This story is part of SLM‘s January 2021 cover feature, with tips on riding out the rest of the pandemic. Click here for more stories from the feature.
There are two types of COVID-19–era remote office workers in this world: those who are savoring working from home and those with young children (for those of you in the second camp, skip ahead to p. 54). If we had to pick a silver lining, it might be the fact that many workers whose companies have abandoned offices as a means of mitigating COVID-19’s spread have found that working from home isn’t so bad. There’s no commute, for one thing, plus no unsolicited visits from well-intentioned co-workers who linger a little too long in your cubicle; no microwaved fish in the shared kitchen; no awkward small talk.
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Like many, we had great hopes at the beginning of this whole thing that less time spent in our cars and at the office would mean we’d start knocking off bucket list items: finally get abs, finish (start) that novel, get past Comment allez-vous? in Duolingo. Instead, we’ve piddled it away in the most American of ways: by working more. According to NordVPN, a virtual private network service provider, Americans who use its service work an average of three hours more daily than they did before COVID-19.
Reader, take back your time. Here’s how to do it: the Pomodoro Technique, so named for the tomato-shaped timer its inventor used while at university (pomodoro means “tomato” in Italian—and it is interesting that Italian workers, NordVPN found, did not lengthen their workdays). Under Pomodoro, you make a to-do list, set a timer for 25 minutes, work on the first task, and, when the timer dings, take a five-minute break. Repeat. But what to do with your breaks? The beauty of working from home is that you can get away with things that would be considered not unprofessional, per se, in the office, but just a little…lazy? Relaxed? Some ideas:
1. The average adult reads 300 words per minute. That’s five pages of a novel.
2. an episode of a 25-minute show before lunch
3. three 30-second yoga poses with two repetitions each to fight the 3 p.m. doldrums
4. The perfect amount of time to check in with a friend via text message
5. one primal scream to round out the day when your internet freezes for the fourth time
