You Can’t Quarantine Hustle – Part 1 – The Work From Home Morning Routine

With the craziness that has come with the pandemic and quarantine measures, I thought I would share something that might help some of you who are trying to work from home for the first time.

I’ve spent more than a decade running my business remotely, even spending 5 years on an island, literally.   We lived on the Island of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands and I ran my business remotely using nothing but a sub-par internet connection.

This article series contains some tips and tricks I can share that may help you.

I know a great deal of you well enough to know that you don’t lack hustle and that with the right tools and the right attitude I know you can pivot through this thing and I’d like to help any way that I can so hit me up if you have any questions or if I can help in any way.

The Morning Routine of a Work-From-Home Hustler

Lizzy, my insightful wife, was talking this morning about the side effects that this quarantine lifestyle is going to have on many of our lives.    It’s  a great time to look inward at ourselves and truly honor our health spiritually, physically and mentally.   It’s really an opportunity – the car is in the shop and now that the car is in the shop why not put it up on the lift and do some serious unscheduled maintenance on it.

So she says “you can either be the victim of this thing, or figure out how to make it into an opportunity to be better”  – Pretty cool, right?

For example, she and our daughter are homeschooling and sheltering-in-place at our house so they took the opportunity to draw on the portion of the sidewalk that passes in front of our house writing messages like “be happy”  “ don’t worry” “ be grateful”  and “be healthy”.    Opportunity to brighten someones day and give them a bit more hope taken.

Establish a Morning Routine

Even though you won’t be leaving the house, establishing a morning routine is going to set the tone for the day and get your mind in the right space to be productive.

It’s all going to feel odd for a while,  change always does, but the difference between being a victim of the situation and thriving through it is being intentional and taking control of the situation.

Taking control of the situation begins by taking control of your day.

So doing something good for your body, a workout, meditation, yoga, something for you done by you.

Then ditch the sweatpants and dress like you mean business and proceed to your dedicated workspace.  I’m going to write more tomorrow with ideas about the dedicated makeshift workspace, but you just have to have a space, however sophisticated or ad-hoc it is, to get your work done.

Aside from just plain productivity, the best reason for this is so you can separate your home life from your work life.   You have to draw a line in the sand and not cross it or you and your family will be miserable.

Be Intentional About A Work Life / Family Life Balance

You will be tempted to let your work life bleed into and take from your family life and vice-versa.

Its a balancing act and it’s also a controlled fall.   None of this is going to feel or be perfect, it’s a controlled fall,  all you can do is fall forward and the only way that is going to happen is if you are intentional about where you are and where you are going.

If you work more than a reasonable 8 hours a day, you are saying to your family that your work is more important than they are.   You don’t have to take every call, answer every email in a millisecond.

Frankly if what we have is a society in which our corporate bosses expect us to drop our children and file that A2645 performance data powerpoint excel spreadsheet bullshit immediately – then you know what, something is wrong and this is the perfect opportunity to change that crap here and now.

So be intentional, set hours, set a space to work in, and do your best to stick to it.   You’ll fail, and that’s ok, just get back up and keep moving towards that work life balance thing and then at least you will fail forward.

Regards and now more than ever I hope you see beauty even when it isn’t pretty

JY