HOME (work)LIFE BALANCE

(As I type this article I am besieged with my six year-old daughter wanting to complete a DIY project, utensils that need to be cleaned and “work” work that needs to be done. I’m thinking of the next sentence and at the same time I have my daughter playing Yankee-doodle on her keyboard. She jumps from that activity and yells, “C’mon papa, C’mon fast!....I’m getting bored!”)

Home-work has taken over Work-work.

8 days – Locked in and I’m still getting used to all the Work From Home challenges and the frightful 8 pm announcements.

Most of us are worried about having enough essential goods that will last till the neighborhood grocer opens up or till the online grocery sites starts accepting orders. We are overwhelmed with the deluge of information on the Corona virus pandemic and exhausted sorting out all the fake news among it.  

I am at an advantage as compared to many other people. Most live in joint families or are cooped up in a small houses with bad internet connectivity (which is shared by all, including the grandparents), with Televisions that are forever on, whistling pressure cookers & full throttled mixer-grinders and worried deliberations on health, the economy, job security, salary and food.

At the moment it seems like “work” work seems to be taking the backseat. Having to deal with multiple distractions and being able to complete the scheduled list of tasks, responding to pings from managers, colleagues, clients, partners and completing online learning courses is starting to take its toll.

Being Disciplined doesn’t come easily to people who prefer to wing each day. 

I have tried to do many things over the past few days. Here are some of which that have worked:

1. Mornings are for goals and Evenings are for wins. Start each day with the list of things (home-work and work-work) that need to be done. End the day by a celebration (such as a quick family jig, a karaoke evening, a minute to win it race, etc.)
2. Find out the “Silent hours” at home. If not; establish that with your family. Reserve that for critical work that needs your utmost concentration. Even if its after people have gone to sleep or before they wake up.
3. Tell others about your situation; especially your manager, your peers and your clients. There is no shame in it, because almost everyone in the world is going through the same thing. Heck! I’ve even got my daughter, wife and mother to say hello to some of my colleagues and clients. I just make sure that my back is towards a wall (on a Video conference) so that people cant see into everything else that’s happening around in my home.
4. Ask people for help if you don’t have a solution. I heard of a story from a friend about a man who stays with his father who suffered from schizophrenia and didn’t allow him to be on calls. He found out that the best place where he wouldn’t be interrupted was his bathroom. So he works out of there, with a stool as his table and you-can-guess as his chair. People will find workarounds. If you can’t, ask someone and its better if that someone coaches you, rather than prescribes solutions.
5. Make a Joint To-do list: I have made a work check list and clubbed it with that of my homes chores and daughter’s to-do as well. Everyone knows what each have to do. We have also just made a 21 day calendar (that we will strike out each day).
6. Stay active and keep up the step count. No phone call is to be taken seated (unless I have to make notes). I maneuver carefully around the house on every call. I achieved 15000 steps yesterday, which included a 7km run inside the apartment and up and down the staircase and lift lobby.
7. Have a bundle-hour where all administrative tasks such as online payments, transactional phone calls, housing society chats and not urgent email replies can be bundled up and done.
8. If you are a manager, start tracking results and not activities. For e.g. First set the expectation or target for the week such as “Reducing Errors by 20% per 1000 lines of code or Achieve 10000 impressions for the PR article”. Track that metric through the week. Ask what the team member is doing well, not doing well and what are they learning. Acknowledge success and discuss feedback. Avoid policing and tracking the day-by-day or hour-by-hour activities that they are doing.
9. Get your team together once every day or two and tell them “how you are doing as a business”. If you aren’t a manager and you don’t know about how your business is doing, ask for it.
10. Arm yourself with new knowledge and new skills. I am currently on my 3rd Audio book and completed 30% of two online courses. You dont know what the future holds and being ready will only help you. I've got a basic outdoor survival training program and book in my list now.

A few days ago, I was on the verge of running out of patience, trying to explain to my daughter about patience itself. I have now realized that I was losing patience with myself as well, especially about balancing home and work. The above ten techniques have worked for me, and there are around 30 other experiments that haven’t. One such experiment, was not working at all! I enjoyed it for a few days, but after that I slowly started feeling anxious. I learned that my Ikigai has always been related to my work and home. And leaving any one of those out was making me incomplete, and hence the anxious.

I strongly recommend reading Ikigai. It’s such a beautiful and pertinent read for everyone during this crisis. I do wish that each one of us comes out of this Pandemic, unscathed and stronger as individuals, as families, as communities and as citizens of humanity.