Three home-working tips from China

It’s now almost seven weeks since Chinese New Year’s eve, which for us marked the start of suddenly being forced to work from home. A big change from seeing each other at the campus every day. Here are three things on how we’ve coped, maintaining our sense of sanity and sense of togetherness.

1) Sharing daily to-do’s before & after the day

Divide your day’s work schedule into very clear goals. For example, 4 hours of class time and completing preparation for Lesson 5 of HSK3. After finishing the work every day, sum up and check the results of your work to see if it is completed and whether it is done well. Based on today’s work results, refine the work goals for the next day.

2) Mimic working life

Wash your hair every morning, put on beautiful makeup, and start working after preparing. Coffee, milk tea, things on campus, and work from home are also essential.

Draw a real or imaginary line in the room that marks the border of the living space & working area.

Find a place at home that is the most suitable office location, and according to your habits, prepare all the tools you need to work to create a comfortable and free, but binding work scene.

3) Facilitate casual moments into meetings

During each company meeting on Zoom, people would arrive early, and at the start we’d spend five minutes on casual chat. But this has to be facilitated, so we’d ask everyone things like: What’s your morning routine? What’s your favourite thing about colleague X? What’s a recent book you read?

Latest

Twenty-three years

Twenty-three years

In June we moved back to the Netherlands, six suitcases across 8000 kilometres, and after a brief spell at my parents’ place, we moved into our own home. This second move also involved putting down carpet, curtains, buying appliances and furniture — so that our new garage quickly filled with cardboard boxes and other packaging […]
August 29, 2026
Searching for meadows

Searching for meadows

Our new home in the Netherlands sits in a mundane residential area full of young families like ours. The street name comes from made (‘meadow’), still referring to a field that once lay here and now survives only in the name (just how the name Shanghai refers to a river that no longer exists). And […]
August 5, 2026
Degrees of wealth

Degrees of wealth

In eight years of living in China, taxi drivers or older colleagues loved to ask, “Which is better, the Netherlands or China?”, hoping for a single insightful answer that would explain everything. And now, back as a resident in the Netherlands, people ask the mirrored version: do I miss living in China? Neither question is […]
July 11, 2026
Goodbye to Guanyin

Goodbye to Guanyin

It’s a Saturday morning, and we’re in a taxi on the way to the airport. My clothes cling to my body and already reek of sweat, and that’s even before our 12-hour flight has started. Today I woke up at 5:30 to get up early and throw away the last furniture and items we used […]
June 30, 2026