Like many people, I am currently experiencing the delights of working from home.
It’s not a first-time experience because in the past if I have had a writing job to do and needed to avoid the distractions of my colleagues, I have used the dining room table rather than go into Sundial House.
However, this time around, it seems a bit different.
Rather than it being a choice, it feels more like an obligation. After all, I don’t want to be responsible for spreading the virus.
It’s not even as if I know I have it I’m pretty fit for a bloke of my age, and I have no symptoms (no new persistent cough or temperature – I just coughed when I wrote that – I think it’s call psychosomatic!! ☺)
The challenge for me is concentration on the job in hand.
It was my birthday last weekend, and Andy bought me a book Through a Window by Jane Goodall about her research work on Chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream National Park.
Thirty years ago, I read her book In the Shadow of Man, and I want to pick up the new book and get into it.
To avoid the distraction, I have put the book on the coffee table in the other room, but it’s only a short walk away and have to focus on avoiding popping in and picking it up!!
So I am back at the dining room table, laptop fired up and dealing with emails, writing letters to clients and speaking to those who need to ask me questions by mobile phone.
But the Robins are distracting me now!!
I can see their nest box through the window right next to the kitchen door. They are sitting on eggs and whichever adult is out foraging is regularly flying past the window to deliver the food they have collected.
I know that very shortly I will have to stop typing, pop outside and provide a supply of mealworms to them.
You may well know that Robins will sell their soul for a wriggly mealworm and I reckon within a few weeks I am going to have them take a worm from my hand!
Must concentrate!! Oh that’s good the FTSE 100 is up a hundred plus points I wonder what the US will be like when it opens.
And then I noticed that the recycling needs doing so away from the keyboard and I can’t stand looking at untidiness so off I go.
Just had a chat with a colleague about the client follow up report that he is writing, so that was good. It got my focus back on work for a while.
He is also working from home, and I joked that I hoped he was wearing a suit and tie (as advocated by some commentators on the subject of home working).
He pointed out with little irony that he was wearing at home exactly what he would have worn had he been in the office; we have a very relaxed dress code.
I know that later I am going to be distracted by some face time with my grandsons and lunch in a short while might well mean I get to read some of the book.
Strangely though I still feel quite productive maybe it’s the blend of work and home-based tasks?
One thing I am thinking though is that when this pandemic comes to the end of its course, I suspect that we may well want to think about work in a slightly different way.
Those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to work at home, perhaps avoid the commute might well want more of that. We shall see.
Sorry I have to go the Robin just came back.
