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# Working from Home: Mom Guilt
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*This is our fourth installment of our Working from Home series from Rebekah, KHIT’s Lead Data Analyst. She shares about being a mom to a toddler and the importance of structure.*
“Oh my gosh, you’re going to save so much money on daycare!! Won’t it be so great to keep your little one home with you?”
This was the first phrase out of almost every person’s mouth when I told them I was quitting my job to work from home.  Obviously, if I am at home my toddler should be here with me, right? For every mom sitting there thinking about how amazing that sounds, I want you to try a little experiment: take your toddler to your office with you for one day.  Just one, and then let me know how that went.
I knew from the word go that keeping my tiny tornado at home would not be a good idea, and the proof is in the pudding.  When all of the crazy started in the world we had no choice for several weeks, as my coworkers can testify my tot LOVES to FaceTime and thinks that she should be a part of any GoTo Meeting that mommy is on.  She is such a helpful tiny human and could not help herself when it came to any of mommy’s work materials.  It didn’t take long before she took daily field trips to Mimi’s house. (Thank goodness for Mimi!!)
When you work from home everyone seems to think that means that you have a ton of extra time on your hands.  Your house is always spotless, you have time to make it to every school event for your children and if your kids have the day off of school they can stay with you because you’re home and you must not be busy.
After hearing these things over and over again the mom guilt started to set in.  Should I be keeping my tiny tot home with me? Why isn’t the house spotless every day? Why do I have dirty laundry in the basket?  The answer to all of it is no.  Just no.  Being a work from home mom does not mean that I need to try to do everything that a stay at home mom does AND work.
After plenty of trials and errors I realized that the best thing for me and my family was structure.  My tiny tot needs the structure of a daycare setting, my bonus daughter needs the structure of school (definitely not homeschool as this crazy time has taught us) and I need the structure of a quiet house.  I have to get ready every morning like I am going to an office, and I have to force myself to take breaks and walk away throughout the day. But, I have learned that my breaks can be productive on a different level.  I can do a load of laundry, or dust a room so that I don’t feel like my house work is always behind.
While I allow the hours within my day to be flexible the days that I work generally are not.  In order to subside the mom guilt I work longer days Monday through Thursday, even working after my girls go to bed some nights, in order to give them and my husband more of my time through the weekend.
And even after doing all of the above I’ve learned that every mom struggles, every mom feels guilty at some point and every mom is TIRED, so don’t be so hard on yourself!
My day to day life is a work in progress and always will be, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world!
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# RPAs: KHIT’s New Automated Interest
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This week, KHIT leadership attended a series of webinars all about RPAs (Robotic Process Automations), with presentations from companies across the globe who use them daily. RPAs aren’t actual robots, but rather software that can do simple and complex, repetitive tasks such as downloading and editing reports, sending emails, filling out forms, and many other computer-based burdens that take away time from more important work. This software is already being implemented in competitive finance institutions, major tech companies, and processes small and large can make your redundant tasks manageable. And KHIT certainly isn’t behind the curve either; we already have a functional prototype that can download a report, insert a calculated column, and send it on its way. See how we can create RPAs for your organization that can provide significant efficiencies and cost savings.
# Working From Home: Office to Home Office
*Blog post number 2 in our Work from Home series: Dani is KHIT’s Lead Data Analyst and has been with the company over a year. This is her story of the transition to a work-from-home setup, complete with tips!*
After years of working with children, life threw me a curveball and I transitioned to a regular office setting job.  It was a very hard adjustment for me.  Sitting all day in harsh overhead lighting.  Wondering how some of these people with positions above me managed to make it through life.  No fresh air.  Feeling guilty getting up from my cubicle outside of my scheduled breaks.  Finding socially appropriate things to say to my coworkers.  Steaming after being moved to a new cubicle away from the window that I was so very fond of daydreaming near (my family got me a red stapler to display in silent protest).  I wasn’t very happy, but I made the best of it.
I started working part-time for KHIT about a year into that job.  Juggling all of my home responsibilities and working two jobs wasn’t easy.  In January of 2020 I was offered full time work with KHIT and I couldn’t have been more relieved, excited or scared. I jumped in with both feet.
I live in a rural area with less than reliable internet so, until I could harass our local service provider to stretch the cords that would link my house to the current century, I worked from our “home-base” in Katie’s home office most days.  I was able to ease into the working from home scene.  I would schedule my days similar to those working in a more traditional setting.  Once the internet was connected and all of our worlds changed this spring, I was home. On my own.  By myself.  I love it.
While I am still learning what routines work for me and how to schedule my days, I feel more productive than ever.  My stress level has plummeted.  Some days, I take my computer outside to a picnic table in the shade and have chickens sleeping on the table top next to me.  Most others, I am at my desk with a dog at my feet or cat peeking from behind the screen of my laptop.  When I need a break, I take one.  I take a walk (with my crazy hounds) without asking for permission. If I want to move my desk (and red stapler) to the living room where I have three windows instead of one, I do just that.
I may log fewer hours per day than the typical 8 hour day, however, my hours are time spent actively working and not consumed with wishing I were someplace else or with office social constructs I don’t usually understand.  I might be at my table at 10:30p on a Sunday evening under the warm glow of my desk lamp, if I have a deadline.  I may also be sweating at the grocery with a two page list from my grandmother at 10:30am on a Friday. (Was it the bran flakes or the crunchy raisin bran?)
Some days, though?  My dogs are underfoot and my cats won’t stay off my keyboard and why is there hair everywhere and the chickens have scratched up the sunflowers I just planted and why is there no good food in my fridge and all I can see is the dust on my baseboards and the tiny spiders taking residence in the corners of the rooms where the ceiling meets the walls and I still don’t know who leaves all of these dishes in the sink and when was it I last left the house?
On those days, I have to literally get up and walk out of the house and take a (dog-free) walk or drive with the windows down and reflect on why I am feeling that way.  Usually, it’s because I haven’t had enough exercise or mental stimulation outside of work and home chores.  I am having fewer of those days.  I am also learning that as flexible as my schedule allows me to be, I need some non-negotiables and things to remember.
**Dani’s (current) Non-negotiables:**
* I need to do some sort of morning movement.
* I need to do my morning hygiene.  Yes, EVERY. DAY.  Even if I’m not going anywhere.
* I need to change out of my jambos and put on some day clothes.
* I need to take regular meal breaks away from my workspace.
* I need to set an alarm in the morning.
**Dani’s things to remember:**
* Just because my computer is sitting there, I don’t have to work.
* I don’t have to say yes to all of the lunches or coffees just because I work from home.
* If a task or event is important to me, I need to put it on the calendar.
* Regulate and Hydrate.
One thing I know is that taking this job has turned my world on edge and was the best decision I could have made for myself.  I will keep getting better at balancing home life and work-from-home life.  There are about 46,975 tips online regarding working from home and usually the Google doesn’t fail me.  I’m also really good at learning lessons the hard way.
-d
# Working From Home: Why Working Remotely Is The Future Of Tech
*Eli is KHIT’s lead developer and has been with the company since October 2019. He kicks off our Work From Home blog series with a real-talk assessment of the difference between office and home-office.*
The time is 7:00 AM. Your alarm clock is dutifully emitting a harsh buzz to wake you from your peaceful slumber – a brutal reminder that it is indeed a brand new day. As you complete your morning routine in the laziest of fogs for the 5,000th time, it becomes increasingly harder to suppress a familiar thought: “Man, this sucks.” The time is now 7:45 AM.
After slogging through half an hour of questionably self-aware commuters, you at last find yourself at the office. After completing the ancient ritual of awkward smiling and uninteresting small talk, you finally make it to your desk. The time is now 8:30 AM. You look at today’s schedule – a solid three hours of meetings that could have been emails to start the day. You’d like to get some serious work in before they start, but they don’t start until 9, and it’ll take half an hour just to get into a decent workflow. You instead elect to fetch some coffee and mentally prepare for hours of near-useless boredom.
The time is now 12:00 PM – the meetings are over, you’ve had lunch (a utilitarian ham & cheese at your desk), and it’s high time to actually contribute to the workplace. You work diligently with some breaks here and there until everything that needed done is done. Luckily, there’s no mid-afternoon meetings and it goes rather smoothly — a rare treat. The time is now 6:00 PM. Exhausted, you retreat through the webs of traffic and make your way back home. By the time you are able to enjoy the evening’s leisure, the clock that so rudely awoke you that morning now reads 7:00 PM.
Twelve hours have elapsed since your day started. Of those twelve hours, one hour was spent getting ready, one hour was spent commuting (if you’re lucky), one or two hours were spent talking with coworkers or waiting for the next thing to happen, two or three hours (typically more) were spent in largely unnecessary meetings, and five or six hours were spent doing actual productive work.
Let’s be honest – the current model of working at a centralized, physical workplace is a *huge* waste of time, particularly if you work in tech. As a recent college grad whose first job at a large software company was very similar to the scenario described above, I was absolutely floored at how much time is simply wasted on a daily basis, from the lowest on the totem pole (read: me) to even my manager’s manager and almost certainly beyond. I later left the job for mostly unrelated reasons and eventually joined the team here at KHIT, where I currently work from home every day. The difference was quite difficult to get used to at first – the lack of commuting alone was completely foreign to me – but once I settled into a routine, I discovered that the increase of personal work responsibility and lack of distractions allows for a much more efficient work schedule and a better overall attitude when going through it.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that working from home automatically makes you super-efficient or completely eliminates all wasted time. Realistically, the five or six hours spent doing in-depth work are only upped to six or maybe seven hours on average, depending on the tasks that need done. If I’m being honest, the likelihood of me hitting the snooze button surely increases. But the benefit doesn’t lie solely in productivity, really — at the end of the day, no matter where or how you do it, you’ll probably get a similar amount of work accomplished if you want to keep your job.
For me, the real benefits of working from home are found in the removal of monotonous day-to-day drudgery that can often ruin a day (well, for me). In a remotely based company, all the meetings that should be emails *are* emails, and the ones that *shouldn’t* are accomplished just as well in the internet world as in the physical world. I don’t have to wake up exhausted at 7 AM. I don’t have to spend an hour or two commuting. Instead of making idle chit-chat with coworkers and waiting for meetings to start, I can go directly to my laptop and immediately get started on a task. When I get hungry, I can use the time I saved not commuting to make something better than a ham sandwich – or if it’s a busier day, I can use that time to make room for an extra hour or two of work. If I want to take a break and go for a walk at 1 PM on a gorgeous day, I can do just that. I now have extra hours of free time that were impossible before; not because I’m doing less work (if anything I do more now), but because I can avoid time-wasting activities that are not just common, but *integral* to working at a physical office.
The point is, I no longer have to spend 12 or more hours a day away from my own home, locked away in a fluorescent hellscape with, let’s admit it, people I don’t really care for. What’s the point of doing so if you can still accomplish what you need to on your own accord?
Are there benefits to a physical workplace? Sure. I can’t deny that there are certain advantages to working in person and that many people prefer it. But shouldn’t it be a choice? Why do it five days a week?
Let’s do a quick calculation. In December of 2019, there were 130 million full-time workers in the U.S. About 5 million of them are listed as software engineers, not including other technical occupations [2]. Let’s say that each one, like I used to, commutes a total of 1 hour every day (again – if you’re lucky). Assuming 251 official U.S. working days for each person in a year [1], simply eliminating the commute to and from work would save 1.26 *billion* hours that could be used for work, or literally anything else that isn’t a total waste of time. And that’s not including the other hours of wasted time which would easily bring that up to at least 3 billion hours of total wasted time per year. That’s *just* software engineers.
I understand that not everyone is suited for working at home, and it presents its own unique set of challenges. However, these challenges are easily overcome and are miniscule compared to the miserable drudgery of day-to-day work at a physical location. Even if it’s just a couple days a week, having the option to work from home would be a step in the right direction for all parties involved, increasing productivity and decreasing time-wasting annoyances.
It’s time for the tech industry to seriously consider making remotely based work the more common, and eventually the default way to operate.
Sources: [1] < [2] <