Following up with my entrepreneur friend on our mutual struggle to self-organize, we came up with a cool idea: let´s do a morning briefing, so to speak: meet up on zoom with our coffee mugs to share our plans for the day. See how it goes.
We did and it worked wonders!
Already prior to our first meeting, I had mentioned this blog that I wanted to put out there – which you may have read by now. It felt like a commitment, so I focused and – loo-and-behold – published my first blog in a long time.
That first virtual-cowork-day:
the same thing happened: I looked at the most important and the most pressing items on my list and picked three. Following a nice coffee chat I sat down to work, as did my friend. I wrote, and created, and published.
We agreed on a second zoom-in during the afternoon – way cool. We both got focused, and did our thing! Feeling so accomplished this week 🙂
Now what happened, actually.
Working from home, be it as entrepreneur or as employee, there is no real “container” for your work.
What is a container?
A box is a container or a house is a container. My personal definition of “container“: something that has walls and a lid: boundaries of time and space to hold something specific.
Your contract at work is a container for your work as to content, duration, location.
The office space itself is a very tangible container: building, room, desk provide the location for your work. Office hours provide the time-container within which you focus on your work. Going to the office building with all your colleagues, you fill that tangible container with a well-defined set of thoughts, topics, conversations.
You see: the office-container facilitates you working. It facilitates focus.
Your home is also a container, just of a very different kind. It is about family, care and love. It is a safe space.
Now you bring your work home. It´s like the containers get mixed up. No wonder we struggle!
What did we do with our virtual co-working call: we created a new container in the virtual world, so to speak. My desk at home magically became part of a work-environment of two. It facilitated my focus on work topics as opposed to home topics. And it provided a container of time: a start time with our first zoom meeting, and an end time in the afternoon. When I got up from the desk, I saw the result of my day´s work and was able to close the PC satisfied.
Stepping away from my desk I moved out of the “work-container” into the “home-container”.
End of work day.
I hope this inspires you to look at your own containers, what is there and what needs some more boundaries for you to work with more ease, focus and joy.