Let’s face it, when your boss told you that for the remainder of the quarantine, you would be working from home you were excited. Not about the pandemic of course, but about working in your underwear for a whole month. Hell, we were all a little excited… again not about the devastating disease tearing its way through the world, but about a little extra freedom from the office. In a time when everything else is dark, we found our little light at the end of that tunnel. I don’t blame you!
HOWEVER…
It has now been two months for most of the states on the West Coast at least and working from home is no longer a big freedom, but in a lot of ways a prison in and of itself. Now your home starts to feel like an office and everything is the same except you’re all alone… but before things get too dark, I’ve got some ideas on how you can shake up your WFH experience and feel that taste of freedom again!
- FaceTime & Zoom: You’re probably doing quite a bit of teleconferencing already for work, but have you ever considered just calling your friends or coworkers that you actually enjoy, and just leaving them up on your screen even while you’re not actively chatting? Make sure this is someone that is actually a close friend of yours, but it’s nice to just know that there is another person in the room that you could casually speak to if you wanted. Even hearing other people make human noises feels nice when you’ve been isolated for so long.
- Talk & Walk: Take all of your calls that you can on the road. Depending on your job, there is a good chance that you don’t ALWAYS need to sit and stare at a screen when you have a phone conversation. Plug in some headphones and take the call on a walk. Pick a direction and walk in that direction for as long as you can, or until the call ends, and then on the way back, call your friend and take a moment to relax before you jump back into work when you get home.
- Bring Your Office: Take your whole office on the road. There are plenty of companies that offer WiFi Hotspots (surprisingly, Solix X is not on that list) that you can just bring with you to a park and set up 6 feet or 50 feet away from anyone and just work there (). Bring a picnic, bring a Bluetooth speaker, bring your Alexa if you want! Most of these WiFi Hotspots can support multiple connections, so you might as well use them. Maybe even get some friends to join you and just sit far enough apart from each other that you can all use the hotspot… which certainly reaches further than 6 feet and create an outdoor safe office for you and your friends.
Just because everything has changed in the world around you doesn’t mean you can’t have any fun. There are plenty of ways to stay safe, have fun, and shake up your environment whenever you can. If none of these ideas grab you, that’s okay, if anything, you can use them as a jumping off point for your own ideas that might!