How to Maintain a WFH Office

As the era of Covid keeps going without end. Our homes have become more than just our place to live and relax. Our homes have also become our offices. Working from home was not a strange concept before COVID. Companies did not like the idea of employees working from home. People liked working from offices since the company would flip the cost for any materials need(monitor, chairs, coffee). However, now that the office has become part of our homes. Our lifestyles need to change as well.

Early Days of Working From Home(WFH)

The idea of WFH for the first couple of months was fantastic. I had always thought people that got to work from home get a pretty good deal. One would wake up drink a cup of coffee and start the day.

Two of the biggest perks were saving on gas and the daily 2-hour drive. Another would be eating healthier by cooking homemade meals. (Oh boy, was I wrong) As the WFH stretched into months, the thing needed to change to make it work.

For a while, I started to miss going to the office. Mostly because I missed the daily conversation with friends and the separation of work and life.

For the first couple of months, I just kept the same pattern of work minus the commute. Thinking everything will go back in 6 months or so. I would wake up with a cup of coffee in my hand, I would read my emails, show up to meetings, write code, and stopped working late into the evenings.

This kept going for months. Then I started to feel something was wrong. I started losing motivation, mental burnout, gaining all the weight I lost and having no sense of life. With my life now going in the opposite direction I wanted, I started to go into a mild depression. All the work I had done to improve my life fading away.

Things that helped me

At this point, I knew changes needed to happen in order maintain a WFH lifestyle. The first thing I started to tackle was my surroundings and lifestyle for WFH.

Surroundings

My office is the base of operations of the enterprise called life. As I started to spend 90% of my day in the office. I decided to invest in making it more suited to me. Before, I used to have a crappy old desk from freshmen year of high school, an uncomfortable chair, a crowded workspace filled with random hardware and personal stuff. This just drove me mad. I needed order in my workspace if I wanted to keep my sanity and also feel productive.

I decided to drive to Ikea. Looking through the various models and displays in the store. I started to piece together how I wanted my office to look with minimal furniture to maximize open space.

A couple tables, ooh standing desk, wire organizers… you get it. I started to build this office in which optimized my comfort while working. I took a lot of inspiration from Youtubers who are bosting their desk set-ups like a PC build (which seems to be a trend now). It was the best decision of my life. I feel that my office now is a representation of productivity and myself.

I noticed that my life in the office was better, which meant I spent more time there. However, I started to implement the same strategy in my other rooms. The way that I view it is that my life is now in this one little box. So let us make this little box awesome.

Life Style

Minimalist

To keep my surroundings clear of excess physicals things, I started to investigate the practice of minimalism. Minimalism is a common trend in which you reduce the physical things around you. Only keep the things that you use every day or has deep emotional meaning to you.

As I started the practice, I became aware of how many excess material things I have. Clothing I never wore, small toys, and items that just cluttered my house. Anything that I did not use, I either gave, tossed, donated, or recycled. (be careful, you don’t throw something away that you might have to re-buy)

However, by the end of this, my house felt spacious and livable. Walking around my house did not feel like an obstacle course.

Home Automation

As part of keeping my areas clean and more my own, I started to automate my house. Installing Wyze lights, switches, robot vacuum cleaners, door locks in my home.

When I mentioned before that my office became a command center that was not a joke. I periodically feel like Captain Kirk, with the ability to control the house from my office chair using my Google Hub or phone.

Automating my house made it more efficient for me to manage daily routines, as I will explain in the next section.

Routines

By leveraging my IoT devices, I have constructed set routines for a weekday and weekends. Using Google Routines, I was able to manipulate my house during the various phases of the day.

Every weekday start:

6 am wake up (me ignoring google for 30 mins or so) 7 am Finally wake up, coffee and reading 9 am Google tells me to start the day, turning on my office. (I have a lot of hardware there this helps conserve energy) 12 am Google telling me taking a break (30 mins - 1hr) 2 pm Google tells me to check my 8 goals of the day (This is important) 5 pm Google tells me to stop working, get dinner and turns off my office 6 - 9 PM Free 10 pm Google tells me to go to bed and turn of all devices and puts some rain sounds 12 am Actually falling asleep.

I picture this like the intro of the Jetsons when he is put in a conveyor belt half as sleep and machines prepping him to go to work.

Quick side note on the 8 goals. I was watching a YouTuber called Peter McKinnon. Peter talked about how he writes 8 to-dos in his notebook to keep himself organized and feel like everyday things are getting accomplished. I have always liked the idea of Habitical, Google, or Microsoft task manager, but never fell into the habit. With a notebook or sticky notes, that felt more natural and memorable. The idea of setting 8 to-do’s for daily achievements was a boost in productivity.

My only amendment to his rules is that many of my to-dos are iterative. I may complete part of a to-do, but the next day I might be dealing with the same task just a different part of it. My rule on this is 8 iterative daily goals and add one when one is fully complete.

This routine management has helped me a lot in my day today. It allows me to aim for something and keeps me motivated.

I also have many other books on my about page regarding the books that help me be more productive or motivated.

Activities

Aside from the routines, I have started to supplement my free time to do a task that I want or need to do.

  • Reading
  • Sunday Meal preps
  • Wednesday-Sunday working out
  • Learning ( Azure, Japanese, etc)
  • Making my bed
  • Taking long drives ( with an audiobook)

These little rituals; however, small or big help me maintain order and balance.