This blog post is written on-top-of-mind and is a representation of my, and only mine, opinion and/or feelings

Context

Right now it is the 9th of April 2020, we are in the middle of a Global pandamic: COVID-19 or as it is more commonly known, coronavirus. Because of this most companies in the Netherlands have closed their office locations and require their employees to work from home, the same goes for the company I am currently employed.

pre-week 1

In the week leading up to mandatory working from home, you could notice the country realizing it was coming, China had been on lock down, Italy was a disaster and the first confirmed cases had occured within the country. Were as most of the people I work with and know weren't that keen on working from home, I was actually looking forward to it; I wasn't looking forward to the reason why, but just the working working from home part. I had been following remote companies like Elastic and Gitlab for a while and felt I knew most of the do's and don'ts of working from home. Also I had my own "office" (more of a mancave) with the required supplies: A desk, dual monitors, speakers, office chair and above all a coffee machine.

Week 1

I came to four conclusions in the first week; First I found out I actually really, really enjoyed working from home. Second I found out I am a bit of a workaholic. Thirdly, not everyone was finding it as easy as I was. And lastly was a true first-world-problem: my dual monitor setup was just not good enough.
One of the major benefits from working from home is in my case I get about two hours a day extra to "do stuff", which pretty much resulted in me working two more hours per day in the first week, a.k.a: Workaholic.
During the first week I noticed the people around me struggling with working from home, not just some of my colleagues, but some of my friends too. Where I had already read about "finding your own rithm", "ether etiquettes" and "dress before you work" most of those afore mentioned people either hadn't or didn't think it over I guess. This meant the interactions I had in the first week were akward and way longer then required, also I had friends asking for advice or complaining over how it was going. To be clear, I completely understood them and are in no way holding any grudges, I may even have been way to enthousiastic about this, it is just how I experienced the first week.
My first-world-problem in this global crisis was the fact I had to pan my head from left to right to far for comfort using the two monitors I had at home. To remedy this situation I used this as an excuse to finally buy a 21:9 widescreen monitor at the end of week 1. Not a single regret since. I am actually dreading having to go back to the office where I have two 16:9 monitors...
All in all, I enjoyed the first week, used the office rithm to continue, just added my commute hours to it. Had lunch with my mother and father for the first time in years which was nice and got a lot of things done.

Week 2

I can work whenever I want?

Where in the first week I was using the office rithm, in week two I went a lot more free-float about my schedule. I got up a bit later but did start working straight after breakfast (bowl of cereal at the keyboard). Around 14:00 I usually took a break for about 90 minutes, either gamed a bit or went for a a ride on my bike. Then around 15:30 I got back to work till dinner, after which I worked to around 22:00. I wasn't always able to use this schedule as colleagues would schedule meetings during the afternoon or I had my flow going so I continued, but it felt nice to move "my work hours" around to my liking. During this week the calls and communication in general had improved a lot, calls were clean and short (mostly) we updated eachoter through chat or for bigger subjects used mail. Work in general was more streamlined, the team I am a part of was mostly focussed in keeping the systems up and running (oh I forgot I work in IT), which was ad-hoc work, fixing issues as they arose. In week two they got around to the regular part of the job again.

Getting my hands dirty

In the weekend after the second week instead of working I picked up a project I wanted to do for a long time by then, build my own server-rack-case to hold my "server" (old desktop with to much storage). This was fun but also thought me the importance of not working in this situation, I was exhausted at the end of the day. Not because of the woodworking, but just running for two weeks.

Today

Which brings us to the here-and-now, week three is going on and I don't expect the working from home to come to an end before summers end. But that is oke, because I am enjoying working from home, spending time with my Family and from time to time I visit my friend (5 min walk) to keep that person sane.