Lessons Learned On Day One of Working From Home...A Day In the Life of This Music Therapist

I spent my first day at home yesterday, attempting to work a bit on music therapy planning, resources, and interaction options and opportunities while not being able to go into work. I now have a three day work from home edict from my administrators, so I am trying to figure out how to translate a service that is very much "in the moment" into something that can be easily accessed by clients who are scattered around our state. Everyone else is doing worksheets, but there aren't many worksheets available for what I like and feel like music therapy should be for my clients, so I am trying to figure out alternative methods for getting materials and interactions out into the COVID-19 world.

I set out my intentions for the day right after I finished my blogging process, and I started working on work tasks at 5:46am. That's a positive about working from home - I can work when I am most effective and productive (early mornings) and be finished by the time I am at my most ineffective (afternoons). Hooray for working from home! I started off with a challenge - an account that requires on-site verification rather than allowing me to verify my identity through my cell phone. Obstacle! I cannot get to work in the time allotted by the program to verify my account access. So, that will have to wait until Monday when I can change the verification process to my cell phone. Most of what I wanted to do yesterday had to be put on hold until Monday because of that access difficulty. I had no inkling that this would happen - it never occurred to me - so that put a crimp in my plans for this week, but I continued.

I managed to set up a video corner in my front room. The tripod and camera are set up and ready for me. The rest of the living room is in the process of being put into work zones - file folder creation zone, video zone, brainstorming zone, non-work zone, journaling zone. It will probably take the rest of the work week and most of the weekend to get things established the way I want them, but that is okay with me. I will keep going in order to make things a bit more organized for next week.

My bullet journal is keeping me accountable and pushing forward. I have a new one (couldn't resist a sale at Walmart and decided that I needed a new, more traditional style bullet journal to use at work right before all this happened - I'm glad I set it all up before we were told that we were working from home - it's made the transition easier on me. I start the morning by writing down all the tasks and things that I want to do during the day. That is my task list. Then, I keep track of my half hour work stints - I set smaller goals for each 30 minute span and then get started. At the end of the 30 minutes, I make my next list of action steps and start again. I have found that changing every 30 minutes from one type of task to another helps my productivity and efficiency. This is loosely based on the Pomodoro system. This is one of the many ways to complete tasks, and it happens to be the pattern that works the best for me. I also do a bit of the Alastair method which is another way to track habits and tasks. This is a new process for me, but it is helping me figure out what I want to do daily and every week. So far, the only task on my list that I've done daily is my bullet journal set-up, but that's okay right now. I am figuring out what I want and need from this entire situation.

The other part of all of this that has been a challenge is that I am having to shape my home life to accommodate work. I already have a work space, but it is for my other work and not for my primary job. I am having to make room for these new responsibilities and shift my other responsibilities. It is not easy to add things into my already crowded space. I am trying to use this as an excuse to downsize my stuff a bit. By establishing zones in my front room, I am hoping that I will eliminate some of the extraneous stuff in my home. I have already moved out several boxes of stuff and have taken bags and bins out to the recycling and dumpsters. I have also noticed that I have LOTS of unfinished TME ideas, compositions, and visual aids in various places around my home - it is time to gather them into one zone so they get finished!

Yesterday, I was able to clear out the dining room part of my home to set up my video corner. I also created a file folder with the intention of making it into a powerpoint presentation and video by tomorrow. I met with my interns and discussed how we were all coping with the changes. I planned the four videos that I want to record today and ordered new SD cards for my camera since my current ones only record 8 minutes worth of content. Those will arrive next week sometime, so I will make due until then.

Today, my intentions are to record the four videos that I decided on yesterday, decide which four videos I will record tomorrow, and to continue with developing TME ideas. I have tons to move to the next steps. When work is done for my big job, I will work on my part-time job stuff, and I will pick up a grocery order -that reminds me, I need to put that on my personal to-do list...

I hope that I can increase my work output today from what I did yesterday. I did a pretty good job yesterday, but there is room for more. It's time to get started. I will start with some vocal warmups.

As always, recommendations, comments, and questions are welcome! I'll be posting some information about my newest file folder activity sometime today - look for it on my Facebook and Twitter feeds!!