Introduction
Let me start by writing, that I am happy to be able to work pretty freely from a lot of places around the world.
Due to current events it is the case, that I work from home in order to stay safe and cut social interaction as much as possible.
How I work from home
My wife also works for SAP, so as we both work from home we have used our kitchen table as a desk for us to put our laptops and work utilities on it.
This has the nice side effect, that once you actually want to eat, there is no other way of taking a break from work. So Lunch and Dinner are times where we can talk about our work but definitely can not work.
I think this is nice as we don't get into a mode where we just sit on our laptops, eat in while looking at a screen and then don't enjoy the food that we cook.
We also have, similar to our office hours, our big bottles of water filled and the goal of finishing them during the day. As we have them on the desk we have them in our field of view and don't forget to drink.
From Monday to Friday
This is my first week that I totally worked from home in a long time and it took some getting used to.
On Monday it felt a bit odd that there was no clarity when we can go back to office or not being able to talk to my colleagues by just walking over to them.
During the cause of the week though, I realised and managed to only call people or ask them when I had prepared my questions and points I wanted to discuss. This enabled me to have most "syncs", meetings or calls within a much shorter timeframe as it might have taken in office.
As the week progressed also my perception of distractions changed. On Monday I was distracted by the children (whom also can't go to school) playing outside or other people talking, this is now by the end of the week completely gone.
Now as it is Friday by the time I am writing this I am preparing tasks for the next week so I don't have to think about them on the weekend and can do something different there.
Learnings from the first week
My learnings from the first week are:
- Being able to distance from your work after I am done with it is very important. My wife and I put away our laptops after we are done with work and only take them out the next morning again.
- Trying every day to change the routine a bit is an important part. This way each day is a bit different and be the change just changing the time when it is lunch time.
- Working from home is not a rocket science but something that everybody needs to figure out for themselves.
- Having a meal plan is a nice to have, we cook not for only one meal but for multiple and then just reheat the food as it is more convenient and takes away some distraction.
