How to work from home during the coronavirus global pandemic
In this episode I talk about the ways that you can cope with working from home during the COVID-19 Coronavirus Global Pandemic. I focus on the ways that I personally have been dealing with it. Hopefully it helps you get through the coming weeks or months!
Here’s the transcript from this podcast episode, please excuse any typos!
In today’s episode I’m going to talk about the best ways to work from home, and more specifically in this day and age where everyone is on lockdown and we’re having a quarantine because of the coronavirus on how to deal with this stress and possible depression, the economic damage has been caused, what can you do to make the most of this time that you have at home. The first thing I have to stress is, if you don’t work from home and you lose your job. I understand you’re going through a really tough time right now, but you have to still make the most of the time that you do have, which means, figuring out a way to make some extra income from home, whether it’s taking one of those jobs Amazon has been posting online or seeing if any local businesses can use your help. Is there something in your industry that you can do from home. If not, Maybe this is the time for you to tackle a new project.
I’m sure a lot of you out there want to write a book or make a movie or work on a new app or something artistic, you want to paint some paintings or maybe you want to do some arts and crafts that you want to sell on Etsy. Either way, now you have all the time in the world. And you can’t make any more excuses. So get to it. If you are working from home, like me, I’m one of the fortunate ones. Some lucky I’ve been able to work from home for over 15 years now. So the best way to transition from an office job where you have to commute every day to now working from home is, it’s an obvious thing to me, it’s common sense. You have to section off an area of your house or your apartment that is dedicated to your workspace so you have a desk with a computer, and that is your quote unquote office.
For me, I converted my basement from my home to an office a very long time ago with lots of desks and computers. There’s even a bathroom, and plenty of water, so I don’t have to leave my office. It’s technically an office. I have my video conferences down here. I do my work down here. I’m recording this podcast down here so this is my office. When I want to take a lunch break. then I go to my kitchen. You shouldn’t be wandering around your house during your work day. You shouldn’t be in your bedroom during your work day. You shouldn’t be wandering around the house, watching TV and playing with your animals and your kids, you should be in your office, if you can stick to that. That’s how you get into the mindset of you’re at work, right, because this whole situation we’re in right now. It’s all a mentality, you have to kind of grasp and accept. This is our new reality for God knows how long right now.
Once you can start to realize that by sectioning the rooms off of your house to separate things and separate actions and tasks. That’s how you’ll start to be able to accept the fact that this is your new reality, this is these new spaces, you have to work out of. And part of that has to do with having a routine. So waking up every day. At the same time, as if you were going to work. don’t sleep in. I’m telling you don’t sleep in. I wake up early every morning just like I always have nothing has changed, walk your dog, have your breakfast, brush your teeth, drink your coffee. If you work out, workout from home. Don’t skip the routine just because you can’t go to the gym,
you know, I have resistance bands. I’m using those with YouTube workouts, I’m using my chairs, I’m using my sofas, I’m using all these different pieces of furniture, my doors everything to do these workouts. Sure, it’s not the same as going to the gym, but you just can’t skip the workouts because you’re quite stuck at home. improvise. YouTube has so many videos of workouts, trust me when I tell you you’re going to kick your own butt. If you watch those videos and start exercising. So don’t skip it, stick to the routine, having a routine means having a schedule. So if you work for a couple of hours and take a lunch break. Then work again and take a coffee break. Then work some more than go outside for a breath of fresh air, or walk your dog. Maybe you can take a quick break to play with your kids. Check it on their homework, but stick to your routine, which means don’t stop working at like two o’clock three o’clock and start watching Netflix.
Now, keep working, even if you don’t have any actual work to do, learn something new, learn how to play the piano, learn a new language, go online and do research, learn something. Don’t just say oh well now I have time to just relax and binge and chill. That’s not, I’m telling you right now you might be good for the first couple days you’re gonna, you know, get your energy back because you’ve got a chance to finally relax, but eventually you’re going to get bored and you’re going to start to burn out and you’re going to get depressed.
So stay active, stay on your feet. I work on a standing desk, so I’m standing right now trying to incorporate little breaks throughout the day, walking to the kitchen to get a glass of water every hour to walk up and down the stairs to carry something to and from different rooms in the house. And then of course because you can’t see your coworkers. Make sure you have video chats scheduled. Keep in touch with your friends and your family, wherever they are in the world through video chats, texting is great, phone calls are okay, but I’m telling you, I’ve been doing video chats with friends and family on a daily basis, and it’s it’s keeping us a little bit, you know connected it’s keeping our morale up because we’re seeing each other’s faces, as if we would in person, reconnect with old friends, or make new friends.
Nowadays, you know, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world because we have the internet, we have smartphones, we have cameras, it’s a lot easier to stay in touch with each other. And I can’t stress how much it’s important to stay hydrated. One of the things that most people always joke about is, man I can’t drink one glass of water a day or the recommended eight glasses of water but I can sure pound 12 beers every day. It’s funny. It’s great but it’s also not good. You have to drink water so drinking hot tea, water, one of the things I’ve been doing is I’ve been eating a piece of fruit every couple hours like an orange Apple banana Kiwis mangoes berries, you name it. They say that five servings a day is what you need so that’ll be good because you’re not going to be bingeing on chocolate and candy and cupcakes and all that garbage instead go for the fruit, trust me when I tell you go for the fruit it’ll keep your energy levels high, it’ll create your sweet tooth, and it also gives you all the vitamins that your body needs to fight off this virus if you do catch it. Which brings me to food. I mean food is one of the most important things when you’re working from home or when you’re stuck at home. Thankfully for myself I happen to be vegan. So most of my food is dry, it’s in jars like beans and rice and keyline all sorts of different grains and legumes like lentils. I have lots of frozen vegetables. So, I know that sounds crazy.
It’s not really related to my technology podcast but health and wellness is very important to me and as an entrepreneur. When you work for yourself, you can’t take a day off, you can’t be sick. Okay. And you have to be always full of energy and ready to help your clients, ready to help your employees if you have any, so make sure that you’re separating a section of the time every day to either prepare your food or figure out what day you want during the week for me it’s usually Sundays, to do a massive meal prep prepare five days worth of food, different things like one day I might I might prepare like five days worth of rice and beans. and tofu and vegetables and sauteed onions and I’ll make sure my avocados are ready to be right bins, that kind of thing. Get it prepared, put it into Tupperware so that every day, all you have to do is scoop it out onto a plate, heat it up and eat. You don’t have to actually cook, that’s the key about meal prepping and yeah it’s boring and it takes a long time and you get to clean a lot of dishes, but at least it’s only one day out of five, you know, so it makes it a lot easier.
So stick that into your routine, get healthy snacks like raw nuts. I always have cans of raw nuts all around my house so when I want something to snack on I don’t go for a bag of chips, you can make your own chips with sweet potatoes. So I guess my point here is make sure you’re snacking throughout the day to curb your hunger, make sure it’s healthy snacks, fruits and vegetables, and if you do eat animal protein, just try to keep it to a minimum because it’s going to make you crash. Keep the junk food to a minimum. The same things are gonna make you crash, try to stick to the healthier stuff because right now Your body needs the healthiest possible food that you can put in it. To avoid this virus.
Once you have your routine figured out your workout schedule, your work schedule, your breaks, your snacks, your food, and you feel like you have everything kind of under control. That’s when you have to realize, you may be one of the only ones out there who does. Most people right now are suffering, they’ve either lost their jobs. They’re not acclimating well being stuck at home because they’re used to being out all the time. And people are getting depressed. So reach out to people who you think might be having a tough time with this and make them laugh tell them a story, you know, try to catch up on old times. Find out where they might need help. And maybe you can lend your services to them or just your friendly advice to try to keep people kind of up and Adam, because this is a tough time nobody thought that, you know, in 2020, we were going to see a pandemic. A global virus that’s causing the entire world to shut down and have everybody be stuck at home.
So, in short , I might be able to cope with it better than most people because I already was working from home. I already had kind of an introverted lifestyle. Sure I miss going to the gym. I miss seeing my friends and my family. I miss going to stores and public events, and public parks and things like that. But, um, I think I’m better suited to cope with it because I’m so used to being home a lot, whereas most people aren’t. Most people are constantly on the go, they’re always going places you’re always going to shows and movies and and restaurants and clubs and all these places, so they must be taking this really hard and that’s when you have to really support them the most. Just because you’re doing well doesn’t mean everybody else’s so definitely reach out to people who you know are having a tough time and make them feel better if you can. So the cool thing about having a routine is that the day will fly by so much quicker, as opposed to you sitting there saying oh my god it’s only 10 o’clock in the morning What am I going to do all day no if you have a routine, and you have a schedule. And you know what you have planned out for every single day, no matter how tedious and mundane it is whether it’s cleaning or cooking or exercising or walking the dog or making your coffee or anything, anything you know maybe maybe you set aside two hours every single day in the middle of the afternoon, to work on a new book, you have a book idea you’ve always wanted to write now you have time to write the book, even if you’re not writing that book, sit in the room, and at the desk, and at the laptop that you’re using to write that book.
For example, in my house I have an extra bedroom, and usually people will turn into a children’s room or a workout room. I turned it into a sunroom. A couple of years ago so in the wintertime I can sit in there I get sunshine from all the lights I have in there, and has beach fabrics and it looks like the beach basically it’s my, it’s my Oasis away from the winter, depression, and so what I did is I set up a desk and a chair and a laptop that I never used in that room. I specifically go to that room every day in the afternoon. Just to write my new screenplay. I don’t go in that room for anything else. I turn on the sunlights, I get a fresh burst of energy from the sunlights. And then I sit there and whether I’m researching stuff for my screenplay, or I am reading actual screenplays from Hollywood movies, or I’m researching parts of my screenplay or I’m rereading my screenplay or editing it, or I’m reading new scenes for the screenplay. That’s what I go in the room for for those couple of hours. Nowadays I don’t get any screenplay written, but I still go to the room and I still do the different steps. I still read screenplays where I might be researching something or I might be learning something or I might just be getting a sunburn. But either way, going to that room for those couple of hours fills some of my routine time slot. So it takes time. And that way, I’m not just twiddling my thumbs walking around the house wondering what I should do next. So, try to figure out a way to section off different areas of your house. Definitely move from room to room throughout the day Don’t stay in one room all day long. By sectioning rooms off and going to different rooms of your house. It’s kind of like you’re at an office where you’re going from your office to, you know the lobby to let someone in or to go to the water cooler to get water, or to go print something in the printer room where you’re going to the conference rooms have meeting, like by moving to different rooms in your house and having different tasks assigned to those rooms.
That’s how you can kind of make it work. You know it’s not ideal but it’s better than nothing. I’ve been doing it for years and it works great for me. And you already know you have to wash your hands, maintain social distance from your friends and family. When you go for walks, make sure you stay away from people, if you’re not feeling well definitely contact your doctor and stay home. This coronavirus is no joke hopefully it’ll be gone, sometime in the next few months so we can all go back to our normal lives. Just stay happy, stay sane, stay clean, stay healthy and stay in touch with everyone. While this whole craziness is happening, the end of the world. Some people are calling it, and this is your chance to learn something new. So many people always tell me I’ve always wanted to build an app or I’ve always wanted to write a book or make a movie or read a screenplay or. I’ve always wanted to learn how to speak Spanish was nice to get out. It is a tiempo para para de la to get us Western Sahara the Vedas, meaning now you can do whatever you want, you can learn whatever you want, you can create whatever you want. You have no more excuses. You can now do whatever it is you always wanted to do, because you have all the time in the world, literally, so no more excuses to get to work. You know what to do.
