Does it feel like you never get away from work when you’re working from home? In this video, Michael shares easy ways you can “decontaminate” your living space and make working from home easier
Transcript
Michael Grinder, here! I just want to share with you what my life is like. And you may be experiencing some similar things.
You know, in the past I would go off to work and I would do my job and then I would come home. And when I did that, my home was my castle, and work was somewhere else. Now, I have to be home and work, as well as I don’t go away. So, it’s like I’m contaminating my own location.
Sometimes I feel like I’m just in the dark. I don’t have the ability to know who I am or what I’m doing at a given moment. Because the part of me that’s me, that I used to have at my castle, and the part of me that is my position, they’re now together. So now I gotta figure out what to do. Dog-gone it!
COVID has changed everything. And if you’re a parent, please, God bless you. Thank you for trying to understand how to be the liaison, the go-between, between your child’s school and what you’re child is trying to learn at home. That’s not easy.
And if you work from home, that’s really really tough, in addition.
So now the question is, so we’re contaminated, we have two different locations that are now overlapping like crazy. What do we do?
I want to strongly suggest, we’ve gotta figure out how to sort out, when am I being work? And when am I being home?
Probably the best way to do it is through the nonverbals.
If you can, try to have two different locations. I mean, it’d be nice if we could have a place that we do our work at home and a place where I leave that location and now I come back and I’m being myself.
If you can’t, see if you can take and put like a cloth on top of the dining room table where you eat, so that when you are at work, you know you’re at work because of the cloth. And then take it away when you finish. Anything that will do a difference in terms of size, color, shape, that will really really help you a lot.
If you can’t do those, then go with time.
When I’m doing something at a certain time, I am in one part of my world, and then I’m another part of my world when I finish that time.
But if you can, if you can’t do the nonverbals of color, size, shape, and time, please take a break.
If you ever took a class, whether you were at college or somewhere else, and you were studying one particular book for an exam coming up. If you sat down the book and you pick up another book ’cause you have a second exam coming up, you’re gonna find you mix ’em up. You’ll be taking the test on one and the answers to the other content appear.
What do you do when you have to have a given location and you have to study and do more than one thing? Take a break. Finish the book. If nothing else, walk to the other side of the room, come back, now open the next book and you’ll be okay.
So, please take care of yourselves. And if you’re parents, thank you so much for what you’re doing.
If you’re working from home and your a parent, bless all of us, ’cause we’re gonna need it.
Final thing. Let’s be realistic about how to get our sanity
If you’re in an abnormal situation and you have an abnormal reaction, please know that’s normal. You’re fine. Give yourself grace.
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