A couple of thoughts before and after the office closes. Feel free to share.
- Don’t panic, don’t panic, and please stop panicking.
- Make sure you have a spare power cord.
- Take your headset with if compatible with your home phone. If not, consider ordering a USB headset for your laptop. You can also use a Bluetooth headset.
- If allowed, bring an extra monitor home or consider buying one. I recently bought 2 new HP VH240a monitors that have the same resolution as my laptop for about $125 each. I connect two for my primary monitors and ignore the laptop screen. I use s 2 port HDMI splitter to mirror each screen on another set of monitors I setup to use as a standing desk. With 2 keyboards and mice, I can now switch back and forth without having to move anything.
- Bring any files or planners that you use.
- Don’t leave any food at your desk or fridge. It might grow into something deadly before you get back.
- Setup a dedicated office space away from the family. Print a Do Not Disturb sign for use during your official working hours. It’s critical to have a space that is for work and one for family or you will go crazy not being able to turn off work.
- Check the background for your web cam. As you’ve seen from mine, I’m redoing my office and it’s an ugly mess. Certainly not OK for Members to see. A temporary fix is to hang curtains or fabric as a backdrop. I have green screen, black, and white photo backdrops I got for Christmas that I’ll be hanging.
- Setup phone use policies so that no one picks up your office phone line during calls. Have your cell phone ready in case the phone line isn’t available.
- Consider increasing your Internet bandwidth. Web and video conferencing or softphone apps eat a lot of bandwidth. Even more so when your family is trying to watch everything available on Disney+.
- Get a comfortable set of soft headphones to block out noise and listen to background music. You might like your current headset, but after a couple hours it can give you a fierce headache.
- You should already have 2 weeks to 3 months of food on hand. If not, don’t try to buy it all at once. Simply add 50% more of the items you usually buy and consume them in order. Do not buy canned soup, veggies, or cup noodles if you don’t usually eat those items. Buy only what you like to eat.
- Make sure you have enough coffee or drinks at home since you likely won’t be going out. There is no reason to stock up on bottled water. If you hate drinking tap water, get a simple filtered pitcher or faucet filter and use reusable water bottles.
- Make sure you have enough batteries for common devices (like your mouse) or top off rechargeable batteries. Unlike most environmental disasters, there should be absolutely no disruption to power, water, or sanitation.
- Set personal office hours. Don’t work in the evenings unless that’s part of your current routine. You don’t want your home to become your office or it will lead to stress and feeling trapped.
- Make sure you have a comfortable working space and chair.
- Get up, walk around, and stretch regularly. For all you step counters, you are going to be very sad to see 8,000 steps go to 800 when you aren’t in the office.
- Setup open meetings for your team to chat and catch up without any set agenda. It can get very lonely working from home. Our fun water/coffee room chats are gone, and you want to avoid feelings of isolation and being disconnected.
- For the current Covid 19 scare, don’t worry about masks unless you are already sick. Most of the masks people are wearing only stop you from coughing on other people. You are more likely to infect yourself using them in public. Just wash your hands like you finished slicing jalapeños for nachos and need to take out a contact lens.
- Finally: Don’t panic, don’t panic, and please stop panicking.
