Remote Work and Pets: The Purrks of Companionship 🐶❤️🐱
Some helpful tips for preparing yourself and furry office mates for remote work
One of the perks of working from home is the ability to spend more time with your furry kiddos. Never again will you have to look into those doleful eyes every morning before heading out to an office for eight-plus hours a day five days a week. Instead of lonely pets waiting for a rushed 20-minute lunch break walk or snuggle with you, they’ll get to serve as your new office mate.
Especially during this time of stay-at-home orders, pets can bring a sense of joy, calm, and companionship. They don’t understand what’d happening outside the walls of their home or yard, but they can sense when their humans need some TLC. As the Thoughts of Dog Twitter account recently noted, dogs can also bring some much needed levity to video conference meetings:
Many offices now permit pets to come to the office either all the time or occasionally. Pets are good for morale in an office. They are equally good for morale in the home. They are guileless, loving beings that connect with us on a deeper level. Here are some things to consider when working from home with furry kiddos:
Take frequent walking or play breaks
One of the perks or working from home is you don’t have to drive home to visit your pets during the day. One of the drawbacks of remote work is workers tend to overwork, or not set parameters on their work time. One way to maintain healthy mental breaks is to take a quick 15-20 minute walk with the pup, or play with the cat. This will give you some mental and physical space before returning to your schedule.
Prepare pets for Deep Work time
Yes, pet breaks are great, but just remember that when we take a break, it can take us up to 30 minutes to refocus our work. Cal Newport advocates for Deep Work periods where you cut yourself off from all distractions so you can engage in the kind of thinking and focus that produces game-changing ideas or projects that value much higher than busy-work tasks.
So if you really need to focus for extended periods of time, make sure your pets are provided for and won’t interrupt you. If you can, close your office door. Or give the pets some toys or treats. Or ask a family member or neighbor to help out by pet-sitting for a few hours.
Mute yourself on video or phone calls
I personally adore pets—especially dogs—so they really can’t annoy me that much. But there are times on calls where someone’s dog is barking so much others can’t hear or concentrate. In this case, it’s probably best to mute yourself (good call etiquette anyway), tend to the dog, or move to a new, quieter location. During this time of everyone adjusting to working from home, patience is a virtue when it comes to pet interruptions. So if you hear the occasional bark, just know your coworker is doing their best to not be a distraction for the team and make adjustments as needed.
Share the adorable love
As the cute Thoughts of Dogs post above mentions, dogs can be great for boosting morale. So if you need some cheering up and want to share some of it with peers, go ahead and bring your furry friend on camera for a bit. If it’s a serious conversation that requires focus, the pets can wait. But otherwise, feel free to keep them nearby to provide some visual comfort and stimulation to your team mates or clients.
I’d love to see photos of or stories about working from home with your pets. Please send them to me and share your favorite tips for working remote with your furry friends.
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