I am late to the “work from home” club. As a very active residential and commercial real estate broker, my work is often done in the car, in a collaborative office team environment, in person and on site with my clients and my team of real estate partners, in my bed right before I fall asleep, or right as I wake up, or pretty much anywhere else. In these situations, all I really need is my phone, laptop, and a decent wifi connection. Having a dedicated, organized, and welcoming workspace in my home has not been a priority until now.

Once we received stay at home orders for the various counties I serve, I had to work very hard to avoid a mental breakdown. The questions that immediately came to mind were how do I continue to serve my clients? How do I stay relevant to my clients? How do I stay in business? Many real estate professionals had made up their minds to shutter their doors and wait for the pandemic to subside. I knew that wouldn’t be me, but I wondered, what should I be doing? Once reality set in that my routine could not and should not continue how it has been, these are the things I started to do:

Create a dedicated workspace in your home. We purchased a new place in Sep 2017. I’m ashamed to say that one of our spare rooms is not up to a level that it should be. About a month ago, I cleaned and organized the spare room as much as I could by getting rid of old papers, reorganizing and repositioning, and tidying. If you’re my friend on Facebook you see that my first work from home picture was of me in my bed typing on a laptop. I’m happy to say I do now have a space.
Create a schedule and stick to it. While I am not out showing homes, meeting my clients, attending inspections and final walk-throughs, going to happy hours and other real estate networking events, I still have things I should be doing for my business. I set a schedule that built in the essential elements to keep me in a positive mindset and my business running. And I am sticking to it. It has made me feel better. The reality is, creating a schedule and time blocking is something that is overdue for me. I should have been doing this and I intend to keep it up when we emerge from our quarantines.
Exercise, pray, and meditate. Wellness gurus were already doing this regardless of being flung into a pandemic. But I had not. While I hate to admit it, I easily prioritize my business over health and wellness. If you have not had the time to do this before being mandated to stay inside, now is the time to start. If you are in Durham, you apparently have an indefinite amount of time to learn this since the stay at home order has been extended with no end in sight.
Cook more. I do like to cook but ordinarily do not have enough time to cook as much as I want. If you hate cooking, check out this list of businesses that offer curbside takeout. As a person that might love takeout more than life itself, I decided that I would commit to cooking five days out of the week and indulge in the takeout life on the weekend. This is hard.
Learn something new. There is nothing wrong with wanting to re-watch their favorite shows from start to finish or check out new ones. I myself would like to see what “Us” is all about. Self-care comes in all forms. For me, there are a lot of things that would help my business that if I am diligent in getting checked off will make me much better going forward. Those things include reading self-help business books that colleagues highlight during our Zoom mastermind sessions, hyper mastering my CRM, and of course, blogging more!
Talk to your family and friends. My family and close friends live all over the nation and globe and it's been comforting to know that they are still alive and well. Not everyone can say this. Gratefulness is an act that requires daily practice and I think going back to the basics of literally counting what I am grateful for--starting with my immediate family being alive--is a good start.
Wash your hands! Wear a mask!

Working from home in a pandemic 101

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