It’s been a couple of weeks since we’ve been told we need to work from the office on Mondays and Wednesdays. Personally, my productivity plunges underground, and because I have evening calls after those office hours, I’m finding myself pulling 14 hour days. It’s very sustainable!
Worse still is how un-ergonomic the office setup is (non-adjustable table; chairs with minimal back support; no proper foot rest; monitors from the 2010s if other people get to the three HDR monitors we have in the office), and that is fucking my back right up.
It takes a whole day to actually recover from that, sometimes more, and it’s affecting the quality of the rest of my life. I’m actually finding myself leaning on medication to keep the pain at bay, instead of being able to go to my bed and do some stretches if I were at home.
This has also been messing up a lot of my habits — a lot of them presumes one that can be predicted, or that I actually have the time to do it. These are some things I have to figure out how to best fit it into the new schedule:
- Meal prep: Because our office days are Monday and Wednesday, and I’m inclined to buy a salad for lunch, I’m not sure if I should be batch-cooking on Sunday. I have the aforementioned evening calls that sometimes end at 11pm, and I’m not sure if I would have the time to spend the hour cooking on Tuesday evening/night to make sure I have food for the later part of the week.
- Money: This is mostly just an adjustment and a mindset shift, because of the added costs of coffee, food, transport, and general I-see-a-thing-and-I-get-reminded-that-I-want-it.
- Writing: This very hobby. How very meta, right? It’s not just the time that I use to write these out too, but actually finding the willpower to want to, after work ends (at 11pm sometimes). I’ve never missed more than 2 weeks of posting, until… this one, I guess, since this has been in my Notion drafts for that long.
- Gym: In the same vein of writing, it takes Monday and Wednesday out of the rotation for potential gym days — I go in the mornings because it’s less crowded, but I also don’t want to sacrifice too much sleep time (which is also a problem if I’m commuting 2 hours a day)
- Physio exercises: These are somewhat separated from actual gym time, because they’re more localized ab exercises compared to the equipment I need at the gym. I can try doing them at night, but sometimes I get too tired and lazy, and just… don’t.
- Snacking: This is entirely on me, but we have a snack area and I find myself gravitating towards the dried mangos and Twisties because why not? (Why yes? @ myself)
Anyway, this feels a lot like complaining and very little of solutions, and I’m frustrated. Hopefully I’d have worked something out, found my groove, and working on being just that little bit more productive with my new routine. And without a 2+ weeks break for writing!