that Pomo on that larger task/category.

Bonus Suggestions:

1. Imagine yourself somewhere else. When I was an M.A. student I couldn’t afford to take myself to the coffee shop regularly, if I went it was a big treat, so what I started doing (that is still useful now that we’re all stuck inside) was I would make my second cup of coffee but I would imagine I was at a coffee shop. I would stand on the living room side of my kitchen counter and place my order, then I would go to the other side and turn on the hot water, imagine I was a barista (even though my brewing method was not coffee shop like at all, I was making a French press). When my coffee was ready I would pour it out theatrically into my mug, push it to the living room side, and then I would unpack my belongings at the counter and start work. It sounds strange, even to type it, but this worked for me. I changed my space slightly and then I imagined the rest. It made me feel better. If you try this and you’re a social worker, maybe arrange with a friend to meet for coffee in a video chat, do your pomodoro method together for an allotted amount of time, having a person Skyped in might make this activity feel more like the experience of being out.

2. Stand and read. If you’re like me and live in a small apartment you’re probably spending a lot of time sitting and a lot of time not moving. It just seems natural. Find tasks that you can stand and walk around during and spend a pomodoro that way. I walk while I read. Of course, I can’t walk at the pace I would go for a walk outside or on a treadmill, but at least I’m up and moving. The American Heart Association recommends either light cardio for an hour a day five days a week or intense cardio for 30 minutes a day three days a week, minimum. In general it’s probably a good idea to read for an hour. Join me in walking and reading, or find some other task that allows you to get up and move around.

3. Clean during Pomodoro Breaks. When I lived alone in a tiny tiny studio in Queens my back started bothering me again (my back and I have an on again off again relationship with pain and it’s definitely my fault for defaulting to bad habits like sitting all day when I’m not experiencing pain) I decided to start using my pomodoros breaks for organizing. I figured, organizing usually involves standing, and it is a task that can be endlessly done, especially in a small apartment, so I killed three birds with one stone, organizing was a complete break with whatever cerebral task I was engaged in, I stood up and moved around every 25 minutes, and my apartment became a lot more organized. If you’re like me you don’t enjoy organizing, so maybe that seems like turning breaks into work, but I had to get up and move around and organizing I guess was the most pleasant task I could come up with to accomplish that, not experiencing back pain was enough of a break for me.