The Strangely Positive Impact of Working From Home

How telecommuting has helped me manage my stress levels.

With COVID-19 raging in the outside world, many of us are forced to shelter in place. This has negatively impacted the economy, with entire industries shutting down and millions out of work. The impact on the day-to-day lives of millions of households across America will be staggering.

I am fortunate both in that my job is fairly crucial to my company and I have a work laptop that I can take home with me. As such, I am still working full-time from my home. It’s been an interesting challenge, to say the least.

Working from home brings a lot of standard issues with it. If you don’t have a dedicated office space (we don’t), you’re often stuck working from the couch or the dining room table. If you have animals (we have four cats), they will be affected by your new work situation too.

Meetings are now conducted over the phone or internet, which has a whole host of issues. Many people don’t care for pants, many children don’t care to have their parents occupied by something else, and pets again are a fantastic wild card.

Then, of course, there is the joy and sorrow of finding yourself at home with your partner when you would otherwise be apart. Spouses are now finding that their partner, who occupied a particular position in their head, has a completely different personality when they’re working. Plus, there’s the challenge of spending your entire day, every day, with a person that you may only see for part of that time. It can be jarring, to say the least.

I am encountering many of those problems, and am working through them in different ways. Two weeks in, my cats have settled down and don’t bug me as much while I’m working. I’ve found that having multiple places to work (the dinner table, the couch, the guest room) can be refreshing when I’m feeling stuck.

Meetings are an interesting thing since my wife has a different sleep schedule than I do. She often gets to bed much later than me, often at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, and sleeps until 10:00 or 11:00. Considering many of my phone meetings take place before she wakes up, there is the minor challenge of trying not to wake her.

All of this is augmented by my bipolar, which requires medications that I was (thankfully) able to stock up on right as everything hit the fan. Even medicated, though, my paranoia and germophobia have been particularly up lately, and a simple trip to my local Chinese restaurant for some birthday takeout was enough to send me into a mild panic.

So, imagine my joy to discover that, two weeks, in, my stress levels have decreased and I’m actually feeling fairly good about life right now, all things considered.

It wasn’t necessarily like that at first. There was the initial panic of stocking up the house to prepare for lockdown, forging through the crowded grocery store and spending triple our monthly budget on food. We stocked up on everything we possibly could, panic-buying anything and everything we thought we’d need.

Because anxiety is a major feature of my illness, that first week was quite challenging. I stressed about having enough food, I stressed every time we had to go out, I stressed whenever I read or heard the news. My typical anxiety gradually morphed into moderate paranoia, agoraphobia, and germophobia. Regular hand-washing became my prayer and avoiding public places my gospel.

As I settled in, however, those things began to calm down. Avoiding public places was still high on my list, and proper, thorough hand-washing is now a regular feature of my life, but the anxiety and paranoia faded mostly into the background. Sure I get stressed out if I have to go to the store for anything, but I’ve been to a public place once in the past week, so that’s been at a minimum.

I’ve also been under a lot of stress at work this year, having quite a few deadlines in the first three months which culminated with a mid-March deadline that was worth 20% of our budgeted revenue for next year. It was a major project that required many hands, with me coordinating the whole thing, and my mood took a nosedive during the process.

That project wrecked me in many ways, driving up my anxiety and depression and sending me into a hopeless spiral of angst. Everything seemed terrible, and it felt like nothing I did was going to matter. My mood was at a major low point. Then we clicked “submit,” and my spirits began to lift.

One week after we submitted it, I was working from home. The joy and relief of sending six weeks of hard work off to be judged were tempered by the stress of COVID rearing its ugly head, sending me away from my office and coworkers to spend a month (at least) working from my dining room.

There was another bout of depression that I had to deal with as I realized that I would be stuck inside the house away from my friends for a long time. I am an introvert, so being away from people doesn’t bother me much, but being forced to stay away against my will kinda bugs me.

As the dust from the initial bout of anxiety and depression has settled, though, I find myself enjoying my time in, both work and otherwise. One of my friends set up a meeting on Discord where we got a chance to play games and chat with people we haven’t seen in a while, and it was spectacular. It didn’t even matter that we couldn’t see them, it was still a lot of fun.

My work life has also leveled out. While the first week of working from home was a bit challenging, I’ve settled into a routine that has helped my mood and productivity. It’s fairly amazing what I’ve managed to accomplish so far — I may be more productive working from home than I would’ve been working from the office.

In one of my team calls, we all talked about how productive we’ve been since working from home, and the perks of being able to stand up, walk away from work, and go to the park with our partners or kids for 30 minutes. It turns out that working in a comfortable environment does wonders for your work.

There are other perks as well. Having access to a full fridge and pantry for lunch is nice, as is sharing another meal with my wife. Sometimes if I’m particularly busy, she’ll be kind enough to make me lunch. I can also snack at will if I’m feeling peckish, and homemade coffee is always better than office coffee.

There’s also the aspect of just spending more time with my wife in general. We are fairly compatible and balance each other in many ways, so when people gripe about how awful it is spending more time with their partners in lockdown, I simply can’t relate.

So, as a result of these perks and others, the past two weeks have been fairly good for me. Working in a comfortable environment with my loving partner and adorable (if nosy) cats seems to have had a positive impact on my stress levels. My work is better for it, as is my mood and home life. Even though my social life has suffered, its impact has been fairly minor all things considered.

That, for me, is one of the biggest surprises out of all of this. I always thought that I needed a routine, a place to go when I work, a commute, all the trappings of a normal office job. It turns out that I can have all of those things and also work from home.

My routine is still there, just different. Every morning, I come downstairs, take my meds, and hop in the car for a drive around the neighborhood to play Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and listen to audiobooks. It gets me out of the house for a little, I can catch up on some “reading,” and I get to play a fun game.

When I’m done, I come home (I never travel far and never leave the car), get breakfast and coffee, and settle into my new workstation at the dining room table. I generally work there for the first few hours of my day until my wife wakes up and we eat lunch, then I determine if I want to stay there or move to the couch or guest room to give her some space.

All the while, I’m in the comfort of my home, surrounded by people, animals, and things that I care about, able to relax and be comfortable while getting my work done. I can wear comfy clothes, pet my cats, play video games on my lunch break, and just generally enjoy my life and work.

So, despite my bipolar, the daily risk of depression and anxiety, my newly-developed paranoia and germophobia, and a general reluctance to be in public, my mood is the best it’s been in quite some time. I’m not the happiest I’ve ever been, but considering that there’s a pandemic going on, I think I’m doing okay.

Right now, as I type this, my wife is sitting next to me, my cats are all around me, and the cherry tree in our backyard is blooming a fantastic shade of pink. I’ve put down my work for a minute to write this out as it pops into my head — since I’m working from home, I’m able to work on breaks or flex my hours and make up the time later. Once I finish, I’m going to grab a quick lunch, edit and publish this, and get back to my day job.

I’ve been a big ball of anxiety and depression the past few months, and although this isn’t the best it can be, it’s still fairly good, I think. While I know that changing scenery can help deal with depression, it didn’t occur to me that working from home would have such a dramatic, positive effect on my mood

You know what? I’ll take it.