Like many others, our household has grappled with the whole working from home thing for a little over two weeks.
Two adults need to work and there’s a three-year-old in the mix.
We realised early on husband needed his space and I needed mine.
Also read: Life in lockdown – Toddler Times
We brought in another desk and converted our tiny dining room into a home office, functional and close to the fridge, which in retrospect may not have been the greatest decision.
Firstly, we needed a few rules.
The home office is exactly that, an office.
We helped Layton understand that when mom or dad are at the office it’s time to work.
We set time aside during the day for each of us to engage with Layton through learning or play.
Then, we set up office hours.
When you’re working from home it’s hard to break away from work that needs to be done, especially for two adult workaholics.
When we first set up our temporary home office there were teething problems, to put is lightly.
Husband and I both tried to squeeze around the dining room table.
Laptops, cables, documents, stationary, the works.
I learnt a few things about my husband in those first days.
He functions perfectly in chaos and he listens to old-school rave music when he works. Who does that?
He also uses two screens to manage emails, but can’t multi-task when holding a conversation and trying to tighten a screw.
He’s also unusually calm in explaining the same document eight times to someone over the phone.
I, on the other hand, need a clear space to work. I like to get an early start to my day and I like that I can look out the window when I work.
I’m a pro at giving my new work colleague a disapproving side eye when his gazillion shipping documents “somehow” find their way into my workspace.
I also learnt that cats don’t make good work colleagues, but they do make warm ones.
Often I found I could get the most out of my work day if I started super early.
Coincidentally, this is also the time when you realise winter is coming. Lap warmers at 4am make up for all those times when little paws walked over the keyword or that time when you found yourself staring into the rear end of a furry bum on a video call.
In all seriousness, what I do think is that this lockdown will change the way businesses operate going forward.
Businesses have seen their employees are willing and able to work from home.
Employees have learnt more patience and balance between their work and personal lives.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution will be led by a business which embraces the digital space, and that’s no secret.
Yes, the lockdown has affected us and the businesses around us.
Many businesses will not survive for long after the lockdown, but those that will, however, will be the ones which embraced the chance to change the way they do things.
It will be those that looked outside the box, threw the box away and built their own systems to be more productive.
It will be the businesses that found value in operating in a digital environment and those that took what they have learnt during the 21-day lockdown and implemented it for the betterment of their future.
