Working from home – because that is the only way now…

So…I have completed several weeks of work from home now. And just few months ago I thought that I will never work from home again….

This time round I found it quite hard. I was distracted by what was going on around me. I spent hours watching videos about the pandemic; what to prepare, how to survive and videos about what will happen next.  As a result, my productivity dropped immensely not mentioning zero motivation to work. Anxiety and fear crippled me for hours. I am not ashamed to admit it. I believe that it is O.K. to be scared and worried. It is a normal reaction. It is good to admit to yourself and your loved once. If you do that, you will be more understanding towards yourself and others will be more understanding towards you. When I realised my feelings and failings, I moved to the next step. If you read my blog regularly, you already know that I love to follow steps 🙂

I created a new routine for myself and decided to keep it. Morning routine stayed almost the same as on the “normal” work days. I created a little workspace that is shielded from my family and is fairly quiet. I have put up my board with a weekly timetable and deadlines. I left my phone in the bedroom and limited my time on the media. I have set a time for breaks (I have cut out my trips to the fridge). To make my work day more appealing, I have shorten my ‘actual’ work hours. I started my work with few silent minutes of ‘tuning’ into my work. This is an important little step for me as I need to sound friendly and enthusiastic when I talk to the clients. All of this, helped me to get into a certain tempo.

Once I moved on from feelings to action, I realised that I am actually still interested in what is going on. I even looked at new technologies that I can use and found some free courses I want to take. All of that helped me to settle into my ‘remote’ mode of working.

Did the worries disappear? No. I still have them. I don’t know what will the ‘world of work’ look like after the pandemic is over. Some people say that it will be better and some people say that it will be worse. I think – no one really knows 🙂 All I know is, that I need to have a back up plan, in case I lose my job. I know that people often recommend to go deep and focus only on one thing. But I think, for me personally, this is not a good strategy. I am looking at my skills and thinking – what can I offer to this new world which is coming but I know nothing or very little about.

Here are my very crude notes:

1/ I know, that I have to diversify.

2/ What skills do I have, what can I offer.

3/ How can I enhance my skills in the shortest time possible.

4/Can I start providing this service now at least on a small scale, perhaps during that time I gained from working at home?

I will end up this post by some basic observations that might be good to share with you . I think that I am not wrong if I say that people will always – meaning even in our uncertain future – be interested in:

1. Health
2. Happiness
3. Wealth

Are you able to provide service, advice, expertise in one of those areas? Can you solve some problems people have in achieving these? Can you teach them or help them?

Last time, when I was mentioning some hot jobs, I omitted completely the tech industry. Mainly because I am totally useless with anything technology related. But if you have those skills – you might go really up now. I can see around me a great demand for apps or educational software that are simple and useful.  Or can you offer services geared up towards the industries that are under so much stress nowadays? That would be great too. Think about nurses, doctors, fire fighters , police force…Do you have something that will make their life easier, can you provide something that would be of a value to them? Or can you produce some cleaning or hygienic products? I can see a massive demand for those.

Or why not start with something small? I noticed that even now there is a demand for dog walking. Or you can offer to be a personal shopper and deliver the shopping to people who are not able to do the shopping themselves.

And one last note to end up this post with. But an important one. Never ever think that you can’t do anything. New opportunities are there already while some new once are slowly emerging. We need to notice them and decide which way we will go.

The feeling that we all are in this together is more obvious then ever. So I wish us all – sunny days ahead 🙂