If I read the news right, a couple of you guys and gals have to stay at home for the next few weeks either twiddling your thumbs or working from home. In the suburbs of Chiang Mai, life is pretty normal right now, we haven’t been ordered to stay home, and virtually nobody is wearing masks except the few who want to protect themselves against the air pollution. In the area I live, few are concerned about the coronavirus, but I do have extensive experience working from home so I thought it may be interesting sharing a typical schedule.
It’s stating the obvious but once you start working from home, your house is also your office, and it can be hard separating the two. So I’d recommend setting a room for work only, or if not possible a space reserved for work, and setup a schedule to introduce some routine. In the beginning, I used to have breakfast, and then immediately started to work with few pauses, but it turned out not to be such a good idea, so I made some changes.
Here’s a typical schedule during a weekday:
- 7:00 to 8:00 – Waking up. I don’t use an alarm clock, just wake up naturally. I may play a bit with the phone in the bed for a few minutes
- Until 9:00 – Breakfast, working in the garden, cleaning the house, learning Thai language, etc… anything I can do without having to use a computer…
- 9:00 – 12:00 – Working with regular breaks every 15 minutes mostly due to eye strain (I need to control my eye pressure). But even if you don’t have any health issues, it’s a good idea to take breaks regularly be it 30 minutes or one hour. To make sure I do take breaks I use a countdown clock, and during short breaks, I may do some cleaning and preparing ingredients for lunch. Workwise, I usually start by reading emails, then check new stories from RSS feeds and twitter.
- 12:00 – 14:00 – Lunch and relaxing mostly lying down on the bed 😉
- 14:00 – 15:xx – Some more work
- 15:xx – 16:00 – More lying on the bed… seriously. I tend to wash dishes during that time too
- 16:00 – 18:00 – More work with the usual breaks every 15 minutes
- Half of the days I work until 18:00, others until 21:00 – 22:00, so here the split
- Short working days – Exercise for 30 minutes (run), then go out for a few drinks or dinner at the restaurant
- Long working days
- 18:00 – 19:00 – Dinner + more rest on the bed
- 19:00 – 21:00 to 22:00 – More work, often looking for articles ideas for the next day, or as I do now write another article
- 22:xx – 7:xx – Sleep
Don’t worry, I do brush my teeth and shower, wash hands, and other things humans have to do, I just did not include those in the schedule 😉 I do have to admit my dressing code during long working days is pretty relax though… Anyway, if you’re new to this working at home thing, I hope you enjoy your new temporary life.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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