Get Organised: working from home

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Have you needed to get yourself and your household organised so you can be working or studying from home during the current coronavirus isolation? In this article I share why working from home works well for me (at least at the moment!), the fact that it can take a bit of experimentation to get it right for YOU, and a list of things that I find helpful to work effectively from my home office including systems, tools, routines, and all the other invisible stuff that people often don’t talk about.

Over the last couple of months we’ve seen an unprecedented rise in numbers of people working from home all round the globe. Even though there’s been a gradual transition towards remote work over the past few years, the current wave of moving work to home is absolutely astounding to witness. Getting organised to work from home is just one of many significant changes the world is adapting to during the COVID-19 pandemic.

How are you getting along with it?

I had a love-hate relationship with working from home for a long time

I’m sitting in my home office as I write this blog. At the moment I’m loving it! You see, I’m used to working from home, but that’s not to say I haven’t ever struggled with it! I had a love-hate relationship with working from home for a long time, and I’ve learned what works for me and my family in the space I have. Being self-employed, I’ve pivoted my business a couple of times over the years to better fit my vision, my family and my desired lifestyle. And that means I’ve needed to adapt and re-adapt more than once.

Kathryn looking at camera with wide eyes and smiling. Background of rainforest.

These days a lot of my work can be easily done from home and it saves a lot of money in office rent! My days are mostly spent preparing for workshops, collaborating by email, managing and promoting projects, applying for grants, using video-conferencing and phone for consultations, and of course writing. Not being able to lead bush adventure groups, retreats or workshops, or meet up in person with collaborators at the moment, means I now have space in my day to create my new podcast. This is also easily done from home. All in all, working from home is a really good fit for me.

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Getting organised to work from home will take some experimentation

I’m going to share with you a list of things that works for ME with the responsibilities I have and the home environment I’m in. You can use this list to inspire your imagination to make working from home much more do-able for you.

This year, 2020, is the first time in 24 years that I haven’t had school-age children with all the responsibilities that brings. It really has made a huge difference to my work output even though we’re a family of introverts and there isn’t a lot of noise or activity in my neighbourhood! I live out of town on a property in regional Queensland, Australia. YOUR responsibilities, family commitments, home environment, culture, workplace expectations, personality and supports will all have a bearing on how you get organised so you can work from home. It will take some experimentation, practise and negotiation with your employer to optimise how effective and efficient it is!

Patiently persist!

What does it take to get organised so you can work from home?

Here’s my list of the most important systems, routines and equipment I use to keep myself organised when working from home:

The actual office
  • Reliable internet (which only came into being in my region a few short years ago – such a blessing!)
  • Computer with webcam
  • Printer
  • Smart phone
  • Stationery (yep – good old notepads, pens, sticky notes, stapler, diary etc)
  • Yearly planner
  • Desk and chair adjusted for ME to support MY posture
  • A quiet space for my office that also provides privacy for calls, video-conferencing and note taking
  • Office door that gets closed during confidential discussions or when I need to reduce distractions
  • A window to look outside, let the natural light in and let the breeze through
  • Resources, books and filing cabinet

Make a list!

Systems and tools
  • Asana for project management and daily to-do’s – I love checking off my completed tasks and replicating projects on Asana to save my time. Asana can also be shared in a work team and it syncs beautifully between your devices so it can update in real time.
  • Keep Notes” – I use this for lists and it also syncs between devices
  • Canva for basic graphic design
  • Paper notepad systems – I have separate A4 notepads with different coloured covers for different purposes eg notes from training programs, notes from meetings with collaborators, notes about amazing business ideas that I don’t want to forget
  • Alarm – I set a timer for some work tasks and use the alarm for meeting reminders
  • Spreadsheets – I still prefer pen and paper but electronic spreadsheets have their advantages. I use them to log my time and budgets on various projects
  • Email program – I close it down when I don’t have to have it open because it’s a distraction
  • WordPress – mostly easy to edit by myself to keep my website, blog and web shop updated
  • Mail Chimp – stores subscriber lists and templates for outgoing emails

The challenge with time management is to manage ourselves

The invisible part of getting organised
  • Boundaries – This is probably THE MOST IMPORTANT aspect of getting organised to work from home. Set boundaries or parameters around your availability, work hours, work space, people, emails, phones, meal breaks, toilet breaks, social media, housework, cooking, grocery shopping, everything! If it’s outside your work hours, turn it off. If it’s not being used in the moment, turn it off.
  • Distractions – Turn off notifications on anything that really doesn’t matter or that distracts you during work time. Create rules about interruptions and be ready to gently remind others about them. Use self-discipline (see below).
  • De-stress your workspace – A cluttered workspace can add to your stress levels. Eliminate what you don’t REALLY need and add some stress-reducing features such as a pot plant, a painting or calming music. Keep your workspace tidy and uncluttered by developing systems to ensure that it doesn’t become a dumping ground for ‘stuff’.
  • Places and spaces – Create designated places and spaces for work materials, tools, resources. And then use them rather than spreading everything across the room or the house. Keep it organised – especially anything confidential.
  • Legal issues – Check with your employer, insurer, council and landlord about your rights and responsibilities regarding working from home.
  • React vs respond – If a new task comes up and it can be done in less than 2 minutes, do it now. Otherwise schedule it.
  • Self-care and self-discipline – These go hand in hand. Stick to the task you’re working on and manage distractions. Imagine that your boss, colleague or a video camera is watching (this is not meant to make you feel paranoid!) – what would you be doing differently? Are your actions aligned with your values and intentions?

Are my actions in alignment with my values when working from home?

  • Rewards – Reward yourself with a relaxing activity when you’ve achieved your work goals, reached the end of your work hours, or stayed on task. This is a great way of marking the switch between work and personal time.
  • Task Lists – Write a list of tasks for each day, categorise them, prioritise them and cross them off when you’ve completed them. Keep your daily to-do list short and keep another list of lesser priority tasks handy that can be brought up as your list gets shorter. I use Asana because I can categorise tasks into different projects and re-prioritise them as needed by sliding them over to the next day or next week. I used to use my diary or notepad or sticky notes – use whatever system works for you.
  • Sense of humour – A sense of humour doesn’t go astray – I’m working on that one 🙂
  • Family / household support – Talk to your family or housemates, including children, to plan how to meet everyone’s needs through the day (and night). Enlist help and support and work as a team as much as possible. Everyone can contribute to deciding on the priorities and how they will be put into action.
  • Systematise your meal times – Plan meals ahead including who’s cooking each night and what time you’ll eat. This also helps optimise your time grocery shopping!
  • Batch as many tasks as possible – Using batching techniques for work and personal tasks. I batch my social media design and scheduling as well as my baking which can be frozen and used later.
  • Put the big rocks into your day first – Plan the little tasks around the bigger tasks that are less flexible or time consuming. Watch my video on getting organised by putting the big rocks into your day first.
  • Time your tasks – Plan your trickiest work tasks for when you feel most alert and when the house is at its quietest.
  • Be consistent and clear – Put your work times up on your door, fridge, notice board or anywhere that your family will see it, or maybe an OPEN and CLOSED sign. You can also add work times into your email signature, Google business page and other web-based applications. If you respect your own boundaries, others are more likely to as well.
  • Move more, sit less – Get up and move around regularly, at least every 20-30 minutes. It can be tempting to stay working if you’re in flow and everything is quiet but your health and well-being needs you more.
  • Delegate jobs around the house – Invest time in teaching others how to do things for themselves. Don’t be a martyr to your work or to the household. This is an opportunity for everyone to learn and develop skills for life rather than another thing to feel guilt about.
  • Wear a uniform or work hat – Create a mental and visual boundary between work and personal hours by wearing a uniform, designated work clothes or even a hat that signifies to others as well as yourself which ‘mode’ you are operating in.
  • Celebrate – Identify, acknowledge and celebrate when things go well! It’s ever so easy to get caught up in what’s problematic without being present for the little wins and moments of joy along the way.
  • Problem-solve – Persist, be patient and get creative when something isn’t working so well. This is an experimental time for many workers and employers. View it as an experiment and explore the challenges and the possible solutions.
  • Connect – Create or request opportunities to connect with your work tribe and other supporters regularly by having online or phone meetings, morning teas and brainstorming sessions.
  • Think outside the box – Create opportunities to make things work! Working standard office hours may not work when you’re working from home especially if you are also supervising children playing and studying. In fact, it’s unlikely to work! For example, I typically do my internet-heavy tasks (eg watch training videos, upload videos) before 7am because that’s my off-peak internet time. Then I’ll spend a few hours of personal time before getting back to work till late afternoon or evening. I aim to leave my social media tasks till late in the day, use normal business hours for connecting with colleagues, and spend my most energised hours on tasks that need the highest level of concentration.

With any obstacle quote

Wow there really are so many aspects of getting organised to work from home when you start to list them all out! This is not an exhaustive list and some of them won’t work for you in your situation. But I do hope it gives you some hope and some ideas to work on for yourself. Let me know how it’s going for you!

Hot chocolate and home baked muffin
Time for hot chocolate and home baked muffins!
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Discovering mountain biking as life’s ultimate parallel universe in her middle age, Kathryn Walton shares information and reflections in ‘Daisy Spoke’ that inform, inspire and empower women to a healthy and active lifestyle.

Another 5 Things I’ve Learned About Life Through Mountain Biking

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When you open your mind to learning and growing, you discover opportunities everywhere around you. Over the past ten years, mountain biking has become a parallel universe for me to learn about myself and the world around me. As my enthusiasm for this style of learning has developed, so too has my love of mountain biking. I wanted to share my excitement with everyone around me and so I began my blog, Daisy Spoke. And my very first post in Daisy Spoke was “5 Things I’ve Learned About Life Through Mountain Biking”.

So ….. now here at last are another five ways that mountain biking has helped me to keep learning and growing as an individual!

1. Look up

Look upI instinctively look straight down in front of me when I ride my bike. This means I wobble a lot and react to every little lump and bump in the terrain. Having a one way staring competition with the trail right in front of me does me no favours. My imagination fixates on small details that don’t really matter. I didn’t even realise this was happening until I learnt at a coaching session the importance of looking up, to keep my eyes focused further along the track. This gets me into flow and enjoying a smoother, more connected ride. I’m still learning to trust myself, to have confidence that my brain has registered the terrain directly in front of me and that my body will know how to handle it. Every ride is a reminder to keep my sights focused ahead in all areas of my life – my work, my personal life, and my riding!

2. Absorb the bumps

Absorbing the bumps while mountain biking
Photo from Chicks in the Sticks 2017

The bumps and jumps are all part of the fun of mountain biking – in fact a very large part of it! But it’s taken me a long time to see it that way. Fear of falling and lack of confidence creates tension which in turn leads to a rigid framework, sore muscles and stiff joints at the end of a ride. Learning to relax my stance and go with the bumps instead of resisting them is an ongoing process. Mountain biking gives me the opportunity to experience a sense of lightness instead of a sense of lack of control. I can visualise my legs as natural built-in shock absorbers. With improved inner resilience, or bounce-ability, I’m also able to relax a bit more in life in general, to see past the hiccups, and rise above the challenges.

3. Move around

Move moreHaving ridden mostly on smooth paved surfaces like roads and bicycle paths for most of my life, it’s been a huge learning curve getting onto mountain bike trails. You need to move your weight around constantly adjusting for the ever-changing terrain. Forward and back, side to side, up and down, as well as every possible combination of these movements. The hard lesson is that if you don’t shift your weight around you can’t get up that hill, or down that steep slope, or round that tight corner. Riding can quickly turn into hike-a-bike (which isn’t much fun) or hitting the ground (which also isn’t much fun). So when I ride I try to be conscious of how I move my body – above and around my bike frame. As in life, the more you move around, the more fun you’ll have and the healthier you’ll be.

4. Be present in the moment

Mindful concentration while mountain biking
Photo from Chicks in the Sticks 2016

A distracted mind is on a road to mishap. At least, that’s my experience on my mountain bike and life in general. On my bike, the terrain is constantly changing and I need to keep my wits about me at all times. When I tune my sensory antennae into the environment around me, I’m fully present in the here and now. At least that’s the theory! The reality is that sometimes when I’m riding my mind wanders off and suddenly, oops, there it is, a rut the size of the Grand Canyon about to swallow me and my bike. It’s an ongoing learning process of training my brain to come back to the present, Not only does this make me safer on my bike, the ride is heaps more fun too. The same technique applied to other areas of life can lead to more satisfying relationships, more efficient and effective business decisions, and reduced anxiety.

5. Keep trying!

Patiently persist!Throughout life I’ve tended to focus my energy and attention on things that come most easily to me. If I couldn’t do something perfectly the first time, I’d usually move on to the next thing fairly quickly. As far as mountain biking goes, I’d had a few short rides on unpaved paths and paddocks over the years but didn’t develop much interest in “that kind of riding”. I’d fallen off a few times so there wasn’t a lot of incentive to keep going, so my bike tended to stay in the garage most of the time. A few years ago I decided to give it another go. Maybe there was an inner knowing that it would open up a whole new world to me, that there was much more to be gained from riding than simply mountain biking skills. With the support of my Courage Coach, I learned to develop persistence and this has had a profound impact on me. I’ve discovered how valuable persistence can be when life gets tough and I feel like giving up. Persistence speaks to that fiercely determined part of my soul and keeps me trying, practising, modifying, trying again, and finding ways to bring my hopes and dreams into reality. I’ve learned that I can work really hard at things that don’t come naturally to me and to experience immense satisfaction from that!

Read PART 1 of this article (my very first ever blog post!) “5 Things I’ve Learned About Life Through Mountain Biking” including:

  • Look where you want to go
  • Lean into what you most fear
  • Going slow is ok
  • Take a break when you need it
  • Practice, practice, practice

Discovering mountain biking as life’s ultimate parallel universe in her middle age, Daisy Spoke aka Kathryn Walton logoKathryn Walton shares information and reflections in Daisy Spoke that connect, inspire and self-empower women to make healthy choices for themselves. She integrates her love of physical exercise, family, nature, gardening and creative arts with her professional background in mental health social work to facilitate change with individuals, groups and communities of women who are committed to living life to the full.

Breaking and creating habits

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Have you ever tried to break a habit or create a new one? That’s probably all of us! There are some habits that are clearly unhelpful, and these are the ones we most often focus on – the ‘doing’ habits like smoking, sedentary behaviour, eating junk food, and going to bed late. But what about those less obvious ‘thinking’ habits. The ones that have us locked into a bad mood, overreacting, overthinking, leaving things to the last minute, being defensive, using avoidance tactics, personalising, blaming and so on. The way we habitually think forms part of everything we do and we’re often not conscious of it. But when we want to create long-lasting change, it’s vital to look at changing the way we think, and not only focus on the way we are ‘doing’ things.

Here are four tips to help you break an old habit and create a new one by focusing on new actions, and new ways of thinking.

1. You are never too old to change

No matter your age, you an always make a change. Don’t accept excuses such as “I’m too old”. Your mind’s attitude to learning plays a large part in how capable you are of breaking and creating habits. With an open attitude and willingness to try, learning a new trick is always possible. For example, even though I’d been riding bicycles since I was a young child, it wasn’t till I was in my middle age that I decided to have a go at mountain biking. What I discovered is that you need a whole new set of skills to ride mountain bikes compared to The Brain that Changes Itselfriding on paved surfaces. Not only did my body have to work differently, but my mind as well. Mountain biking has been one of the biggest learning curves in my life. I’ve been confronted with physical and mental and emotional challenges that would have been so easy to walk away from. But I kept going and little by little my skills have progressed and I’ve learned to handle some pretty big fears along the way. I’m living proof that it’s definitely possible for an oldie to learn new tricks. For some remarkable examples of how the brain can change and adapt to new challenges, have a read of Norman Doidge’s book “The Brain That Changes Itself”.

2. Change can take its time – often a long time!

In a world that encourages immediate gratification and demands fast results, focusing on change habits takes timelonger term goals can be seen as rebellious. Quick-fix solutions are promoted all around us – get a toned body in only 10 minutes a day, lose your baby weight in 30 days, go from a $0 to 7 figure business in less than 12 months. But the reality is that sustainable, healthy change usually takes place over a longer period of time. Quit expecting immediate results when you take up a new habit or give up an old one. Real change takes time! Research shows that when we take up a new habit we need to practise it regularly for at least three weeks, and in many cases we need to allow two to three months or more to feel the benefits, or at least to feel at ease with our new way of doing things.

3. Patience, practice and persistence – not perfectionism!

If you’re anything like me, you just want to be able to do everything perfectly straight away. And if that doesn’t happen it’s so easy to give up. We can make all the excuses under the sun about why we’re not having success, but the reality is often that if we’re patient,Patiently persist to change habits practise a lot, persist with the discomfort, and let go of our need for perfectionism, we’re much more likely to have success. Personally I’ve find it very helpful to listen to what my inner voice is telling me when I get the urge to throw in the towel. That leads me to question why giving up is so important at that moment, and what would be the value of persisting. Then I look at what skills and strategies I need to use to achieve success. Read about how I used practice and persistence to rediscover my joys of mountain biking in one of my  past blogs.  Patience, practice and persistence are definite winners!

4. Focus on what you DO want, not what you don’t want

Focus on what you DO want to change habitsOne of the trickiest things about reducing or quitting a habit (like cigarettes, chocolate, or social media) is that we focus our minds on what we’re missing out on. To demonstrate the power of this focusing technique I tell my clientsFor the next 2 minutes you are NOT to think about the green dragon behind you.” I set the timer and give them occasional reminders to NOT think about the green dragon. The same thing happens when we keep telling ourselves “Don’t think about cigarettes / chocolate / Facebook …..” It’s really, really hard to achieve success unless we focus on what we DO want – the NEW habit or behaviour that we want to develop. You could try saying Time for a walk round the block … time for my fresh fruit and yoghurt … let’s give Mum a call …” Focusing on what you don’t want is counterproductive. Focusing on what you DO want is a winning style of thinking. You can read more about looking where you want to go in my very first blog from 2 years ago.

 

There are many more tips and tricks for helping you to break a habit or create a new one, but these four strategies will get you started with a powerful attitude that will guide the behaviour choices you make, and increase your chances of success!

Let's sum up habit

1. You are never too old to change
2. Change can take its time – often a long time!
3. Patience, practice and persistence – not perfectionism!
4. Focus on what you DO want, not what you don’t want

Discovering mountain biking as life’s ultimate parallel universe in her middle age, Daisy Spoke aka Kathryn Walton logoKathryn Walton shares information and reflections in Daisy Spoke that connect, inspire and self-empower women to make healthy choices for themselves. She integrates her love of physical exercise, family, nature, gardening and creative arts with her professional background in mental health social work to facilitate change with individuals, groups and communities of women who are committed to living life to the full.