The structure of your work setting determines how much and how well you work.

People who work on a factory assembly line work in a very structured and regimented environment. To perform work, they must be in a particular physical space that is defined by machinery and other workers. They must perform particular actions in a particular way.

As symbolic/knowledge workers we are much closer to the unstructured end of the continuum, especially those of us who work from home or otherwise remotely. Our "machinery" is light and portable and can be moved to any space. There is no prescribed process we must follow in order to accomplish work and deliver a product. If you work from home, you can stand on your head and suspend your computer from the ceiling if that gets the right neurons firing to get the job done.

This is both good and bad.

We are freed from those workplace policies necessary to align a large group's actions but don't make sense for people individually. We save time, energy, and gas from commuting every day.  There are a multitude of small conveniences and comforts to working at home.

On the downside, we have little or no externally or physically imposed structure. But productivity suffers without structure. That means we must do the work of imposing structure for ourselves. No structure or limitations means work doesn't get done or gets done poorly and not on schedule.

Solution: make your own structure!

When I learned that I had to impose my own structure, it awakened me to all the opportunities where self-imposed structure could improve not only my productivity, but also my experience of working. Whenever I encountered anxiety or frustration, I thought ... could I dispel this unpleasantness with a different structure?

That way of thinking has made a huge difference and leads me to improve my internal and external work environment every day.

One of my biggest work buggabees is task switching. I have a job that requires me to use a wide range of skills and software environments to do work.

Switching between projects means switching between mindsets, skill sets, files, and applications. Often I work on projects so sporadically that there's a lengthy delay (weeks or even months) between work sessions for a project. I might get an assignment for a PowerPoint presentation or user guide that won't actually take off for a week or a month. But when the time comes to dive in, I need what I'm learning now to be fresh in mind.

Task switching is cognitively expensive

Task switching productively is hard because it means forgetting what's currently fresh in-mind and recalling what isn't. If you're switching to a task on a project that has been long dormant, the switch becomes much harder. You must trace cold paths back to a months-old meeting where someone told to find file x in folder y and do z.

When I first started this job filled with task switching and ambiguity, I often felt frustrated and anxious. I could not find files (was that file shared on Box or SharePoint? Or did I save it on my hard drive?). I couldn't remember what I did last in a coding project and where I left off. What was the next step? What was the next problem to solve?  Sometimes it took me half an hour or more to try to reconstruct the project mentally and find all the resources I needed. There was no company-wide or team-wide effort to collect and consolidate and curate to make this easier.

And then I realized, I could do that for myself. What I needed was one place to collect links to files and folders, notes of instruction and feedback, my own self-notes about what I had done and what was left to do. Then, when the time came to work on a project, I didn't have to waste mental space and effort back-figuring.

I needed a way to quickly ask my past self the questions that I didn't immediately know the answers to.

Use OneNote to minimize the costs of task switching

I decided to try doing this be creating a task/project management notebook in OneNote.

Now, it's been 3+ years since I started gathering and curating in OneNote and I have done things work-wise that never would have been possible without this little raise in my platform. I always start each work session with a little boost that I didn't have before. I don't have to wonder about trivial but critical work-stopping things (where is the file I need to edit?).

I have a General notes section in OneNote and then a separate section or section group for each work area.

I don't spend too much time structuring the information because I've learned the power of searchability ... OneNote allows you to search across pages, sections, even across notebooks. I rarely navigate to find a thing. I type a keyword into search and I have the page I'm looking for in minutes.

Some pages are really really long ... especially when I'm keeping track of code examples and snippets or resources to learn more about a particular syntax, structure, or technique.

Some pages are super short. With only one sentence, link, or screenshot.

I've learned it's always better to stick the info in there somehow and somewhere. If I never need it again, it does no harm. But if I do need it, I always go to my OneNote first.

It's like an extended space for my memory, that relieves the burden on my mind of trying to keep everything. It frees me and lightens the burden of task switching, that undeniably continues to be expensive for me as it does for everyone.

How can you impose structure to improve your experience of working and get more done from home?

It's a question worth considering.

These days it seems like everyone's talking about telling stories to engage audiences

But what about storymaking to benefit for your own life and work?

As knowledge workers, we're often aiming stories "out there" toward others. But we also need stories ... we need stories aimed "in here" toward our own hearts and minds. Why? Because story is how our unconscious mind reveals hidden wisdom that our conscious minds need to know.

Great stories reveal hidden truths

In the book Stealing Fire from the Gods, James Bonnet talks about how stories become great when they reveal small bits of hidden truths. These truths are things you know unconsciously but not consciously. Becoming aware of these truths will allow you to transform your life, to grow and change, to get where you're supposed to go, to meet and fulfill your destiny.

This may seem like grand flowery language. Not everyone believes in a destiny per se. But everyone is searching for meaning in their life.

Meaning buoys you over stormy seas

In Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl talks about how finding meaning allowed him to survive the worst of circumstances, imprisonment in a concentration camp. Despite suffering illness without care, starvation, freezing cold, and cruelty to himself and those he loved, he managed to continue even when he had no sense if or when the suffering might end other than in death. He was able to continue on because he found meaning in his living.

“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.” — Viktor E. Frankl

So how do you do this? How do you speak the language of story and become conscious of your own unconscious wisdom?

You become a self storymaker, where you are the hero of the storied journey.

This is true for every storymaker — the stories we make feature some aspect of ourselves. For how could it be otherwise? We have only ourselves, our own psyches, through which to understand the world.

See your life as a hero's journey

You can organize your story using the stages of the Hero's Journey popularized by the late myth researcher, Joseph Campbell, like this:

• Your story of transformation begins in an ordinary world ... your world of comfort and reliability. You feel safe and unchallenged here, even if it's because you've grown complacent. We build fences and put up walls to be secure only to realize we have imprisoned ourselves in a place where we can no longer grow.
• Seemingly out of nowhere, a call to adventure challenges you to leave the comfort and security. This is actually a challenge to leave the well-lit world of consciousness to explore the murky, unlit depths of the unconscious, to see what you can learn there.
• You likely refuse that call. Who wouldn't? Why would you leave your version of a palace that is safe and secure to journey God knows where and become vulnerable to unknown dangers and perhaps even death? But the longer you refuse, the more that goes wrong. Your efforts to accomplish and actualize and achieve only cause everything to fall apart, more and more.
• Finally, you realize you must leave or nothing you value will be left. You must accept the call. And so you do.
• Meeting the mentor. Once you accept the call, things change. You encounter others critical to finding your way. You need wisdom that you don't yet have. You're journeying into the unknown ... unknown to the ego/hero but not to all. Others have been there and can advise you by sharing their wisdom.
• Crossing the threshold. Armed with new wisdom from your mentor, and a new understanding of the importance of the journey ahead, you cross the boundary into the unknown.
• Tests, enemies, allies. Other critical figures start to pop up. Some will be your allies, others, your enemies. It's all about the goal of the adventure now. It's all about the grail you must find and bring home. Some will give you directions. Some will join you and help. Some will block your way, threaten you, and compete with you for the grail ... they want it for themselves ...or they want you not to have it. Your getting it will mean their downfall, the failure of their objective.
• The approach. After passing a series of tests, each growing in intensity, you find yourself nearing the inner chasm, the greatest, most dangerous test. You have never been more afraid, but at the same time, you have never been more certain that you must follow through. You cannot turn back.
• The abyss, death, and rebirth. Here you face your greatest challenge and fear. In so doing, you must die to your old self and be reborn anew.
• Reward — seizing the sword. Surviving the abyss, you get what you came for. The great reward that you need to progress in your life.
• The road back. With new knowledge and/or a holy grail, you turn back toward home, that ordinary world you were reluctant to leave. Now, you may be reluctant to return, but you must. There may be some struggle with this decision.
• The resurrection. The journey home is not free of peril. The opposition mounts one final attack, the greatest you will face. It is here you give all you've got (with the benefit of the new knowledge/power you acquired), and vanquish dark forces once and for all.
• Return home with the elixir. All hail the conquering hero!

I used to believe that I was a "creative." Beneath that belief were a lot of assumptions. One such assumption was that certain people have an inherent quality called "creativity" that others lack. I believed I was one of the gifted few. Believing this did not help me. In fact, it actually harmed my ability to write, which is usually where I employ my creativity.

This is becoming more and more clear to me as I work to dismantle the expertise around writing that I've built up over decades via a degree in English, master's work in technical writing, and all the things I've learned on the job.

Recently, I started doing meditations aimed at expanding creativity. This is the creativity pack in the Headspace meditation app. I like it so much that after I finish the pack I plan to go back to the beginning and do it all over again.

The course focuses on a visualization exercise. The guide (a man with a smooth deep voice and British accent) has you start with a few deep slow breaths and a relaxed gaze. Then you close your eyes. Then you scan your body. Then you focus on your breath. And then you visualize a bright warm spark of light in the middle of your chest that slowly grows. It spreads to fill your whole body and then beyond, to the room, the house, the neighborhood, town, state, country, continent, and world.

When I visualize this I find that it's easy to imagine the light filling my body and the room I'm in. And then it gets a little more abstract the farther I get from my current position. When I imagine the light filling my neighborhood, I tend to think of it spreading to places I walk my dog, then I imagine it rolling out like a wave into places in the city that are prominent or that I frequent, then to other places in the state that I've visited ... where friends and family live, and then to more and more distant places that I've seen pictures of, or what the land mass looks like on a map.

When you cannot imagine the light expanding anymore, you let your mind freely rest in that expanded state of awareness. It took me a while to get used to the rhythm and dance of visualization. At first I was too heavy handed and effortful ... trying to force my mind to do this right and getting frustrated when I wasn't satisfied with the results. The technique is one of watching something slowly unfold that you are not causing or controlling.

The belief that I can cause and control creativity s a mistaken one that I often harbor. It goes back to that belief that I was a particular kind of person .. a "creative." The truth is that creativity is a quality of mind that every single human has ... at least all those who have a mind. It is always there ... the mind can always tap into that property and using this exercise is one way to do that.

The meditation guide recommends "flashing" on the exercise multiple times throughout the day. It solidifies the channel to your creativity ... builds it up ... makes it a familiar path.

While I practice flashing on the spark visualization, I've realized that I have "flashed" on other more harmful visualizations unintentionally.

For instance, I flash on this concept of causing and controlling ... of all the things that could go wrong and how I must stop them. This taps into other qualities of mind than creative expansion. It narrows my mind. And when my mind narrows, I get anxious, wooden, decidedly uncreative. My ego loves this quality of mind. It pushes me to visualize doing the perfect thing to get the perfect result. I mentally recite the litany of ... first I have to do this and then I have to do that and I'd better do it this way so bad things don't happen. It's a kind of mental OCD rosary.

I have been doing this continually .. flashing on this visualization multiple times a day for years and years, not realizing that it was an exercise I could choose, so unaware of all the possibilities of mind beyond those thoughts that I believed were just reality.

But now I'm aware that causing and controlling are a visualization exercise, just like the creativity visualization exercise. I can become aware of what my mind is playing. Mind sweet mind and all it's games!

Now I meditate every day. Sometimes multiple times a day. It has become a habit because I've seen how living a day is different and better when I spend a few moments in the morning becoming aware of my mind ... how it darts about, how I can focus it with gentleness, and how I can free it to expand creativity. It is liberating to realize thinking is just thinking ... not something you have to believe or own. The mind thinks ... that's just what it does.

You can get the benefits of the creativity meditation if you "flash" on it throughout the day. Just for 30 seconds, you re-visualize the spark of light expanding to encompass the universe and then rest in the expanded awareness.

You cannot banish thoughts intentionally. That's the ego butting in again ... OK, you're doing the thinking wrong again, you'd better put the kibash on that mind of yours! No. Won't work. Tell yourself don't think of elephants and suddenly elephants are all you can think of.

Instead, become aware of what that scarifying ego is doing. Become aware of the meditations you're doing without any intent. Label them .. there's my perfectionism. There's my ego. There's that thought again. I see what's happening.

When you're flashing on meditations that put you in a small scared frame of mind, become aware of the framing in a gentle accepting way ... just like you would accept a small scared child, with understanding and nurturing. I see you. I see you.

When I make a mistake, what other people think of me .... all the ways it could (and likely will) harm my reputation and my future

• What bills did I forget or miss paying and how they will likely make us homeless eventually
• How the results of all this effort I'm putting in will not be valuable to anyone and may make me look foolish
• How my dog's nails are getting too long and I can't bring myself to trim them
• How my illness is disabling me and because there's no diagnosis for it no doctor will likely ever be able to help me and it will eventually result in my death
• How I can't give my daughter back her health and her previous state of activity and joy
• All that I'm not getting done that I've wanted to do ... house cleaning and organizing, novels I've not written.

And then flash on more intentional meditations. A bright warm spark of light in the middle of your chest, growing brighter and brighter, spreading until it bathes you and your world and your mind expands until it holds the largest awareness fathomable.

Work in that mindset and see how you feel and how much better the experience and artifacts of your work processes become.

I am 50 and I have a college degree along with some graduate classes and some specialized training. Besides education and training, I've picked up knowledge by doing things on the sites of several jobs I've worked over the past 30 odd years. I know things.

Knowing things can be beneficial. That seems obvious. Nearly every rite of passage in this life is about knowing the right things to make it to the next level. That's what progressing through infancy and childhood is about. That's what progressing through school is about.

But while knowing can help in many ways, it can also harm.

When you learn your brain shortens a path and solidifies it. It makes a shortcut. It literally cuts off certain pathways so that the next time you encounter that situation (the learned scenario), it can navigate faster. Instead of exploring possibility, it defaults to the learned pathway. It's an evolutionary adaptation. You have the advantage of moving faster and using less energy to process information.

Imagine living in earlier human times when existence was all about basic survival needs (getting water, getting food, avoiding danger). Once you discovered the path to a particular water hole by wandering, the next time you could cut out the caloric expense of trial and error and beat a direct path. And once you knew how to get there, you could acquire even more advantages to help me survive. You might learn that predators tended to be at that waterhole at certain times of day, so you could avoid going there at those times. You might learn that waterhole tended to dry up in late summer so there would be no point using energy to go there in August ... You might even have to pull up stakes and move closer to a more bountiful source of water.

These are all good things to know for continued survival. But knowing those things comes with sacrifice.

In order to learn, you cut off the opportunities of other possible paths. You solidify your mental model of the world so that it is less pliable. You make acquiring other knowledge that lay in finer grains of reality less likely. Once you've learned to see the forest, its difficult to see details of trees that conflict with your concept of "forest."

This is especially true for creative work like writing and coding. I've received praise for pieces I've written. This led me to believe I knew how to write. I had writing expertise. I would dream up amazingly beautiful written pieces that I thought I should be able to produce being that I could conceive of them and that I also knew how to write.

For years, I produced very little creative writing of any quality, much less anything of great beauty. This is because I spent more time thinking about what I knew rather than actually writing. I fenced my creativity in with knowledge and expertise. I knew rather than practicing. When you know you are less open to learnings that may contradict what you know.

I've learned recently that it takes a great amount of bravery to become a beginner again. to let yourself feel vulnerable and naïve after you've spent a life time on learning and becoming an expert. But that is what it takes to do important and fulfilling work. To get past the resistance of the fences you've built. To take a different path to the water hole to see what you might discover even at great expense to your survival.

Writing is more about exploring paths to the water hole over and over again. It's not about finding one short way to get there.

Another way to look at it: writing is like continually being born, over and over again. While that may sound difficult ... being born is likely the hardest thing we do in this life, I much prefer it to the alternative: shutting down more and more until possibility is essentially dead.

"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan.

In Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein, discusses the dilemma of the expert, a role that has been described jokingly as "someone who knows more and more about less and less." Just like knowledge, expertise is good for many things. But bad for others. When facing a problem, an expert is likely to use a technique called "narrow search" to solve it. Because experts have deep knowledge in a narrow area, they search that narrow area to find solutions. Because of this they're very limited in the analogies they can form. And forming analogies is critical to getting new insights on difficult problems. Newbies outside the expert's field can find unique solutions to problems within that field at higher rates than the experts within the field. They haven't cut off all the possibility with expertise. They can see other routes to the water hole that experts dismissed long ago.

Can you become a novice in your specialty again? That's an important question. Can you enjoy the benefits of both broad mind and deep, narrow knowledge?

Thinking is an exercise. How you do it determines everything about your life. Your mind is the most important tool you will ever own. But so often we are unaware of how we think, how we exercise our minds, how we wield this tool. And then we wonder why we're not getting where we want to go.

When we think of exercise, we usually think of physical movement. We exercise our bodies to change our muscles. We lift weights to strengthen muscles and sometimes to grow muscle mass. We run to strengthen our heart and lungs. We stretch to make our muscles more flexible.

We add regimens of physical exercise to our routine to deliberately use our muscles in ways that will improve our ability to move and function in the world. For knowledge workers, modern life does not require enough muscle use to keep us strong and limber. We sit at desks to work, reach for foods on shelves, drive cars to get where we need to go. We're not swinging from trees, traversing savannas, running from predators. If we want to stay strong, we have to re-create physical scenarios deliberately. But what about our minds?

Strengthen the mind like you do the body

Like our bodies, our minds don't receive the same kinds of stimulation as they used to. We demand of them periods of intense focus and quick switching between very different tasks. We stress them out and give them little opportunity to dispose of the extra energy. No wonder we suffer from anxiety and depression at such high, never-seen-before rates.

But what if we consider ways to develop the mind as we consider the ways to develop our muscles?

The mind is not a muscle. But it can be strengthened, built, and made more flexible in ways that are similar to muscle exercise ... consistent, periodic practice of certain ways of thinking and being aware.

You've been building this mind your entire life

Mind exercise happens whether you realize it or not. You have been exercising your mind your entire life. The ways that your mind works now are the result of all the ways you've used it in all the moments, days, and decades you've been alive.

If your mind is not working quite the way you would like, you can change it. Sometimes people are unhappy with the way they think because they have mental illness that would benefit from therapy and medication. I am not a therapist and don't pretend to be one. I'm only sharing my own experiences. Please consult with a therapist on mental health issues ... there are some wonderful therapists out there ... even some services online. You can do therapy and mind exercising at the same time.

How is your mind working now?

The first step in mind exercise is to become aware of how your mind is currently working. This is difficult because we often live believing that we are our mind. We believe our thoughts to be reality. It's hard to get a wedge in there between "I" and "mind".

I use mindfulness meditation and prayer as that wedge. I've read a lot of books on meditation. The most inspriing for me were Michael Singer's The Untethered Soul, Pema Chodron's How to Meditate, and Robert Wright's Why Buddhism is True. I had to learn that the inspiration residue of reading those was not enough to make the change I sought. It was not enough to just learn and understand the concept of meditation. Similarly, it's not enough to just understand the concept of weight lifting, you have to actually lift the weights. You have to actually practice meditation to get some space between your mind and you—to become aware.

At first, I tried meditating by sitting at the kitchen table and closing my eyes. Time slowed down so that seconds seemed to take minutes and minutes seemed to take hours. I constantly wondered if I was getting close to 5 minutes (like I was suddenly a kid in the back seat on a long family road trip ... "Are we there yet? How about now?"). It felt so painstaking and uncertain that I beat myself up a little and told myself I wasn't good at. I feared I was doing it wrong. The punishment and fear made it harder and harder to make myself sit still and meditate.

I stopped doing it for a long time. I still thought about it and felt self-congratulatory for thinking about it. I had the experience of trying to meditate. I'd read about it. I understood the concept of meditating. That was better than your average unaware bear out there. Right?

No.

Thinking about meditating is not meditating

Thinking about meditation is just thinking and will not exercise your mind meditatively. To change your mind, you need to do the exercise.

Some time later, after reading a story about doctor Bill Rawls who had Lyme disease and recovered partially just through meditation, I renewed my quest to build a meditation habit. I signed up for the Calm guided meditation app thinking it would remove some of the barriers I'd built up because all I had to do was sit and follow directions. I wouldn't be constantly wondering ... am I doing this right? Am I there yet? Using that app ... doing the daily Calm guided meditation made it much easier for me to get in the habit.

Now I'm meditating multiple times a day and I've been doing this for close to four years. My mind has changed greatly. But I had to meditate daily for a while before I could consciously feel a benefit. You might not get a noticeable reward for awhile. You have to do the habit before you get the reward.

I'm not healthy. Something happened about 8 years ago that profoundly changed the way my body works. No one else would know this by looking at me. If you saw me outside walking around, you would assume I am just like most other people outside walking around. You'd assume that my experience and abilities are pretty much the same as yours (assuming that you are healthy).

You know what they say about assuming.

When I got sick, my nervous system changed. It does not work the way I'd come to depend on it working. The biggest change? The well of strength and energy I used to have is gone.

I used to have more than enough energy to work full time, care for my daughter, workout, walk, do tae kwon do, drive hours to go to volleyball games and clarinet lessons. I could get up at 5:30 a.m. to go to the gym, then shower and work a 10-hour day, cook dinner, and then practice volleyball serves with my daughter, until watching a little TV or reading before bed. I would go to bed and sleep soundly until I woke up at 5:00, hit the snooze a couple times. You get the picture.

I wish I could have my normal back

This was normal, not remarkable. I did not know there was any other way of being in life.

And then I got sick and never got back to that normal. I look at those days now and realize they were remarkable.

Now I have maybe 30% of the energy and strength I used to have. I always feel fatigued and weak. I sleep fitfully if at all. I feel numb and tingly. I can't drive well so I work from home and that's about all I can manage. Some days I can walk around the block ... other days I'm luck if I can walk down to the end of the street.

This new normal has been a big change for me.

Doctors don't help

At first I went to doctors believing they would know just what to do to help. They didn't, at least not so far. I have no diagnosis and no plan for treatment except a repeated recommendation to take antidepressants even though I'm not depressed. I think that's the default treatment if you're a woman and experiencing unpleasantness in your body. Maybe doctors think if your mood is better you'll be less concerned about the unpleasantness.

I went to lots of doctors and got more and more frustrated ... always seeking the perfect solution that would return me to normal.

And then I realized how much of my very limited energy I was spending on something that wasn't panning out. How much time from my life that might be shorter because of this illness I was spending sitting in doctor's waiting rooms and getting angry and frustrated because I wasn't being listened to. How much time I was in front of doctor's blank blinking faces that didn't understand how really sick I felt because it wasn't apparent from looking at me, because their tests didn't show anything abnormal.

Taking charge of my time

Then I realized I could choose to spend my time differently. I realized I could turn my focus toward feeling better by doing things I could control.

There are always things you can do. Even if you can't shake the new physical strangeness, you can chip away at the suffering. As the Buddhists say, pain is a given, but suffering is optional.

Here are some ways I've found that you can feel a little better:

You can meditate to become more aware of how your mind is working. Just being aware of feelings of stress and pain and frustration can help them dissipate.

You can research and try supplements that relieve some symptoms.

You can try other kinds of healing. One of the most beneficial modes of healing for me has been acupuncture.

It took me a long time to try acupuncture because my vague notion of it was that people would stick needles in my body ... kind of like a bunch of vaccinations all at the same time. Also, individual practitioners can be expensive ... hundreds of dollars a session.

A cheaper way to get stabbed with needles

Then I found out about community acupuncture. Community acupuncture clinics offer acupuncture on a sliding fee scale. The clinic I go to, Salt Lake Qi, allows you to pay what you want between $20 and $45 (Note: as of 6/2020, this scale has changed to adapt to COVID-19 distancing requirements, but is still more affordable than most private practitioners).

You sit in a recliner in a room among other people also in recliners. You tell the acupuncturist what symptoms you're having and/or what you want to work on. She listens carefully and feels the pulse in your wrist. Maybe she'll ask to see your tongue. Based on that information, she decides what points on your body to target.

The points usually pierced on my body are in my hands, feet, and forehead. But I've also had points at the base of my skull, in my shoulders, and in my belly.

Then she grabs a package of new, hair-thin flexible needles and goes to work.

There is a little pinch when each needle goes in. It is a needle piercing your skin after all, there's no getting around that. But then, after the needles are in for awhile (around 10 minutes for me), this delicious relaxing feeling pours over you. Your mood lifts and you doze in the dimly lit room, soft soothing music playing in the background. Sometimes I'll even listen to a meditation through headphones while I doze.

Adjusting the body's energy flow

The acupuncturist talks about moving the energy around in my body. I can feel this happening. Sometimes my heart beats faster. Sometimes it slows. Sometimes there's a faint buzzing sensation. I lie there, relax, and observe.

You wait at least 40 minutes ... or longer if you like, and then sit up when you're ready to be done. Catch the eye of the acupuncturist as she rolls by on her rolling stool and she comes to remove the needles.

I do this once a week most weeks, and pay $31 per session (this cost has changed as of 6/2020). It helps my body approach homeostasis where nothing else has. I often feel a little more tired that day and a day or two afterward, and then I start to feel a little better ... clearer vision, more at home in my own body.

When I recommend acupuncture to others, they often say, "Needles? I can't stand needles!"

I can relate to that. The idea of needles piercing your flesh can bring on a fear response. We all want to avoid pain. But what if you're already in pain? What if your body is not giving you strength and energy pain-free? Acupuncture has taught me that avoiding pain can prolong it. And sometimes relief from pain can come from unlikely places — needles in your hands, feet, and forehead, for instance.

In American culture we are so focused on western (allopathic) medicine that we're often blind to other sources of healing. Other cultures have healed bodies in other ways for thousands of years. And yes, those methods have been studied and proven. Our doctors cannot fix as much as the healthy believe they can.

If you're sick and searching, it's worth it to try acupuncture. Don't be afraid of the pain. It's so small for the benefits you get. Being afraid of pain might prolong your suffering.

Have you ever set up a blog?

I did over the past several months. Let me tell you, there are a lot of decisions to make. When I make decisions about a beloved project (like my first blog), my perfectionism starts tweaking. I want to make every decision perfectly. I want to choose the best of all available options. If I hit a road block I start questioning every previous step..

Make the first decision

Here's an example. One of the first decisions you have to make about your blog, after deciding on your niche and choosing a domain, is, where you will host the site for the blog.

Initially I chose to host my blog on 10Web using WordPress as a platform. I did this because I found a deal on AppSumo to host three web sites and get all their building tools and a dashboard where I could check on the health of and traffic to those sites.  The cost was about the same as typical hosting with a lot more features. Sign me up!

It took me only a few minutes to create the site and install WordPress. I messed around with the native themes 10Web offers and decided against using them. Then I found a theme I liked (after much searching and narrowing down). There are a gazillion themes out there. If you're a devoted optimizer (read: perfectionist) then you could get lost for months just choosing a theme. But I narrowed it down and chose a theme that had the built-in features I wanted and also a snazzy design (I didn't want to have to do too much customizing ... I wanted it as turn-key as possible so I could start writing content).

Wrong decision? Beat yourself up

I was working down my checklist of steps, and after hosting I found that I also needed to set up an email address with my domain name in it (@mydomain.com rather than @gmail.com). I Googled and read the first results and found that most web hosting providers also provide an email for your domain. Unlike most other hosting providers, 10Web does not provide an email. When I discovered this, I immediately began questioning my decision. Should I get hosting from somewhere else? Did I choose the wrong web hosting service? Darn you ... you didn't do your due diligence. You should have thought through this more. Now you're stuck!

I like to beat myself up at every opportunity.

But then I realized what I was doing. I was beating myself up for not optimizing perfectly. I didn't choose the perfect right option. And then I realized, there is NO perfect right option.

If I spend all my time optimizing I will never get my blog built.

Take the next step forward, not backward

The most important thing is to take the next step, and not go backwards (second-guess the decisions I already made). And the next thing I needed to do was to set up an email address. I was just where I should be. I was on my path. I had discovered new and valuable information, which is, 10Web will not provide a domain-specific email. Now I can move on and figure out how to get that done.

Moving on, I found MailGun which provides a free domain-specific account. Done.

How much time do I spend trying to optimize. How often do I beat myself up for not optimizing perfectly? This is a losing proposition, searching for the perfect right option. There is no option that's perfectly right. The time wasted on that search is much better spent on doing the actual writing and editing work of blogging.

My new motto: Get going fast, however imperfectly. After you get going, then find ways to get better and faster in action. Banish perfectionism whenever it rears its ugly head.

There is no perfect right option

There is no perfect right option. Choose a path. Take the first step from where you stand. Wherever you end up, take the first step from there. Remember where you're headed and keep taking steps until you find your own way there. You're the only one who can make your journey. No one can make it for you. There is no perfect path ... whatever path gets you there is the right one.

Keep going. I'm backing you up and cheering you on!

Part 2: I drafted this article and had not yet posted it when my blog building adventure took another unexpected turn. Hackers gained access to my WordPress site and installed phishing software targeting Microsoft. I got a take-down notice from Microsoft's vendor telling me I must remove the malicious files. When I ran my WordPress security plug-in I found hundreds of bad files! And there was no easy way to remove them all.

I decided to scrap that site. I also decided to abandon WordPress altogether. WordPress is built with a language called PHP which I don't understand well. The code-base is huge and complex. It's easy to hide small malicious scripts among the good code where novice bloggers like me will not detect them.

A quick Google search for WordPress alternatives brought up Ghost, an open-source platform dedicated to making publishing content much easier than WordPress does. I worked through some tutorials. Then I followed instructions and installed Ghost on a DigitalOcean droplet. It was much easier than setting up a WordPress site. So far so good.

When you work at home, who sees you sitting at your desk typing and clicking? Your dog?

If you're a knowledge worker like me (I'm a technical writer), most of your work is mental. The stuff going on in your head is more important than the clicks and drags and key strokes. The most important work you're doing cannot be seen. So it shouldn't matter whether the outward signs of you working are seen. But it does.

People form the strongest bonds with people they see. It's in the very words we use to describe the quality of relationships. A strong friendship is a "close" friendship. A tenuous chance is a "remote" chance.

What does this mean for those of us who work from home?

Remote workers need to work harder

We need to work harder to form close bonds with our coworkers. We need to make sure we're seen and heard, despite being miles away from those with whom we share a common mission during the working portion of our day.

If you're self-employed, this is even more important. You may have no established coworkers. You may have no "boss" in the traditional sense. But you have others on whom your livelihood depends ... clients, maybe or customers. And it's critical that you get seen and heard by them no matter how much distance separates you.

Performing is key

We remote workers need to get better at performing work so that we get seen and heard.

Just like the actor who must raise her voice loudly enough to reach people in the nosebleed seats, you must project across the distance that separates you from your team, clients, and customers. The distance for us is much greater than the back of a theater. It's miles, states, or even countries away.

So how do you project across distances this great? Technology! Remote work is becoming more and more common because technology that allows us to communicate across distance is improving. So use that technology.

Seize any chance to speak up in online meetings.

I used to be hesitant to "bother" people or "interrupt" other people in meetings so I would wait until I felt I had something truly important or smart-sounding to say. But I learned I am a poor judge of my own utterances. And most others spoke much more than I did, offering ideas that were nowhere near fully formed. Noticing that, I decided to jump in more often. You can too. And turn your video on. If more than a couple people are attending online, be sure to introduce yourself before you speak. "This is Bob, and I want to say ... "

If you're invited to the meeting (unless it's listen only), they want to hear your thoughts and questions. Speak up!

Make your own chances to speak up

Use video call technology to talk to your coworkers just like you would if you walked over to their desk in the office. Find reasons to do a video call at least a few times a week.

Send friendly words daily

Use chatting apps .... I like Slack a lot ... to converse with coworkers a few times a day. It doesn't always have to be strictly work-related. Think about chatter in the office ... people talk about their families, about sports and movies. They tell jokes.

This is the kind of talk that forms tight bonds ... not the more formal "professional" speak.

Rewrite your communicating story

For those of us who are introverts, it can be difficult to overcome the tendency to do what's most comfortable — keeping to yourself. We often consider introversion to be our authentic self. And reaching out to others can feel inauthentic.

But this is just a story we tell ourselves. What we consider to be our "authentic self" is based on current and prior roles  ... not some kernel of self essence. If we hold ourselves to stay true to that story we don't evolve.

We need to tell ourselves new stories. Try on a story about being outgoing. Relentlessly positive. Observent of the strengths of others. Friendly.

Yes, trying on new stories can be uncomfortable. But for remote workers, being seen and heard is more important than being comfortable.

Honor your own value to your team ... what you offer is greater than proximity. And you can overcome the challenges of distance by using these tips to get seen and heard.

Have you every felt so torn between tasks that need to be done that you don't start any?

I've felt this way many times. And it has gotten worse since I started working from home. Maybe the proximity of my coworkers had a tempering influence on my neuroses.

This torn-between-demands experience happens when many urgencies stare me down all at the same time. Sometimes it's clear to me which thing is most important to do but often it isn't. When that isn't clear, even if I commit to working on one of the things, then the little voice in my mind nags me about the other things that aren't getting done and how I'll have to disappoint the people waiting for those things and how bad that will feel. When I get like this, even if I force myself to knuckle down and work on something, the experience of doing that work feels very negative.

The dumb wrong thing vs. the perfect right thing

I imagine how dumb people will think I am for working on the dumb wrong thing when I could have saved the world by working on the perfect right thing.

Recently, after a couple days of making myself sick and not getting much done, I realized that in those two days, I could have finished all the things if I had just picked one, done it, and then picked another, and done that, and so on. I would have felt much better at the end of those two days and the people waiting would not be waiting anymore. What kept me from doing that? My mindset.

It's perfectionism, plain and simple, these mental loops that bug a doer, whispering that what she's doing is not the perfect right thing. This thinking will slow you and eventually stop you cold.

Sometimes you close your eyes and point

The truth is, perfectionism lies. There is no perfect right thing. Sometimes there is not even any clear best thing among all the things awaiting your attention. Sometimes, you just have to close your eyes and point. Wherever your pointer aims on your list or kanban board or bullet journal page of to-dos, do that thing.  Then do another. And another. All the things will get done much faster than if you sit and deliberate and worry and beat yourself up.

Here's another perfectionism-feeding factor: what if all the things are BIG complicated things that cannot be done in a day or even two. Like what if multiple articles need to be written, and edited, revised and proofed. Like what if a multi-page website needs to be designed and built?

In such cased, here's what I do ... I visualize what will make the most difference to my goals and my perception of whether I'm achieving them? Or, I imagine what will bother me the most if it is not done? Avoiding that imagined pain is motivating. Worst-case, if I still don't have any clarity, I close my eyes and point. Wherever my pointer aims, I take that big complicated task and break it down. What's the first tiny thing I need to do to make progress? Set a timer? Put my headphones on? Open VS Code? I do it. And then I do the next tiny thing. I may not finish the project by the end of the day, but I make more progress and feel much better having made progress than I would have chasing my looping worries around and around my mind.

The magic of action

First actions are magic. They sneak you past your perfectionism and put your feet firmly on a path toward your goal.

After your first action, the next action becomes the first and so on. Every project is a series of first actions and next first actions.

I've found the first action that makes the most difference for my focus and productivity and even creativity is not opening a new document or starting a timer or putting my head phones on ... It's jotting down what I just did (whatever that may be ... staring off into space, answering a slack message, whatever), and then writing "now I'm ready to switch to writing a user article about this product." This is called interstitial journaling and I got the idea from this article: https://betterhumans.coach.me/replace-your-to-do-list-with-interstitial-journaling-to-increase-productivity-4e43109d15ef.

Write what you did, then what you'll do next

Interstitial means in-between. It's that in-between focus periods, those transitions where you stop one thing and inertia can prevent you from switching gears to move onto the next thing. It helps me (in an almost magical way) to write through that switch. I write the thing I'm going to work on and then the first action I'm going to take and then I do it ... no worrying about the perfect right thing, no other decisions to be made, just do do do.

An example from just before I started working on this: "10/9/19, 1:02 p.m. —- OK, I finished the user testing meeting and now I'm ready to edit an article. First action: open an article in Notion. Then start the timer."

And then I did it. I grabbed 28 minutes of time sandwiched between two meetings that otherwise would have been frittered away.

If you keep using interstitial journaling to take breaks and get back on the next first action, you'll finish that project and the momentum from that will carry you into the next and the next.

You'll finish your five projects ... maybe not as fast or perfectly as perfectionism dictates, but if perfectionism had its way, you would still be sitting there worrying about how many things needed to be done and which is the perfect right thing to do next.

Don't be the hater criticizing the imperfection of the person who did something. Be the doer, the learner, the imperfectionist taking action and making mistakes to get to good enough and leaving all the perfectionists in the dust.

Beginning again

I've been writing and editing professionally since I was 19, copyediting the Daily Utah Chronicle student newspaper in college. I went on from that to write and edit for weekly newspapers, newsletters, a quarterly magazine, and then onto scientific and medical writing and software guides.

Most of my published writing came before the advent of social media. I've written very little online. Except for the occasional comment on FaceBook or answer on Quora, you won't find my words on social media platforms. I want to change that.

But I'm finding there are differences in writing for online platforms rather than print. There are new things to learn. It feels like starting over as a writer. I'm a beginner again.

I've been a beginner over and over in my life. It happened when I started to learn tae kwon do. And again when I started meditating.

When I was training for tae kwon do belt tests and tournaments, the master told us the most important thing we could was to be really good beginners.

Beginner's mind

Similarly, when I began meditating, I read about something called "beginner's mind," where you have no preconceived notions. You haven't narrowed or specialized yet. You are at the very beginning of your journey, open to accepting whatever learning comes your way. Indeed, in meditation, beginner's mind is something to cultivate even after you have experience. It is a way of being in the world.

So here I am, beginning again. Seeking my beginner's mind for writing in this new world of social media.

When I wrote for weekly newspapers and a quarterly magazine, I got my ideas from my editor, reader tips, or my beat (a weekly round of checking in with sources, attending meetings, responding to events on the police scanner).

I wrote based on the writing process I'd learned in college. As a technical and medical writer, I get my ideas and source material from subject matter experts ... software developers, clinicians, scientists, engineers who have deep knowledge but not necessarily the audience viewpoint.

That's how I've used writing to earn a living for decades, and how I'll keep earning my living while I experiment with writing on these new platforms.

A place to publish

Luckily there are many, many other writers who share their knowledge.  And there's so much to learn. Writing online is not just about writing, it's also about publishing. To publish online, you have to know a bit about the technical side of things. You have to have a place to publish, like a social media platform or a blog.

I decided to start with a blog and propagate. Why?

Because I read a book about content marketing that said a blog is critical. It becomes the base of all your content marketing efforts.

A blog seemed doable. I know html and css. I have set up web sites before. I thought, I can set up a blog! I started working on it.  I decided to use WordPress to save time. I read a couple articles online, purchased a domain name, purchased hosting, installed WordPress, fiddled with the default theme and then decided to purchase and install a professional theme. None of it was as easy as I thought.

I got frustrated repeatedly. And then I took a break, looked for my beginner's mind, and opened up to what there was to learn.

That wasn't the end of the frustrations, of course. Before I got anything published on my blog site, hackers got into it and installed phishing software targeting Microsoft. I got a takedown notice. I decided to nuke the site and abandon Wordpress in favor of Ghost, which is my current platform.

Building the site took weeks of half hours or hours of time and then rebuilding it took more weeks. I had to remind myself of the path I was on and what next thing I had to do.

What to write

The next thing ... get writing.  But about what?

I started keeping an experience journal. I write 15 minutes at the end of the day about the mundane, interesting, weird, normal, whatever happened during the day and what I thought, how I felt, what I decided.

Then I set up a content calendar using Notion. I mined my experience journal and added article ideas in my content calendar.

Then I set up a writing process in Process Street.

Just before I start writing, I select an article topic. Then I follow the process in Process Street.

I often have only an hour a day to write, so it's important that I don't use any of that time for anything but writing. I need to know my topic beforehand. I can't waste time trying to decide or remember what to do next.

The results are not perfect. I want them to be better. But I am just a beginner and I am learning to be patient with that. And to keep doing the next thing while staying open to the learning that comes my way.

Imaginative people tend to gravitate toward creative work. Makes sense right? Imagination and creativity seem to go hand in hand. But what if I were to tell you that imagination can stop your creativity in its tracks? That's what happened to me.

Prolific imagination = prolific problems

I have a prolific imagination. In fact, I imagine working much more than I actually work. This causes problems for me.

Throughout the day, even when I'm not working, I think about the work awaiting me: the latest runtime error from a programming project, the article I was too tired to edit yesterday, the bills due before the 15th. I imagine other people annoyed, impatiently waiting for me to do those things. This storm of demands gathers in my mind.

Future, imagined work is not real

The more I think about them, the more difficult and unpleasant the tasks seem. These imaginings are little stories I tell myself. They're based on projection and speculation ... work to come, not yet done. They're not real.

The problem is, when it comes time to do those tasks, my imaginings can stop me — that is, if I believe them. For example, believing my mental stories of dishwashing has caused me to dread doing dishes.  I picture myself standing at the sink, feeling a little grossed out by the leavings on the dirty dishes, the bits of food floating in the murky dishwater, crusty cheese caked on a plate that won't scrub off. I picture being forced to stand there, subjected to those small revulsions while I would rather be doing other things (watching Bates Motel, reading October Country, playing with the dog, just about anything). I picture myself feeling tired and annoyed. I picture myself suffering through this for a long time.

Forcing yourself grows the dread

Who wouldn't avoid doing something that seemed that unpleasant? We are wired to avoid pain and approach pleasure. My mental stories cause the perception that dishwashing is painful. When I do eventually go wash the dishes, just by sheer force of will, the stories play in my head all the while I wash, reinforcing that perception of pain.

Dread forecasts that an experience will be painful and then fulfills its own forecast.

This habit of dreading work went on for me for a long long time. I dreaded doing it. But I also dreaded NOT doing it, because then it just sat there, waiting to be done.

Do the work for a few minutes — set a timer!

Then I read about a technique this woman used to get started cleaning her house amid overwhelm and inertia (http://www.flylady.net/). She set a timer for 15 minutes and told herself that she would work on one cleaning thing for 15 minutes. Then, if she hated doing the work and found it to hard and painful, she could stop.  So I decided to try that. Fifteen minutes sounded very short. You can do anything for 15 minutes no matter how distasteful it seems. I told myself, "I'll wash dishes as fast as I can just until this timer goes off."  Then I could could take a break and do something fun if I wanted to.

To my surprise, after 15 minutes, there were no dirty dishes left!

Timers teach truths

My mental stories were tricking me. I was not forced to stand there doing something unpleasant for a long time at all. The truths I learned from this were:

1. I can finish a sink full of dishes in 15 minutes or less almost every night, even without a dishwasher
2. Washing dishes is not inherently unpleasant.
3. I don't have to believe my mental stories.

Realizing that my mental stories often turn toward the horror genre and that I don't have to believe them has given me incredible power and freedom around my work. I have found that I don't need to tune into any particular mental channel in order to do a task. I don't need to feel good about doing it. I don't need to get a positive or realistic mental image even. I can decide to do a thing (like washing the dishes), aim myself at the process, and work through the steps.

You will be liberated when you stop believing your stories

Not only is this liberating for household chores, it's revolutionary for my creative work.

When I think about writing, my mental horror stories nearly always kick in. They tell me that my brain's not working as well as it has before, that it will be unpleasant to sit and write words, that the words will not be good, that my neck will hurt for sitting still at the desk, that my posture's too bad to sit at the desk for long ... you get the picture. But I don't have to believe any of that. I can aim myself at my writing process. And I can break that process down into the smallest steps needed to do the next thing to start.

Break it down ... waayyyyyy down!

You want a process much more refined than the usual all-encompassing phases like 1. Draft, 2. Revise, 3. Proof, 4. Publish. Those phases are made up of smaller steps, that are, in turn, also made up of smaller steps. You want to break down the steps until they're so small that they're ridiculously easy to do. Sit down at your desk. Pick up a pen. Open a file.

For example, here's the writing process I follow for blog articles today:

My process today

Open Notion (the app where I plan, outline, write, and organize my writing: https://www.notion.so/)

Select a topic from blog ideas in my blog content calendar (in Notion)

Set my Focus at Will timer for 20 minutes (https://www.focusatwill.com/app/music)

Start the timer and free write on my topic until the timer goes off

Stand up and walk around for 5 minutes

Sit back down and start the timer again — use my probing questions to tighten my draft until the timer goes off

Stand up and walk around for 5 minutes

Sit back down and start the timer a third time — rearrange and proof my draft until the timer goes off

In my content calendar, move my draft to the In Review stage

Check off "Write 1-hour blog" in Habitica

You'll notice there's no step for conjuring up or considering a mental horror story about writing. I just do the first thing. I commit to just 15 minutes. Anyone can do anything for 15 minutes.

You'd be surprised what you can accomplish in that time if you don't believe your mental horror stories.

Every solution in life creates new problems. I've found that to be particularly true about working from home.

I began working from home well before the advent of COVID-19 to solve the problem of commuting. Commuting became a problem for me because I have a chronic illness. Many days I wake up very tired and dizzy, making driving difficult (especially long distances, especially on freeways, especially when roads are jammed and other drivers impatient).

My daughter has the same kinds of symptoms only more severe. She lives with me and often needs help getting to the doctor, the pharmacy, and the grocery store. A couple years ago she got an emotional support dog who ended up needing quite a bit of emotional support herself.

Working from home relieves the great stress of fighting rush hour traffic while I'm feeling dizzy and tired and anxious and conserves my energy for actual work tasks. It also allows me to be here for my daughter. If she has a doctor's appointment, I can work right up until it's time to leave. Then I can pick up with working as soon as we get back. I don't have to leave the office to pick her up, then go to the appointment, then back to the office.

The Commuting Problem

The commute became a big problem for me about two years ago in December when my illness suddenly got worse. I wasn't able to drive anywhere. Not to the neighborhood grocery store. Not three blocks to the library. My company's office building is 20 miles away — a 40 minute drive for me unless I take the freeway, which I never do. I thought I might have to stop working.

My problem wasn't really about being able to work though. It was about geography.  When I made that 40 minute drive twice a day, I sat at a desk in a geographic location separate from my home and used the same tools to do work that I use now ... Microsoft Office, WebEx, Slack, Chrome, Azure DevOps, Visual Studio Code .... those tools did and still do make up the bulk of my work day.

Even when I worked in the office, I often typed messages to people who were working in the same building rather than simply getting up and walking to their cubicle. People often signed into WebEx from their desks rather than walking to a conference room.

The New Work Geography

Working from home solves the problem of traveling to a different geographical location to do the same work that I can do just as easily without traveling. But I've found that my new work geography creates new problems.

Here's the biggest one: I lack the geographically enforced boundaries around work. I never leave things "at the office." All my work materials and tools are always right here, making it possible to work any time.

For those of us raised with the protestant work ethic, this is a conundrum. My work ethic has always been, when you're at work, you do your very best for your employer. Even sanctioned breaks caused me a little nag of guilt. How long have I not been working? What am I not getting done? Who might be noticing?

I still have that same work ethic but being "at work" means something a little different now. When I'm at work I'm also at home.

The physical and geographic boundaries between work and home no longer exist. The solution? I re-create those boundaries in my mind. I practice mental geography.

Fencing off work

Scheduling

I use Microsoft Outlook for my work email and calendar. My official public calendar holds my meetings and appointments, my on and off hours so that coworkers can easily see when I'm available. When my calendar says I'm available, I'm at my desk — except for brief breaks.

Also in Outlook, I set up a separate scheduling calendar that only I can see. On my scheduling calendar I block time for tasks I choose to do that day. I know that I underestimate how much time it takes to complete a task, so I add a little padding to my time blocks. I keep my calendar open and visible while I'm working to stay mindful of the time allotted and stop myself from tweaking and taking unecessary detours down rabbit holes (I can research the meaning and etymology of a word for an hour ... seriously)

Planning and Prioritizing

I keep my to-do list and lists of daily things and habits in an app called Habitica. Just like a video game, it rewards me with a pleasant "ding" and points when I complete a task or do a habit. I really like the little hit of dopamine this gives me. It keeps me engaged. I feel more positive and excited about work and I get more done than I used to.

Getting Started

I think about my work projects when I'm not actually working on them. This can get in the way of actually doing the work. To get out of my head and doing work, I use a method called interstitial journaling (https://betterhumans.coach.me/replace-your-to-do-list-with-interstitial-journaling-to-increase-productivity-4e43109d15ef). When I first read about it in a Medium article I thought it sounded weird, but I am an experimenter. This experiment was highly successful. Resistance flees immediately when I write down the time, what I just did, and then what I'm going to do next. It's magical.

Sustaining Focus

I use the pomodoro technique (Time 25 minutes of focus on your task and only on that, then 5 minutes of break, repeat). For a timer, I use Focus at Will https://www.focusatwill.com/app/music, which plays your choice of music while you focus. I like to listen to the Classical Plus option.

This mental geography has allowed me to increase my day-job productivity and build the blog you're reading now. And I'm always on the lookout for other ways to map my work.

What tools do you use to map the geography of your work? I'd love to hear!

It can be either, depending on you.

The first time I worked from home, it started as a dream that rapidly became a nightmare.

I was editing a quarterly magazine for a non-profit association that moved to another state and gave me the option of telecommuting.

I had worked for the company for 4 years at the time, gradually climbing the ladder. I loved the people and the work. I also loved being at home with my 8-year-old daughter. I thought working from home would bring all those loved things together for me. I could use the same hours of each day to work and spend time with my girl.

How wrong I was! I failed miserably.

I didn't work steadily, as I had in the office (8 hours of work in 8 hours of day). Instead, some days I did much less (1 or 2 hours of work in 8 hours of day). Why? My brain was accustomed to going somewhere else to work. Instead of going to a separate office, I was sitting in a chair at a table at the foot of my bed. It was the same chair I sat in to surf the internet, to watch cat videos, to read social media posts, to read books and write letters. The stuff that would be considered "goofing off" if I did it in an office.

The office imposed limitations on what I could/should do while sitting in my office chair at my office desk. I no longer shared physical space with my peers and supervisor, all working shoulder-to-shoulder to make progress each day. When the office went away, so did their expectations and camaraderie ... or at least my perceptions of them.

When the office limitations went away, suddenly possibilities seemed unlimited! It felt great!

Time stretched for months between quarterly magazine deadlines. What's an hour or three of Internet surfing when you have 3 months before the next magazine comes out? Indeed, what's a day or two when you have weeks and months?

Then, as deadlines drew closer, I would realize I was far behind. I would panic and work day and night in marathon spurts full of stress and self-recrimination. “I should know better! Why did I let that happen again?”

I always felt guilty. When I spent time with my daughter, I felt guilty that I wasn’t working. When I worked, I felt guilty that my daughter was neglected. Sometimes I felt so bad that I avoided both work and spending time with my daughter. Instead, I comforted myself with Yahoo Groups bulletin boards and cute guys on Match.com.

Slowly, I became aware that working at home was not working for me. I did not want to admit defeat, I believed "failure" to be a dirty word. But finally the nagging realization became too much. I was so relieved when I finally called my boss and explained that I was not doing what they needed. I took a lay-off and found a more traditional on-site office job.

After that failure, I thought that I never wanted to work from home again. I spent the next 15 years telling people so.

But in the last couple years things have shifted. My daughter and I are older and we both have chronic health problems. Alot of my coworkers work remotely — from home or from offices in other states. Even when I go into the office, I use distance communication tools like e-mail, Slack, and WebEx.

Driving half an hour to get to an office building where I do the exact same thing I could do anywhere else seems wasteful. For all of those reasons, I now find myself working from home again.

What did I learn from my first failure? How will those learnings improve my ability to work at home well?

I believe that my failure was because of my mindset. I allowed external factors to determine my activities. To get in my “work” mindset, I needed to be away from home. My work mindset was … “Do as you’re directed by your boss. Do it as quickly as possible. Perform, achieve, get praise.” I really am a praise junky. I like to be liked, especially by authority figures.

My home mindset was, take care of Summer, then rest, relax, and get ready to go to work again.

I could not bring the two mindsets together into my living space.

But here I am again, faced with just that task.

I believe it’s going to take some experimenting. Continuous learnings ... small experiments, feedback, and adjustment. I believe this is the way to figure out how to work at home better than I did before.

The alternative? Keep doing what I did before. Long stretches of guilt and anxiety punctuated by marathon works sessions fueled by deadline terror.

I also believe that my experiments and learnings can help others. You can learn from my failure. You can grab onto the handle of the findings from my experiments. You can plug my hacks into your work-at-home sockets and fire up your productivity. And then you can come back for more.

Welcome to prolific in pajamas!