Whether you are at school, university or in the wonderful world of work, over the past few weeks you have most likely experienced some serious upheaval! One possible consequence of the difficult situation we are currently in is that you might now be working from home.
To all the extraordinary key workers out there who are keeping people safe, fed, connected and cared for – a massive thank you from us both!
The UK has now been in lockdown for over 40 days, and myself and Maisie have been living and working from my flat together. We usually live a good few hours away from each other so it has been a bit of a change for both of us! It has been really nice to be spending lots more time together – that said adjusting to living and working in a confined space has been interesting to say the least!
I have created a little home office at one end of the dining table and Maisie has set up camp at the other end. This makes for some fun when we both realise we have a work call at the same time and one of us has to shift it and get out of the room pronto!
However I am very glad for some company in the ‘office’. With the highlight of course being taking it in turns (kind of) to keep the constant flow of cups of tea coming. Luckily we work similar hours so we work in tandem – not causing too many distractions for each other! However as Maisie starts super early throughout the week she finishes earlier than me on a Friday – so Friday afternoon can be a bit of a struggle!
The majority of the work me and Maisie do is computer based, so we are lucky enough that we are able to do it remotely! We are both still working on similar projects to the ones we were before the lockdown started – so we haven’t had a big change there. However there has obviously been changes in how we communicate with our teams and how we progress our work forward. It has all been a really interesting learning experience and we are both trying to continually improve the way we work every day!
It has been a challenging process adapting to our new ‘normal’ – at least for the foreseeable future. In this strange time, there have been and will continue to be good days and bad days, but adapting to a new situation is always a tricky thing to do.
We have tried to create a routine in this strange and uncertain time to give us some kind of structure. This is definitely a help to us, it defines our time a little more. It means we know what day of the week it is at the very least – the days do have a tendency to merge together a little bit at the moment!
The extra time can be both a blessing and curse. It has given us time to work on projects (like this blog), read more books, improve our coding skills and spend more time together. However it also gives you the time to overthink things, worry and become anxious over little things that normally in our busy lives we don’t have the time to register!
Here are some of the things we have been finding the most useful whilst working from home so far:
- trying to create a space in your home where you just do work – separate to where you relax.
- setting a time for lunch and moving away from your working set up to take a break.
- going outside, whether this is during your lunch break, before or after work – make sure you step outside and try and get some fresh air.
- making sure you decide on a time to finish your working day – it can be easy to let work creep on longer than you usually would do being home all the time.
- making a plan for what you will do after work – plan to watch a particular movie or TV show, to have a bath, read a book or cook a specific meal.
Stay home and stay safe everyone!
If you are working from home right now, how are you finding it?
Lily & Maisie
2 Sisters In STEM
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2 Sisters In STEM 