As we have been pushed into remote work, most of us don’t have our space and our lives setup in a way that accommodates for this. The boundaries we have to draw for ourselves and one another become more and more important, as weekdays and weekends merge into another, and the daily rituals of commuting to work no longer mark the beginning and end of our work day.
When the crisis started, in the early days of working from home my husband made us buy 2 desks. I had often worked from home in my previous job, and I was happy to do so from our dining room table, but Hadi, my husband, instinctively understood that we were dealing with a different kind of remote work. We were beginning to work “from” home, rather than work “at” home.
To make things a little more complex, a friend of ours was staying with us temporarily when the lockdown started, and so we went from being a couple to being a family.
This is the workspace I created for myself at home.
As we have been pushed into remote work, most of us don’t have our space and our lives setup in a way that accommodates for this. The boundaries we have to draw for one another quickly became evident. We had to clarify:
Where we would work, and who would occupy each space?
Did we need to / could we afford to buy new hardware (desk, chair, screen, etc.)?
When we would work.
When we needed to be left alone vs. when we needed everyone to take part in the “communal” time-space
We have developed a worksheet to help you (and those who live with you) in defining the physical and temporal limits of your workspace. To access it, click here.
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