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?