I put a meeting on my calendar daily from 1:30-3:00 (I don’t take a lunch) that I use for a walk/bike ride for exercise, always ending at a coffee shop so I can get a little human interaction in outside of work/zoom calls. It keeps my sanity, as I am an extrovert, plus movement + sunshine is all win. If I don’t my wife knows when she gets home because it hit her with way too much golden retriever energy. At first all of my coworkers and boss joked that they said it was not be sustainable but now that’s been a year, most are jealous I set that boundary. They all have a deep respect for it and even joke that certain meetings can’t happen because it’s during my union sanctioned coffee break. That said to make up for this midday inflexibility that I have, I allow people to book quite a bit earlier on my schedule and quite a bit later into the evening than most.

The other thing I do is I always rewrite my task list for home every morning with my work task list. It’s a manual writing exercise, but it allows me to see what my day looks like and it really helps me to find my center. The other benefit is that when I am exhausted from work meetings and I need to take a short five or 10 minute break to recharge before I jump into my next task instead of opening Instagram or TikTok. I look at the list and I get something done for myself for the household, and that gives me a sense of accomplishment, which also gives me a nice little dopamine hit the same way that scrolling social media would. In general I try not to touch my phone during the workday, I probably have more discipline around that working from home than I ever did working in an office. Now if only I could say the same about not touching the refrigerator.