Mardy: Novel Coronavirus, novel working experience

Since this discovery of the existence of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), the world has remarkably been forced changed in both macro and micro level ranging from policy making and implementing to daily life style.

Since the end of March 2020, to cooperate with the government effort to put the spread of this deadly virus through encouraging social distancing and staying at home, Open Development Cambodia has decided to encourage its employees to work from home.

Emotion towards social distancing

This particular change impacts pretty much on me emotionally. Remarkably, less in- person communication with my colleagues and limited outdoor activities make me feel distressed and isolated during the period of the remote working. Moreover, it appeared to be so weird when working days and weekends, as well as family time and working time, cannot be distinguished precisely. Overall, it is challenging for me to consider my house, the place for relaxing and family, to a home office for working productively.

Journey of adaptation

“If we fail to adapt, we fail to move forward” – John Wooden.

While working from home can be a tough experience, I have gradually adapted to it with a lot of customization.

The major task is to seek for a workable place. Initially, I setup the desk in a space outside my bedroom. At first, it appeared to be a good place, but the afternoon sun makes me bathe in sweat. It pushed the frustration of working from home to the next level as it creates a very uncomfortable and distracting environment.

Consequently, I had no choice but to seek for a better place. During the process, I have tried different places and postures namely sitting at my tiny desk on the floor, laying down on my belly on the floor, and sitting on the bed with the laptop on my lap.

As a result, joining my younger sister at a big table in the living room appears to work best for me. Besides less heat, I feel less isolated with the presence of my sister studying in the same room. As the kitchen is nearby, I can manage my break time better as I stop more frequently to have some water, and my mother keeps alerting me about the lunch and dinner break.

Staying concentrate during the course of the day is a mission impossible at the beginning as I often spent more time thinking about the tasks to do than doing the task. Hench, to keep my daily task on track, I started to properly prepare my hand-written daily to-do-list and to set the level of priority to each task. I also tried out some desktop applications. Among all, I found “Be Focused” as the most useful application as it allows me to entry my priority tasks and set the time and interval time for each of them.

Weeks later…

After weeks of working from home, there are a number of challenges that I am struggling to overcome. They are as follow:

  1. Time management: In spite of the practice with to-do-list and the support from application, I still cannot yet fully concentrate and keep myself on track throughout the day.
  2. Virtual communication and remote support: Although I am getting a bit more familiar with the virtual meeting online, I still find it inconvenient and uncomfortable in comparison to communicate in person with the team. This should because the lack of facial expression and body language. In addition, providing technical support to the team remotely is frustrating sometimes as the tools and applications for completing those tasks often has problems.
  3. Resource inaccessibility and connection instability: From home, most resources are not accessible as local network connectivity is needed in order to get proper access. Besides, with the unstable internet connection at my area, working from home is not as smooth as expected.

Among all the hardship arise during this period, I would acknowledge some benefits of this new working experience. It is a chance for me to enhance my self-discipline – to stay focus with my own customization and management. Actually, I enjoy some of my personal ways of working at some points of the day, especially when I can focus well on the tasks that requires a lot of concentration. Plus, there are more time for me to be with my family members and helps more with some household chores.

Dawn of hope

With the more stable condition of the pandemics in Cambodia, I am positive that the day to be back in the working environment at the office is approaching. Specifically, I miss the communication in person with and the presence of my colleague; I miss the discussion and laughter during lunch break; I miss my desk that allows me to works for hours without back pain.

I do appreciate the tolerance and patience from the team regarding the lagging in communication and task completion with the understanding of the challenges in adapting to the novel environment – working from home.

Blog written by: Mr. SAM AN Mardy, ODC’s Web Development and IT Officer.