What You Shouldn’t Do When Working From Home!
It has been more than 1 year when my company decided to run full working from home (WFH). I wasn’t someone who enjoyed WFH before. Even though my previous company, allowed the employee to do WFH, I did it very rarely. I considered myself as someone who got energy from people around me. When I moved to current company, I knew that we have fix working hours and no WFH policy yet, and I had no issue with that. But, then pandemic changed the company and also changed me. In the middle of March 2020, it pushed us (company & employee) to start WFH. And then, I just realized I love it! WFH is fun even though sometimes it becomes tiring. I grateful for no more traffic, no need to iron the cloth, having additional few hours to sleep in the morning.
I tried to reflect back and summarize few things that I did but you shouldn’t do it when having full WFH.
Sitting for 11 hours (or more) and not doing any stretching
My office working hours was from 7.30 AM until 5 PM. Normally, I work from 7.30 AM until 6.30 PM. What has been happened for this 1 year, at those range hours, I just sat in seat. I only moved my ass for very less activities such as walking to restroom, praying, taking my lunch (which is delivered by the courier to my doorstep), and going to dispenser! I walked for not more than 1000 steps every day. And the result is my left knee injured. It hurts when I sit or bend knees now. I have booked a doctor for this. While in parallel, I fix my ‘ways of working’ by putting a box under my desk (treat this as footrest), try my best to change posture every 5 minutes, do some stretching every 1 hour, and have min 15 minutes exercise on the afternoon .
Back to back meeting without break
For a year, I spent more than 35 hours/week for meeting. My calendar is fully booked with all those meetings.. Team meeting, project update meeting, new project meeting, 1o1 with team, etc. It was OK in beginning, since I am quite multitasking person. So, I can contribute in meeting, but still do other stuffs (e.g.: review file, drafting presentation file, replying email, replying whatsapp office, following up some actions via whatsapp, etc). I know I should not do that, but what else I could do when I had rejected some meetings, but still the calendar was full. When it was offline, we still had time moving from one room to another room (or another building), but nowadays it is virtually moving from one link to another link. I realized I had online meeting fatigue when I felt frustrated and what I wanted was only complaining and commenting unnecessary things. Then what I did? First thing was taking leave, having no meeting in weekday was the best decision and recharging the energy. I also blocked 1 hour a day for working time. I tried my best to reject any invitation, excepting from le bosses or team (in this case IT team). And then I tried to discipline by having Eisenhower Matrix (important/urgent). I had allocated my 40 hours for certain activities in a week. If the allocation time has been taken, and certain activities need excessive hours, I will request the meeting to schedule it to next week or I will delegate it to team.
Drinking less (not enough) water
I am too lazy to move my ass, so yeah, I drink less than years before WFH 😞 No need to mention the impact to your kidney, right? You can find lot of articles about it. So, my plan for this Monday, I will drink at least 2 liter water a day by putting 1 liter bottle in my desk and walking to dispenser once the bottle empty.
Neglecting skin care routine
I didn’t do a lot of makeup, but I had my routine skin care (at least day cream and night cream. And since (in beginning of 2020) I worked for cosmetics and skin care company, I put more effort which was 7-step skin care. It worked well for few months, but suddenly messed up due to WFH. I didn’t what the triggers, but somehow I became lazy to use all of them even only the day/night cream. After few months, my skin was dehydrated. It produced uncontrolled oil, and combined with my hormone imbalance — I had a lottt of (big) acnes on my cheek. Now, I am back to my skin care routine: face wash, toner, serum, essence, eye cream, day/night cream, and sunscreen. For worst case, I promise myself, I won’t skip the night cream. It has been a month, the skin condition is much better, but some acne scars are still there. So, yes plan applying vitamin C on my daily routine.
Not exposing to sunlight
I blamed my working hours as reason why I didn’t expose to sunlight, since I started my meeting on 7.30. But, yeah it was my excused! I could have a meeting in terrace (by bringing phone/ipad), I just was too lazy and ignored the importance of vit D that we can get from sunbathing. I think this was also one of reason why my injured knee (lacking of vitamin D) ☹️ So, start on this Monday, I will do 30 minutes sunbathing, yeii! I am so happy since my dedicated ‘working’ space (in this case room for working or exercising) is ready to be used ✌️ Since WFH could be forever, so I invested to this space
I am so excited for this Monday, since I plan few things (mentioned above) to be started on that day!
PS: Even though, I had the dedicated space now, but I I think I will spend more time in bedroom (my 1st working space), since the iMac is there. But, let’s check whether I have to move it later. By the way, I captured my original 1st working space last year, here is the set-up changing:
