The Corner Office Redesigned

 

When working in a traditional company downtown, one can easily spot the superstar professionals. They’re the ones with the corner office on the top floor and a personal assistant, and they strut around in the expensive designer suits.

When you work from home this may look completely different. The term “corner” could be referring to a corner of your living room, and the power suit might very well be a pair of sweatpants.

Working from home sounds like a dream to a lot of people. No commute, snacks at hand, and no chatty colleagues at the water cooler. But this freedom comes with additional responsibility. There is even a struggle to remain productive.

My friend Laura got her first taste of working from home during the pandemic. At first, she worried that she wouldn’t be productive while away from the office. But she found the opposite to be true. She got more done.

Although, for most of us, the traditional work week is 40 hours, those hours don’t correlate with much of an outcome. Let’s face it, we’ve all spent days sitting at a desk doing nothing, merely because it’s expected. We have to ditch the time sheets and evaluate our performance based on what we actually do.

How much happier are people who work from home?

As it turns out, there are stats on that. A survey from TINYpulse, a firm that studies employee engagement, found that remote workers score an average of 8.1 on a ten point happiness scale. Other workers average closer to 7.5. Other studies show remote workers take fewer sick days and can actually put in more hours a week without burning out.

Working from home gives us the freedom to fill our days as we see fit which gives us a wide open schedule. This is nice but, without some form of organization, it can lead to stress and distraction. We can end up wasting time and energy deciding what to do and when to do it.

This can be avoided by making a plan for how to approach your working hours.

You can create a ritual to replace your commute. Maybe start the day with a short walk or mindful meditation, and end the day with journaling or picking up the kids up from school as a closing activity.

How about starting each day with a workout and devoting the evenings to friends and family? The point is that, with well thought out goals, you’ll have a target to reach for when organizing your professional path.

Some say working from home can seem isolating, but it doesn’t have to be. With some effort and planning, a remote workspace can remain a close and collaborative community. It’s true that sharing a physical space makes socializing easier, however, we now have plenty of technology to create the “virtual watercooler” and even re-create typical team-building activities in the digital world.

You can schedule a video-cocktail hour or virtual dinner party so you can talk to colleagues in a more informal setting. We should not be afraid to get creative.

By adopting simple strategies like finding a daily routine and checking in with colleagues regularly, it’s possible to stay productive, connected, and ambitious while working remotely.