Work from Home 2

It’s been more than a month since my last post about Working from Home. I thought this was a nice time to look back at how things went.

Information Overload

News about COVID-19 was everywhere. Television news, newspapers, podcast episodes, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp group and email newsletters. It was information overload. Eventually, I limited the sources of information that I relied upon.

These are the resources that I turned to over the last one month while I tuned out all the rest to maintain my sanity.

For local information related to Pune, I followed the Smart Pune Twitter handle. This provided ward-level data about the spread of the disease – number of positive cases and death – in my ward.

करोना पॉझिटिव्ह रुग्णांची 1 मे 2020 पर्यंतची वॉर्डनुसार आकडेवारी दर्शवणारा नकाशा

Ward wise #Corona positive patients in #Pune as on May 1.
(सौजन्य – पुणे स्मार्ट सिटी)#coronavirus pic.twitter.com/5nz2tojTAb

— Smart Pune (@SmartPune) May 2, 2020

There were two podcasts that I followed for COVID-19. The 3 Things podcast from the Indian Express provided news stories from across the country. It covers only a single or 3 topics at the maximum. These deep dives gave enough back ground and insight about the news stories that I slowly ended consumption of other news sources which were covering very little other than COVID-19.

A data based podcast comes from a data journalist, Rukmini S called The Moving Curve (also available on Spotify now).

I also have access to some office-related resources which are not accessible publically.

Working from Home setup

Since the last update, I have become better at separating time between home and work. I tried to setup my working time according to better internet speeds. However, I found that this affected my output and left me feeling groggy most of the time.

As time passed, the internet and power supply stabilized. This allowed me to go back to my office timings for work. When I reset this, it improved my productivity at work and happiness at home.

But, perhaps, by the time people get used to working from home it may well be time to return back to a workplace. Personally, I would welcome it even if we maintain social distancing.