The Work From Home Shift

Blogger ate my Monday post. Here it is now.

Alternative post title: If it takes me 6 hours to knit a mitten . . .

I've basically spent my entire adult life believing that I need more hours in the day. I've always overcommitted (I have a problem saying "no") and far too many evenings, I've heaved a great big sigh and thought, "If only I'd managed to get X, Y, and Z done today."

Lately I've been realizing just how much of my life revolves around unrealistic expectations and guilt. It's not a fun way to live, you guys. It really, really needs to stop.

You see, the thing is, that I always think I should be doing more. I should be making more money, writing more, exercising more, cleaning more, being more giving of my time. That's where the magical thinking about, "If only there were more hours in the day" comes in.

Because I work from home and most people do not, I tend to believe that if I am to be accepted by the outside world, I need to work eight hours day at my desk, just like everyone else. Good God, I wouldn't want to look lazy, would I? If I spend an hour out of what is technically my eight hour day starting a batch of bread or cleaning the bathroom, the guilt starts to seep in. "Real people" do not clean their bathroom on workdays, I think to myself.    

Happily, I think I might be developing some methods to finally let all that heavy, mucky guilt go.

The first thing that happened was my friend Rose introduced me to Leonie Dawson last week (this post specifically) and I keep going back and reading and re-reading Leonie's 15 hour work week post over. It makes so much sense to me and feels like just the affirmation I needed. When we focus on doing instead of working it's amazing what we can accomplish. Although I'm sure you are an excellent employee, chances are you could accomplish everything you get done in a 40 hour work week in your outside of home job in a  20-25 hour work from home schedule. That's just the way things are.  

For example, in my early days of being homeschooled, (gosh, I really should be pretty good at this "work from home" thing by now) we tended to have 3-4 hour school days. That is, we managed to accomplish everything you would have done in a normal 7-8 hour school day before lunch. How? There was no walking down the hall from classroom to classroom. No wasted time when you were done with your work and had to wait 15-30 minutes for all the rest of your classmates to finish up. The same thing goes when you work from home. You can let go of expectations about how long something should take you and focus on the finished result instead. (Also, no meetings!) If you accomplish everything you need to do in a day, who cares if it took you eight hours or not? 

The secret to these condensed school and work days is focus and tuning out distractions.

I just love this quote about focus from Leonie's post: 

Great,” I hear you saying. “I know, I know, I’m supposed to focus. Seriously, that’s like the most overused productivity word ever.”
 
To which I say “That’s nice, but are you fucking doing it?”

I'm making "are you fucking doing it?" my mantra for the week and we'll just see what happens to my productivity. (Good things, I hope.)

Stop me if this sounds familiar, but here's what's been happening when I sit down to "work" lately. I get everything cued up to go. And then suddenly I have an urge to open up approximately 6-7 tabs in my internet browser. I check my stats on Etsy. I read a few blog posts.All of these thoughts start rushing through Am I thirsty? Am I hungry? Do I need a cup of tea? Should I go to the bathroom? Maybe I should research a designer for a new blog design. Did I get around to those social media posts I've been meaning to do? Then I go back to my blog post and find a blank screen and a blinking cursor.

When you work with that level of focus, let me tell you, sunset comes around pretty darn fast. 

I've been spending all of this time thinking I ought to act like I was working when in fact, I was really just posing as someone working. There's another mantra I like to pull out at times like these when productivity starts to take on sort of mythical elements: "Would you pay yourself for what you're doing right now?"

I got another big nudge towards focus and productivity last week when I committed to knitting five pairs of mittens for bridesmaids at a wedding the second weekend in December. It takes me approximately 6 hours to knit a single mitten, so that's pretty easy math: 10 mittens at 6 hours each = 60 hours of knit time. The mittens need to be shipped by December 1 to give them enough shipping "wiggle room" to arrive on time so that means between Saturday (when the yarn for the mittens arrived) and December 1st, I need to find 60 hours of knit time along with keeping up with all the rest of my work commitments.

At first such a task seemed impossible, ridiculous, "what was I thinking?", etc. etc. And then I realized, if I let go of the social media surfing and the other mindless time wasters, 60 hours in the span of 15 days isn't so bad. That's just 4 hours of knitting a day and I don't ever get any work (other than knitting) done between the hours of 4 - 10 p.m. anyway. If I stay on task, everything will get done just as it should be. In fact, the first pair of mittens are already done.    

Focus on the end product. FOCUS. Wring more out of the hours you have and stop wishing you had more of them. Let the guilt go and enjoy what you get done. 

 

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Looking Up

I wish I was better at transitions. Or maybe, really, I wish that transitions were better to me.

Unfortunately, my life as a season employee means I face at least two major transitions annually and although it really seems like the simplest transition should be going from working full-time out of the house to working from home, that's actually always the bumpiest one, where it takes me the longest to get my sea legs back under me. It can be so tricky when your schedule magically opens up and you feel like you should be able to get everything done that you'd be neglecting for the last, oh, five months, never minding the fact that there's still real actual work that needs attention. C'est la vie.

So here I am, still waiting to fall into a fairly set, but still flexible work from home schedule which allows me to make money, make/write nice things, have a clean home, and eat good, healthy food most days of the week. Today's a bit of recovery day, since I spent the weekend pounding up and down Hwy 61 and I-35 with the parents to catch the Saturday matinee of Wicked at the Orpheum in Minneapolis. It was a fabulous performance (I really do love that musical) and an excellent change of pace after a long summer season. It feels wonderful to be home again, sitting in the sun on the couch, tapping away at my iPad because I'm too lazy to get my winter "home office" set up just yet.

There are a lot of things clamoring for my attention at the moment including the mess that is my office, the dump truck load of firewood sitting in the driveway waiting to be stacked and the two last episodes of "Big Bang" theory to be watched before the disc can be sent back. It's easy to feel like I should be a multitasking extraordinaire at the moment, but instead I'm trying to take things one step at a time and try to devote my full attention to whichever task I find before me at the current moment. Since next weekend it's off to D-town again for the annual "holiday" celebration with a group of college friends, I have a feeling I'm not really going to fall into any semblance of a schedule until sometime in early November.

And speaking of Saturday's get-together, can I just state how smart we are for taking what's traditionally been a Christmastime event and doing it in early November instead. It saves us from all sorts of holiday scheduling conflicts and also (hopefully) saves us from some of the headaches of winter travel. Also, because our celebration falls over the transition out of daylight savings time, we end up with any extra hour together. Winning.

Not having a set schedule has allowed me to go for longer runs in the morning. Last Monday, I took my first run in blowing snow, as you can tell from precipitation build up on my hat. I'm not sure I'm hardcore enough to deal with sharp little snowflakes blowing into my retinas for 30+ minutes, but happily, our weather has stabilized a bit since then. I'm still hopefully I've got until late November to keep running on the road before things get too slick and nasty for running shoes. I have no idea how I'll keep running/training in the winter. The most logical winter fitness substitution is cross-country skiing. Unfortunately, I abhor cross-country skiing. Abhor it, I say!

Our little hook-up box for broadband internet was installed last week. Unfortunately, word on the street is that broadband won't be a reality up here until sometime next summer. Cue toddler inspired temper tandrum.

 

One of the brightest (and simpliest) spots in my work from home days is a return to the 3 p.m. London fog tea break time. Oh nom nom nom.

 I spent a fair amount of time last week spiffing up my Etsy shop for the holiday season. (Because, you know, that's way more important than actually working.) Things are looking pre-tee good, if I do say so myself. And yes, we had a thin coating of snow on the ground all of last week. It's gone now.

Andy forever upped the gift giving ante last Christmas when he presented me with a long desired iPad so I had to get him a decent birthday present, rather than a couple crappy cds as I am want to do. (It should be noted that when I insisted I wanted, nay, needed, an iPad for oh, the approximately 30 months between when Apple introduced the iPad and when I actually got one, I never went so far as to actually research what iPad actually was or *cough, cough* how much they cost. Apparently I am a sucker for marketing.)

Enter the trail camera. Andy's been wanting a trail camera for a couple years now to help with deer "scouting" so a couple weeks back I finally ordered him one, despite the fact that his birthday isn't until mid-November. For the last week, we've been setting up the camera all over the neighborhood, trying to catch the elusive "big buck" on camera.  Deer season starts on November 9th. 

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One Week Down

Well, the first week of my summer season is behind us. I survived; obviously. We had two school field trips this wee and I generally consider field trips  the hardest parts of my summer, so it's all downhill from here. (Or uphill, if you're Zach Galifianakis.)

I'd love to tell you all about the wonderful summertime routine I've fallen into, but the truth is, I haven't quite gotten there yet. I've been trying to get up earlier in the morning (especially since it's light out at 5 a.m. around here) so I have time to exercise, get some chores done, and eat a decent breakfast before heading to work. The breakfast below looks decadent, but those "pancakes" are actually just two eggs whisked together with a mashed banana and some cinnamon. I usually don't buy bananas, but in the last couple weeks, our taste buds must have shifted for the summer because suddenly we can't get enough of fresh produce. I stocked up on berries, fruit, veggies, and salad greens on Wednesday and we're already running low.

It's been a little different week around here. I haven't fallen into having set days off yet (due to the aforementioned school field trips) and this week I re-learned just how hard it is to keep up with exercise, housekeeping, and freelance obligations this time of year. I actually missed my first run on Wednesday morning because we'd spent the night in town so we could get laundry and other errands wrapped up early so I could have a full day in the garden. (Don't worry, I'll make the run up tomorrow morning.) Then on Wednesday night, a good friend came for supper and spent the night. In addition, we've got the gardens completely planted starting Monday and wrapping on Wednesday. We've also been experiencing our first real "summery" weather (yuck - why can't it just be 65 degrees all the time?) and yesterday evening we had a crazy bout of wind that created  - swear to God - five foot swells in the bay.

How was your week?
 

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