In a letter to his daughter in 1854, Ralph Waldo Emerson offered the following advice:

You must finish a term and finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could – some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in. Forget them as fast as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it well and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

For many of us, in our professional lives, we’d likely agree that seemingly overnight, even as we do all that we can, we are indeed facing what could be understood as blunders and absurdities. For schools across the country, the foundation of education continues to shift as we face COVID-19, and we are still trying to determine exactly what that means. Here at the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, we’ve focused primarily on how to move instruction from on-ground to online and what tools and methods can help support that process. However, in addition to teaching and learning, we’re also navigating how to manage working remotely. For staff and faculty alike, working remotely carries with it a new set of unfamiliar challenges. As we work through these uncertain times, we have taken a mindful approach to maintaining a connected, productive, and fulfilling work-from-home experience. Every situation is unique, but we hope these practices provide helpful strategies that support your transition to working remotely.

1.  Create and Honor Your Workspace

For many, we may not have home offices, but that shouldn’t interfere with the necessity to create and honor the space that you’ll be claiming as yours. First, determine where this space will be. Whether it’s a spare bedroom, the kitchen table, or that corner of the living room, it’s important to designate that this space is yours during working hours. Unlike permanent remote work, many of us find ourselves sharing working hours with children, partners, and other family members who have also been asked to work and study from home now. In this case, it’s even more important to set aside the space that will be yours. Even if it’s part of the kitchen table, let everyone know that from 8:00 – 5:00, that is your workspace. Creating workspaces for children and others in the home will also support structure and routines. Keep clutter to a minimum but do bring in some objects that symbolize work to you. Finally, thank the space at the beginning and end of every workday. In this situation, we’re all navigating uncertainty, but taking those few moments to offer gratitude to the space that will allow you to stay connected and reminds us of our Core Values and commitment to helping others.

2.  Stay Connected

As we face isolation, staying connected to our work teams is crucial not only for productivity but also for our shared sense of community. Consider these ways to connect with your teammates and colleagues.  

♦  Microsoft Teams: In addition to using Teams for projects, use Teams discussions and chats to engage with your colleagues as you would throughout the day if you were sharing a space. A morning greeting, the sharing of an article, or even a funny meme allows you the chance to connect with your team and feel a sense of togetherness. You’d likely engage in greetings throughout the day at work, so try to replicate that using Teams.

♦  Connect Privately with One Person, Every Day: While Teams gives you the opportunity to capture the feel of an office space, it’s important to have contact, 1:1, with a colleague every day. An email, chat, or even a text can provide a sense of normalcy between you and your co-workers.

♦  Think Holistically: We don’t work in silos. For many of us, our day-to-day routines involve interactions with colleagues from other departments. Continue those relationships and share relevant updates with your own team. Knowing what is happening in other departments across the University will help us realize we are part of something much larger than our own experiences.

♦  Explore Our Online Presence: Try to set aside some time each day to check Community, Faculty Forum, and University social media accounts. Additionally, consider following social media accounts that are focused on your area of higher education. Our peers at other institutions face some of the same trials that we are, so connecting with them may offer insights and a shared sense of purpose.

3.  Establish a Morning Routine

Most research on productivity and remote work emphasizes the value of establishing a morning routine. A productive morning routine often starts the night before. Before wrapping up your day, identify the goals for the next day. Write them down and consider how you may approach them the next day. This will provide a clear end to your workday and will make the next morning more focused. When working from home, it’s easier than normal to have workdays morph into personal time. We’re always connected, and working and living in the same space can make it difficult to distinguish between those two parts of our lives. So once you’ve logged off for the day – log off. Not logging off can lead to burnout and even more stress during an already trying time.

In the mornings, avoid checking your email from your phone before starting the day. Set clear boundaries that allow you to have a morning routine before starting work. Whether that’s working out, walking your dog, having breakfast with your kids, or sitting in meditation, claim mornings before work as sacred. For some, it’s tempting to roll out of bed, pour a cup of coffee, and log in, but the first part of your day will be more productive if there’s consistency and time to focus your thoughts.

Finally, as you sit down, set intentions. Intentions are often broader than goals and are more personal than specific. An example of an intention is I will practice awareness about the situations of others. Stating that intention could help you focus not only on the work ahead but on the recognition that everyone’s lives are different than they were just a few days ago. This practice allows us to be mindful and humbled by the day.

4.  Define Productivity

Once you’ve established your morning routine, it’s time to focus on ways to maintain productivity.

♦  First, set daily, weekly and long-term goals. Write them down and keep them in your workspace. Share your weekly goals with someone else on your team and allow for check-ins.

♦  Next, schedule everything – time will feel different when you’re at home, so it’s important to schedule when you’ll take breaks, go for a short walk, or even have lunch. Additionally, schedule when you’ll check your emails. Unless you have the need to constantly be on your email, consider setting what times throughout the day you’ll check and respond to emails.

♦  Stopping what you’re doing to respond to the emails as soon as they come in can have negative effects on productivity, so if your job allows for it, schedule times. The key is finding what’s best for your team’s communications needs.

♦  Determine the best and most efficient way to communicate. Just because you can’t talk to your colleague across the desk like you did while working from the office doesn’t mean that those communications have to stop – we have chats, video calls, and phones. Being mindful of which communication tool you’ll use will support more efficient and effective use of time.

♦  Reflect on what’s working and what isn’t. This is a time for adjustments, so don’t be afraid to make changes and be adaptive.

5. Use Time Tracking

Time tracking has been one of the most powerful tools we’ve used for remote work. It’s not uncommon for us to have multiple projects all happening at once with varying levels of interdependence. What works so well with time tracking is that it allows you to compare your goals to your reality. Rather than making only a to-do list or a task list, time tracking gives your insights into how you’re spending your day.

Daily time charts not only allow us to see how we’re spending our day, but they also help us prepare and plan for long-term goals. If we know we have a major deadline coming up, we can estimate how much time it will take to accomplish the tasks based on previous experiences. There are online tools that allow you to track your time and place your days in color-coded columns. There are also downloadable Excel templates that allow you to categorize and sort information over long periods. But for many of us, we spend all day looking at screens, so using a paper journal or calendar can offer a most welcomed break from typing. Time tracking is personal and not intended to be shared with others, so it’s important to develop a method that works for you.

There are some additional benefits to tracking as well. First, we can see our days in increments or blocks of time and start to identify how different factors may impact our goals. By using 30- or 60-minute intervals, we are able to recognize the reality of our days and work experiences. Our daily time tracking logs also allow us the ability to code and quantify what we do. As academics, we are natural researchers, so being able to quantify our days keeps us mindful of our own experiences. Finally, it helps us set realistic goals and make necessary adjustments during these unprecedented times. We all may be feeling great uncertainty, and time tracking provides a practical and reflective process for navigating this experience.