It’s the last working day this week on Thurs as Fri is the Labour Day public holiday. We almost forgot about it until our colleagues reminded us. It’s amazing what happens when you start working from home full-time. Weekdays, weekends and public holidays start to blur together. Not easy to draw the line clearly between work life and non-work life anymore. With this, we have come to the end of the 3rd week of us working from home together.
We have settled into a routine and everyone pitches in to make it work. Our helper, wife and I take turns caring for and playing with the baby whenever he’s awake. This depends on how busy all of us get with our respective work for the day. Which could be chores for the helper such as cooking & cleaning, project work & calls for my wife and advisory work & calls for me. But we manage our tasks and take time out to contribute to the household in any way we can.
We try to be disciplined with our breakfast, lunch and dinner timings. As long as the baby allows for it and we try not to let work interfere with them. We even take morning and afternoon tea breaks when our schedules are not busy. It’s a different way of working and this took a while to get used to. But it’s nice that we can spend more time together as a family especially in our 1st year with the baby.
Just a few things we have observed after finishing week 3 of working from home together. We haven’t been ordering much food delivery or even takeaway food for pickup. We prefer home-cooked meals and my helper has been working together with my wife to cook new dishes. Nothing fancy and time-consuming. Just variations and additions to keep the menu interesting. Sometimes it’s the same dishes but we are still happy to have hot food prepared for us for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Our working hours each day has dropped and the level of productivity has fallen but to a smaller extent. It’s difficult to coordinate and discuss matters with colleagues over conference calls without face-to-face meetings. Even tougher to focus on work when the baby fusses to get our attention while the helper is busy with her chores. But we are still progressing with our work and that’s good enough for now.
In any case, our expectations have been managed internally such that we can forget about promotions, salary increases and bonuses for this year. Which means that our next round of remuneration outcomes will be bad no matter how we perform at work. So we are not planning to go above and beyond. Not the year for it. Might as well use it to adjust to being working parents both at home and eventually back in the office.
Who knows when we can return to the office. Maybe in the 2nd half of this year. And we look forward to it. We still think there’s value in going to the office to work. It’s a more conducive environment for cooperation, meetings and social interaction. Just not 5 days a week. Ideally, we work from home about 1 to 2 days a week. A nice balance of having time for both work and family relationships.
Based on the conversations we are having with our managers and senior managers, it does look like work from home arrangements might become a more permanent feature of banking corporate life. Especially when the bank has already made the investment into setting up remote working arrangements such as laptops requisition and systems & applications access. There’s a bigger and more urgent push towards digitalisation now. And it could transform the way we work as bank corporate employees in a positive way. About time we catch up.
Anyway, we look forward to taking a break from work on a public holiday. Would be nice to spend more time with the baby. Think he’s start to pick up on the times when his parents are busy with work and can’t spend time with him. Because that’s when he fusses the most. We try not to count the days or weeks to the end of the circuit breaker measures. Helps the time to pass more quickly when we focus on making the most out of each day and enjoy what we can.
Oh, and we need a bigger place to live in. A 2 bedroom apartment is just nice but it’s already starting to be a squeeze with all 4 of us at home every day. It was never meant to house a family for an extended period of time. We are likely to buy a bigger apartment by next year and hope property prices will be kind to us when the time comes. We have reallocated some of our cash for the bigger property downpayment and renovation so we have less cash for investing. If we can hold our jobs for as long as possible, we can rebuild our cash for investing. Looks like a lot is going to happen these few years and we have to be ready.