WFH: Apprenticeship — Geovanny Cordero

Everyone knows the world actual situation with the COVID-19 and some of his implications. We are called to maintain social distancing and to have meticulous care with our hygiene. Companies have been forced to adapt themselves and one of the main measures taken is to let their employees work full time from home.

Since I started as a full-time collaborator at Pernix, I have had one day to work from home (only three Fridays before this situation), generally only at noon, according to Pernix policy and because I like to have Friday afternoon off . I like and leave operational tasks to do this day, finish other tasks and leave work in a stable state.

But situations change, with the complete WFH I began to notice things like I was bored and I was focused on concentrating all day at home. Many distractions, lack of social interaction, concern about the current world situation make things difficult.

I know I have work to do and the work must be done. So what did I do? Some time ago I came across the DEV platform where developers and technicians write about their experiences and some technology topics. I was constantly reading the top rated articles in my spare time and came across many WFH topics these days. Lots of recommendations, so I get the ones I can implement and tried others. Some of those that are useful to me are:

1. Maintain my schedule. Start and end at the same time as before, take one hour to lunch.
2. Have a good and constant communication with teammates, this is one of the most important.
3. Calls instead of chat are much more more efficient.
4. Take occasional breaks to stretch and make coffee. For this, sometimes I use the Pomodoro Technique to manage the break time.
5. Work separately from my rest space.
6. At the end of the day, do some physical acivity

These are some of the main activities that keep me working and after a few days of implementing some of them, I started to notice that my effectiveness improved.

As part of my learning, I can say that this experience allowed me to realize that I can organize and complete tasks by myself. That I can handle work while the world has a pandemic disease that worries me. That some things are not essential to live and some that really are. And most importantly, that the human being can adapt to any situation and move on.

As human beings and as a country, this situation allows us to learn a lot. We need to improve our cleanliness in every way, for some people this is an opportunity to treasure their family and spend more time with them, companies can achieve a productive WFH with their collaborators, leading to street decongestion, less Pollution, Higher quality of life, saving money on both sides. Some have hats to reinvent themselves and some companies, which can be a positive aspect. These are some positives that I can see, despite everything.

I think that after this situation, normality as we knew it will be very different. Despite all the negative aspects that we are seeing and will see, some changes can be nice and if we were in a comfort zone, this situation definitely took us out of it and is forcing us to reinvent ourselves and improve.