2020: A quarantine in my home office

What can I say about this pandemic year? Yes, it has not been easy, and I would say it still is not, but there is a light at the end of this tunnel: the vaccine is here. Soon we will be back together with our families and friends without worrying. But this post is not about that. It is about how I rearranged my workflow to keep going.

As some people know, I love what I do passionately. I am a mobile iOS developer at Globo, on the CartolaFC team, which I joined earlier this year. Everything was great until we went into quarantine. My routine used to be: wake up around 7am, coffee, study a bit of a foreign language or something dev-related, then head to work. I would come back late at night, hang out with my kids, and on the nights I did not sleep early I would stay up until around 2am watching a series/movie, working on some project or studying. Weekends were always outside, with family, visiting relatives and friends. Plenty of family time, friends, the works.

With the arrival of the pandemic and consequently the lockdown, I actually enjoyed being home every day (before that I worked remotely two days and went to the office three). Having lunch every day with my kids and wife is the best. Not that having lunch with friends from work is not great too - I really like that crew (they are friends outside of work too) - but family is family. Being there with them all the time, hearing their voices, watching them, is really nice.

Over time I started noticing I was not as motivated to work. I felt unwilling, tired, exhausted right when I woke up in the morning. The weekend did not help because I was in the same environment, again. The pleasure I used to have was gone, and that affected me a lot. I started trying to understand what was going on, and I got it. It was the burnout syndrome (if I can even call what I went through that).

Locked inside the house, not going out for days, my old routine had changed drastically. My place does not have a dedicated room I can call an office and only enter when working. So basically I was waking up at work and going to sleep at work without leaving the house, for many consecutive days.

At that point my wife was looking for an interior designer to remodel our place. The funny thing is she wanted to give the house a face-lift, but to me it ended up being more than just aesthetics.

After all the work of buying furniture, painting a few rooms, etc., I now had about three “work stations”. The designer set up one in the bedroom (the quietest spot), one in the living room and another on the balcony.

In the bedroom and living room we bought desks and chairs as fixed stations. The monitor and Macbook would have to be moved whenever I wanted to switch spots. On the balcony I have a three-seat bench and a mobile side table (oh, that table is a gem).

Honestly, it was great. Whenever I got mentally tired of one spot, I moved to another. Since we are still in quarantine, this still works today. It is like flipping a switch in my head and getting a nice boost to work. Think about it: before there was the commute, the literal change of environment, different lunch spots - and now everything is in the same place for months. I believe quarantine wore me down because of the stress of always being in the same spot. I was no longer studying, watching series/movies, or playing my games. I was literally mentally exhausted.

After all the rearrangement at home, I started changing my quarantine routine. I read some articles here on Medium, others on LinkedIn, and talked to friends who were going through something similar. Having more than one place to work at home is super important. At least it was for me. Now I reset by switching environments and everything flows again. Tired of one spot? Move to another. The cadence is sometimes 4 to 7 weeks before I change.

Some people say that having a dedicated room and treating it like an office - only entering when working - is good for separating things mentally. A friend of mine did it that way, but after we talked he also started moving to other rooms in the house to get that environment reset.

Here are some tips that worked for me. They might help you too:

• Have a regular schedule to start and to stop. I kept blowing past the stop time. I would get so focused on the code that I did not see time pass, and by the time I noticed, I was already past leaving time. I talked to my manager and he advised me to stay regular with the hours.
• When you have lunch, disconnect from anything that can wear you out mentally. Playing that game may not be a good idea, because it can leave you more exhausted.
• Taking breaks every hour is recommended by experts. At the office, my watch reminded me to get up and move. What did I do? Got water or a coffee. That helped me leave the desk and let my brain breathe a bit. When I came back, I solved problems more fluidly. At home, during quarantine, I think that discipline matters even more to avoid a sedentary lifestyle, mental fatigue and the most feared burnout.

What about you, what was your strategy for mental health during this quarantine? How did you push through the mental fatigue of that period? Share with us how it went…

Until next time, folks.

Originally published on Medium

This article was originally published on December 31, 2020. The version on buildcomcarlos.com is the integral editorial copy maintained on my site. You can read the original on Medium with the original layout, claps and responses.

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