这成了目前很多人需要面对的难题。2019冠状病毒病(Covid-19)的大流行导致许多办公场所关闭，人们只能待在相对隔离的家中办公。然而在我家，一切照旧。这22年来，大部分时间我都在家办公；最近4年，我和丈夫都在家工作，而我们依旧相看两不厌！

但说实话，当我在20岁中期的时候刚开始在家工作时，情况还是比较艰难的。从那时起，为了不让自己不至于渐渐消沉，我一直努力与外界保持联系，既保证工作效率，也呵护心理健康。

我特别怀念常去的那家咖啡店，平时我一周至少要有三个工作日都呆在那里，而克服这种念想如今对我来说愈加困难，想来其他人也是一样。但我还是能克服，因为我养成了一些基本习惯，确保在家工作不至失去好的状态。

下面分享下我的秘诀：

如果你在办公室工作，那么工作日八小时里的大部分时间都会用来参加会议，而你基本都是在听会。此外就是跟人在饮水机旁聊天，跟同事交谈，或是被各种情况打断思路。我需要在办公室坐班的时候，一天能有4小时专心工作就已经很好了。

由于在家办公不受干扰，在办公室至少8小时才能完成的工作，我在家5小时就能完成。相对而言，如果连续工作超过5、6个小时，我就会感到非常疲惫与孤独。

所以我尽量忽略墙上的时钟是否指向了下午5点，只要我完成了需要完成的工作，我的工作日就结束了。如果完成之前就觉得到了极限或是变得焦躁不安，我会额外休息一下，或出去散散步。

我也会通过视频或语音电话和人相约，保证有时间与人交流。工作电话不多时，我会打给至少一位朋友或家人，时间就选在下午3、4点左右，那时候我的工作效率通常会下降。在清理思绪、和人互动交流之后，我会在夜里晚点的时间整理收件箱、给客户开发票，处理这类不太费脑子的工作。

没了工作日规定工作的起止时间，你就需要通过其他方式来规定完成一天工作的界限。因此，我会每天敲定三件头等大事，并在早上用聊天或电子邮件的方式分享给一位或一群同事，这样我就对自己要完成的工作有了责任感。每天开始工作时我都会先记下主要事项，比如为我们的数据项目创建一个电子表格、列出各种数据变量，撰写以远程工作为题的稿件的初稿，发送所有未结清的发票。

当然，你还有其他邮件电话要处理，但这三件大事就是你一天的工作中心，其他事情可以围绕着中心来开展。一天结束后，即使只完成了三件中一件、或是一件都没能全部完成，你也可以把完成的部分分享给你指定为责任共同体的伙伴，这不一定非要是你的同事，也可以是愿意坚持这样做的朋友，这样大家在家工作时就都能保持理智的状态了。这不仅能帮助你集中注意力，还能构建社群意识，支持你的日常工作。

如果你要享受摆脱八小时工作制的好处，就需要用另一种方式来管理时间，确定合适的工作节奏。

每天选择三件事的方法可以是这个系统的一部分，但你还可以设置其他一些方式帮助自己了解时间都花去哪里了。生产力专家迈克·瓦迪(Mike Vardy)提出了“时间主题化”这个讲法，用来描述将特定的日子、时间或星期用于特定任务或任务类型的想法。你可以在日历类应用上创建一个单独的“时间主题化”日历，用它来计划构想将一天或一周中的哪些时间花在不同类型的工作上。

在电脑上安装诸如Timing.app或ManicTime之类的时间追踪管理软件也非常有效，它们会在后台运行，让你看到时间都花在哪里了。你甚至可以自己制定一些简单的规则，然后就能收到可视化报告，把时间分成有效和无效。检视一下自己是如何利用时间的，无论是一天一次还是一周一次，这样能帮助你找到合适的节奏，既能保持工作效率，又能呵护心理健康。

在办公室工作，无论你是精力充沛，还是疲惫不堪迫切需要休息，你都必须上班打卡，投入到每天的正常工作中。而在家工作时，你可以用更灵活的方式来处理这些自然周期，只要不被它们扰乱。

以前，独自工作状态低迷时我都会很抓狂，例如当大项目或假期刚结束的第二天或第二周，那时我会无法集中精力的时候，没法做多少事。遇上这种危机时期，我的低迷状态会变得难以预测：有几天上午我醒来时特别焦虑，怎么都无法集中注意力，但那星期的某一天，我又超负荷工作，十年来第一次熬了通宵，第二天筋疲力尽。

如今，我学会了接受这些低迷状态，我不再担心这样的状态意味着我再也无法完成任何事情，而是利用这些自然的低潮来处理个人事务，例如完成一大项工作后，和亲友约好打打电话分享近况，或者在某天倦怠时做一堆菜储存在冰箱。我还会利用这段时间来处理一些需要紧张赶进度时候无暇理会的工作项目，例如更新邮件过滤器或者整理文件。我发现这些整理工作能让我理清思路，重新回到工作的最佳状态，更容易让我重新承担起主要职责。

当然，出于某些实际原因，你可能无法整天甚至整个下午都不在线。你可以做的是，做好计划，在全神贯注的模式下处理大部分电子邮件和信息，然后在白天或夜间的其他时间进行几次快速的精确击破，来处理那些不能拖到下次工作窗口的紧急信息。

之前我一直是某家咖啡馆的常客，我认识老板，也认识不少常客，我们有社群感，也会做一些类似同事间的闲聊。现在我完全在家工作，于是我试着在几个不同的网络环境中做一名常客：Facebook群组、Twitter列表和针对本行业和自由工作者的Slack频道，我由此收获了一种与人共事的感觉，遇上专业问题时也有了参谋。

即使你以前在参与公司的Slack或Teams群组对话会比较小心谨慎，现在也是时候在这些软件上面多逛逛了，你甚至可以尝试每天加入一两次以娱乐为主题的群组对话，这有助于你与更大的团队保持更紧密的联系。你也可以考虑时常访问一下自己所在行业或专业领域的更广泛的在线社群，即使你以前从未这样做过；也许现在距离你能去参加贸易展或会议还有一段时间，这样做能帮助在线上你建立或维持类似的关系。

每天在相同的环境中“见”相同的人，我们因而获得了重要的连续与群体感，也有可能更深入地进行更有趣的对话，因为我们不是每天都从头开始。现在这些网络比以往任何时候都更重要，因此我保持登录到几个不同的Slack工作群组，甚至还打开了可怕的消息提醒！

是的，这么做有点让人分心，但实时听到客户和同事的声音让我感受到自己仍是一个更大的工作场所和专业团体的一部分。

无论你以前的办公室文化是怎样的，会议上同事会闲聊也好，直奔主题也好，现在都是时候认真考虑如何在没有任何面对面接触的情况下建立和维持同事关系了。即使你通常与同事保持着清爽的职业距离，你也可能会发现，缺乏肢体语言提示和咖啡桌上的问候，会突然让你感觉与同事的联系变少，也破坏了能让我们一起有效工作的默契纽带。

如果可以的话，既然你在家，不妨放慢一点脚步，在每次网络会议或视频通话开始和结束时花几分钟时间，和同事做一些人情交流，问问他们过得怎么样，问问他们应对隔离生活的最佳建议，分享一些你的个人消息。这些人际关系上的小小投资会带来巨大的商业回报，因为人们只有在彼此信任的时候，才更能有效地合作，而真实的人际交流会建立这种信任。同样重要的是，这些互动会让你感到与他人的联系更紧密，帮助你战胜孤独感。

上一次我从坐办公室改为远程工作时，第一年体重就增加了20磅，因为我之前的基本活动水平，比如从停车场走到办公室，从办公桌走到咖啡机前，出去吃午饭再回来等等，回家后就变成了零。佩戴一个计步工具，计划好每天至少要走多少步；每天趁早散步，如果你还没有达到最低步数，你可以上上下下多跑几次去洗衣服，或者找另一个差事来让自己动起来。

在家工作，尤其当你还是独居，建立某种机制来审视自己的心理健康和良好状态至关重要，这样你才不至迷失在工作和各种截止日期之中。几年前重新开始独自工作时，我试过几种不同的应用程序来进行情绪管理和日常审视，它们促使我每天至少检视一次自己的心情和情绪状态。

现在，这种检视已经成为我的晨间习惯之一：每天早上，我会进行一次自检，看看身体里藏着什么样的情绪，而一旦习惯了这种练习，真的会感受到情绪是有形的，我情绪低落或焦虑的时候，我会尽量早点锻炼，吃得更谨慎，这样血糖就不会大起大落。每隔几周我还会和治疗师交谈，我和我丈夫每天晚上也都会进行检查。

正如远程工作会导致你的基本运动归零一样，它也会令你的基本社交活动归零，当然这不包括与你一起生活的人交流。我发现每周都有固定的约会对我很有帮助，即便我没有组织能力来制定计划。最近，每天下午4点，我都会和一两个朋友一起散步，这样我就能出门见见直系亲属以外的人了。别担心，我们是保持了社交距离的。

我还安排了每天上午固定和一位新同事视频通话。这不是我在传统工作环境下会做的事，但现在它可以确保我们俩每天都能有一个专注的开始，更重要的是，它帮助我们对抗孤独、建立好同事关系。

请记住，正如任何其他专业技能一样，能以健康的方式处理远程工作也是一项技能，需要花费一些时间去实践，但只要你把拥有良好状态和效率放在首位，你甚至可能会发现自己更喜欢在家办公。

How do you balance productivity with health and well-being when you’re working from home, rather than at the office?

It is a question many people are now grappling with for the first time, as Covid-19 closes many workplaces and sends people into the relative isolation of the home office. But in our house, it is business as usual: I’ve worked from home for the most of the past 22 years, and for the past four, my husband and I have worked from home together. (And we still like each other!)

But I’ll be honest: The first time I found myself working from home, in my mid-20s, I had a tough time. And since then, to make sure I don’t sink into any more funks, I’ve been very conscientious about staying connected to the outside world, balancing my productivity with what’s good for my mental health.

That is more challenging for me now, just as it is for everyone else: I really miss the coffee shop where I usually spend at least three workdays a week. But it is possible, because I already have some basic habits in place that ensure home-based work doesn’t compromise my well-being.

Here are my secrets:

If you’re working in an office, much of your eight-hour “workday” is made up of meetings in which you’re mostly listening, in addition to water-cooler chat, collegial conversations and random interruptions. When I’ve worked at an office, I’ve considered it a good day if I get 4 hours of decent work time.

Since my solo workdays are uninterrupted, I can get more done in 5 hours than I’d accomplish in 8 hours at the office. Conversely, if I consistently work more than 5 or 6 hours at a stretch, I can get really burned out and isolated.

So I try not to get hung up on whether the clock on the wall says 5 p.m.; my workday ends when I’ve completed the work I need to get done, and if I reach my limit or get restless before then, I take an extended break or get outside for a walk.

I also try to book in video or phone calls to make sure I get human interaction. On days when I don’t have many business calls, I try to call at least one friend or family member in the midafternoon, when my productivity starts to flag. If I have brainless tasks like clearing out my inbox or invoicing clients, I take care of that later in the evening, after I’ve had a chance to refresh and interact with some humans.

When you aren’t using the business day to decide when work starts and ends, you need some other structure that lets you know when you’ve put in a day’s work. So I like to pick my top three priorities for each day, and share those three commitments with a colleague (or group of colleagues) early in the day, via chat or email, so I have a sense of accountability for what I get done. I start my day by jotting down major items like: Create the spreadsheet with the list of all the variables for our data project; write first draft of remote-work story; send all outstanding invoices.

Sure, you’ll have other emails to address or calls to answer, but those three big things will be the center of your day, and you’ll fit the other stuff in around the edges. At the end of the day, share your accomplishments (even if only one or zero out of three) with the colleagues you’re using as accountability partners. They don’t have to be people you work with; they can be friends who commit to this practice so you all stay sane while working from home. This won’t only help you focus your days, but will give you a sense of community and support for your daily work effort.

If you’re going to enjoy the advantages of letting go of the eight-hour day, you need a different way of managing your time and ensuring you’re working at an appropriate pace.

Your daily “three things” can be part of that system, but it is also helpful to set up some other structures to help you see where your time goes. The productivity expert Mike Vardy came up with the term “time theming” to describe the idea of committing certain days, times or weeks to specific tasks or types of tasks; you can create a separate “time theming” calendar inside your calendar app, and use that to plan and visualize which parts of the day or week you’re going to spend on different types of work.

It also can be very useful to install a time tracker like Timing.app or ManicTime on your computer, which runs in the background and lets you see where your time has gone. You can even build simple rules so that you get visual reports that break your time down into productive vs. unproductive time. Take a look at how you’ve used your time, either once a day or once a week, and it will help you find an appropriate pace that preserves both your productivity and your sanity.

When you’re working in an office, you have to show up and put in a regular day’s work whether you’re bursting with energy or burned-out and in desperate need of a break. When you’re working from home, you have more flexibility to work with these natural cycles—as long as you don’t let them rattle you.

I used to freak out whenever I hit a solo work slump, like the day or week after a big project or a vacation, when I just couldn’t focus or get much done. During these crisis times, slumps are a little less predictable: Some mornings I wake up really worried, and just can’t focus, but one day this week I went into overdrive, pulled my first all-nighter in a decade, and exhausted myself for the next day.

Now I’ve learned to accept these downturns, so instead of worrying that they mean I’ll never again get anything done, I use these natural ebbs to take care of personal tasks (booking a whole bunch of catch-up calls for the day after I finish a big piece of work, or using a listless day to cook a whole bunch of meals for our freezer). Or I use them to take care of those work projects I never have time for when I’m on deadline, like updating my email filters or reorganizing my files. I find these organizing tasks help clear my mind and get me back into the groove of work, so it is easier to get back into the flow of my primary responsibilities.

Of course, there are practical reasons why you may not be able to just go offline for a day or even an entire afternoon. What you can do is plan on tackling most of those emails and messages during the windows when you’re in full-on work mode, and then tack on a couple of short surgical strikes at other times in the day or evening, to handle time-sensitive messages that can’t wait for your next work window.

Until recently, I was a regular at one particular coffee shop, where I know the cafe owners and enough of my fellow regulars to give me a sense of community and a little collegial chitchat. Now that I’m working entirely from home, I try to be a regular in a few different online contexts: Facebook groups, Twitter lists and Slack channels for people in my field and for solo workers, so I have a sense of collegiality and a sounding board for professional issues.

Even if you’ve previously been sparing or surgical in the way you use your company’s Slack or Teams conversations, now is the time to start actually hanging out there a little, and maybe even commit to joining in the just-for-fun channels once or twice a day; it will help you stay more connected to your larger team. You could also consider frequenting a few of the broader online communities in your industry or professional field, even if you’ve never done that before; it may be a while before you can go to a trade show or conference, and this will help you build or sustain comparable relationships online.

“Seeing” the same people in the same context, day in and day out, provides a vital sense of continuity and community, and makes it possible to dive deeper, into more interesting conversations, because we aren’t starting from square one each day. Those networks are more important than ever now, so I stay logged into several different Slack workspaces and even leave the dreaded notifications turned on!

Yes, it is a little distracting, but hearing from clients and colleagues in real time helps me feel like I’m still part of a larger workplace and professional community.

Whether you come from an office where collegial chitchat is part of the meeting routine, or from a shop with a let’s-get-straight-to-business culture, now is a time to think carefully about how you can build and sustain collegial relationships when you have exactly zero in-person contact. Even if you normally function at a brisk professional distance, you may find that the lack of body-language cues or coffee-line greetings suddenly makes you feel less connected to your colleagues, and frays the unspoken bonds of trust that let us work effectively together.

If you can, slow down just a bit now that you’re at home, take a few minutes at the beginning and end of each web conference or video call to just connect with your colleagues as actual humans. Ask them how they are doing, or for their best tips for coping with a cooped-up existence or just share a piece of your own personal news. These little investments in relationships pay enormous business dividends, because people are more effective at collaborating when they trust one another, and actual human conversation builds trust. Just as important, these interactions will make you feel more connected and help combat your own sense of isolation.

The last time I switched from office work to remote work, I gained 20 pounds in the first year, just because my baseline level of activity went from moderate (walking from parking lot to office, walking from desk to coffee maker, walking out to lunch and back) to zero. Wear a step counter and commit to a minimum daily step count; take a walk early enough in the day that if you haven’t hit your step count, you can plan on running the laundry up and down the stairs a few more times, or find another errand to get yourself moving.

When you’re working from home—and especially if you’re doing that while living alone—it is really crucial to have some kind of structure for checking in on your own mental health and well-being, so you don’t get lost in a sea of work and deadlines. When I returned to working solo a few years ago, I experimented with a few different mood-tracking and daily-reflection apps that prompted me to reflect on my mood and emotional state at least once a day.

Now that kind of reflection has become part of my morning ritual: I do a kind of self-scan each morning to see what kinds of emotions are sitting in my body (once you get used to this kind of practice, it really does feel quite physical), and if it seems like I’m low or anxious, I try to exercise earlier in the day and eat more carefully so I don’t ride a blood-sugar roller coaster. I also talk to a therapist every couple of weeks, and my husband and I have an evening check-in every day.

Just as remote work sets your baseline physical activity to zero, it sets your baseline social interaction to zero (well, not counting anyone you live with). I’ve found it very helpful to have standing dates that ensure I have some social interaction every week, even if I don’t get organized enough to make plans. These days, that consists of a 4 p.m. walk with one or two friends, every single day, so that I get outside and see someone outside my immediate family. (Don’t worry, we practice social distancing.)

I also scheduled a standing morning video call with a new colleague. It isn’t something I’d do in a more conventional work situation, but right now, it ensures we both get a focused start to our days, and even more important, it is helping us build a collegial relationship while fighting isolation.

Remember, tackling remote work in a healthy way is a skill, just like any other professional skill. It is going to take a little time, and a little practice—but by prioritizing your well-being, as well as your productivity, you may even discover that you actually prefer working from home.

Corrections & Amplifications
The boxes representing flexibility to work anywhere and not having to commute were incorrectly sized in an earlier version of the Out of Office graphic in this article. The graphic has been corrected above. (March 31, 2020)