How to Survive Working from Home When It Becomes Too Routine

(Fair warning- this post isn’t all that inspirational, but I think it may be very helpful to some of you out there working from home! :))

When I first started teaching online and working from home, the pros definitely outweighed the cons (great income, relaxation, flexibility, etc.). However, I didn’t necessarily like sitting at my laptop all day, and some days (especially when grading papers and speeches) were starting to feel monotonous.

However, after the first year I’d come up with some easy (and some ridiculous) approaches to make my work day easier.

If you ever get bored teaching online and/or working from home in general, try some of the following (adjust as needed to suit your own job):

• Listen to music (without lyrics, unless you can concentrate with lyrics) when grading papers or doing a task that requires some focus.
• Listen to movies on YouTube when you’re doing work that you’re familiar with and doesn’t require too much concentration, like copying and pasting grades from site to site, making course schedules for the new term, importing new content, and adjusting deadlines for the next semester (I listen to Hallmark movies on YouTube all the time because they’re a bit slow and pretty soothing to listen to- it’s kind of silly, but sometimes I look forward to starting my work in the morning just to pick up where I left off with the last cheesy movie!).
• Create a checklist if you have an overwhelming number of small tasks to complete or items to grade (sometimes I have 150 of the same type of speech to grade), so you can track your progress (all I really do is make tally marks/checks on a piece of paper, and it works great). With many assignments, you may be able to listen to music or movies while you work, but watching and grading speeches requires some pretty serious focus- so in this case, I love checking off each assignment one by one. Seeing how far I’ve come on paper as I make progress always motivates me to keep going, and that means I actually finish much faster.
• Make the work you do an integral part of your life, and not just your job. The Happy Professor brand, website, YouTube channel, and books are all near and dear to my heart. There are some days that I take a number of hours to work on the website, write blog posts, look at other blogs to get inspiration, and come up with new book ideas- and I do count that as part of my job a college instructor. Going to work at my laptop is easier because I come at it from a unique perspective- What am I learning today? Did I use a new strategy that I haven’t used before? What did I do this week that I could write about on the blog? It makes my job a lot more enjoyable, and I’m not the only person who can do this. I think everyone should find a way to make their work an important part of their life, in one way or another.

This list of tricks might seem like a (crazy?) way to tolerate what I do, but that’s not the way I see it. First of all, there is enough variety in assignments, schools, changes with how schools want you to do things, and course development that keeps things interesting.

And maybe during this season of my life (when my baby and family life mean a little more to me than charting new territory as an online instructor), I do go on autopilot a bit more than usual- and I don’t implement quite as much creativity or new, out-of-the-box changes to my courses- but for the most part I learn a lot at my job. I love seeing the way the online environment is constantly changing, especially since I have a front row seat at a number of schools who are all making progress in different ways and at different speeds (maybe it’s just me- but I find this so interesting!).

And most importantly (during this phase of life), my job is only a commitment of about 5 hours a day (sometimes on the weekend, and sometimes not).

I’m okay dealing with a little bit of monotony from time to time to reap the rest of the benefits, and when I need a little more excitement when working at my laptop, there’s always a cheesy Hallmark movie on YouTube calling my name.

Happy teaching!