Today marks the 365th day of working from home. On March 12th, 2020, my team was told to pack up our belongings and wait to hear more about how our work environment was going to change as a new understanding was met about the deadly spread and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We were truly in a liminal space.
During the first quarter of the pandemic in the last year I learned how to “work from home” in my two-bedroom apartment in Kansas City, debating daily if my wife or I were going to be working in our makeshift office or at the coffee table in the living room. In the second quarter I learned how to travel in a pandemic while staying safe and providing technology support to critical healthcare facilities across New York, West Virginia, and Tennessee. And in the last half of the past year my wife and I got married in a small intimate wedding and moved to Cincinnati, OH where we are closer to family and friends. Today I still find myself working from home in a continuous debate with my wife over “who gets the nice home office today”.
Working from home as brought a new definition to the phrase “work life balance”. In a traditional work environment you likely were in an office from roughly 8:00am – 5:00pm and maybe had a few tasks to take care of in the evening, but work was typically focused and within certain hours with clear separation. Enter a work from home lifestyle where I now eat, sleep, watch TV, play with my dog, read, AND work all in the same place. For me, success has looked like my life transitioning from a “work life balance” to a “work life integration” mindset.
The UC Berkeley Haas School of Business defines (article) work life integration as, “an approach that creates more synergies between all areas that define “life”: work, home/family, community, personal well-being, and health.” This approach and mindset flips the script of work life balance that is typically thought of as a competition between work and life. To me, this looks like flexibility and control of my work/life and how I spend my time with both. Over the last year I have come to find that I really enjoy working from home (or anywhere) and not specifically tied to a physical location (office) for a set period of the day.
Work life integration works for me because of three critical pieces that I need to be successful.
Manage Your Time
I live by my Google Calendar and my Outlook Calendar. If something isn’t on my calendar I won’t be there and I won’t remember a task, much to my wife’s dismay. She has come to love Google Calendar.
- Two Weeks Out | Every Sunday I map out the big items and events that I know are on my calendar for at least the next two weeks. Always thinking two weeks out gives me the ability to look ahead at events that I can be pretty confident will be occurring. This is a habit that I developed in my first professional job with SigEp Headquarters.
- Daily Prep | Every evening before my head hits the pillow I take a detailed look at my calendar for the next day, thinking about every event and every task on my calendar for my professional and personal life. Through this daily process I get the opportunity to move my schedule around to what is going to fit me and the people around me the best for the next day.
Communicate Your Life
In a work from home lifestyle where your wife is also working from home 6 feet from you and you have a 4 month-old puppy that loves to run and play, you have to have strong communication.
- Over Communicate | Communicate and include people on that “cc line” until someone tells you to stop.
- Be Vulnerable | While there is always a balance and limit to communication, there is power in vulnerability and being transparent with the people that are in your “work life integration” lifestyle. My wife and I regularly discuss our work schedule and figure out what needs to be done for the other person to work at their highest level that day. This communication and vulnerability should also exist in your professional relationships, regularly speaking with your manager about parts of your life that may positive or negatively impact your work performance. For me, this recently looked like the adoption of a dog, moving to Cincinnati, helping my wife’s grandfather pass. All of these events created moments for me to be vulnerable with my professional team
Set Real Boundaries
While managing a calendar and communicating vulnerably are important, there is equal power in setting real boundaries with people throughout your life. In March 2021 the comedy movie, Yes Day was released that covers the harrowing adventures of a family where two parents say “Yes” to everything that their three children ask. While the movie is fun and I would have loved to play the game as a child, there is definitely danger to live like this as a professional in a work life integration lifestyle.
- It is Okay to Say No | In a fast-paced work environment there are often moments where it is easy to feel pressured to always say yes to your work responsibilities and your personal life responsibilities. This ultimately leads to stress, burnout, and likely having responsibilities “fall through the cracks”. It is okay to say no.
- Use Your Calendar | Again, I live by my calendar and that holds for my boundaries too. Intentionally time blocking events and your tasks in your day to day helps build boundaries.
Work life integration isn’t for everyone, but it works for me and I have learned to rely upon it during this work from home and now permanent remote working lifestyle. Every day I actively pursue managing my time better, communicating more effectively, and setting better boundaries with everyone in my “work life integration circle”.
What do you do to better work from home or mesh your work and life?
Erik Angus 