Dress for success

I have just finished my first week at my new job, which was a bit odd as I’m working from home right now. I decided at the start of the week that I would dress for work each day as if I was going into the office. Which, in a way, is what I was doing. It’s just that my office is in my cottage, instead of at the University of Aberdeen.

Normally when I work from home, I work in my pyjamas (mostly) and spend most of the day working from the couch on my laptop. That’s because I am normally working on a very specific task that allows me to do that. But right now, my days are filled with the (almost) full range of tasks and the best way to do that is to recreate an office environment.

Because of this, I have realised that, if I am going to succeed at working from home long-term, I need to treat my home office as if it is the office. That means that I need to keep to standard office hours in my actual home office, not on the couch. Just as I would if I were going into the “real” office. It is especially important for video meetings, as I want to make a good (virtual) first impression with my new colleagues.

Of course, I also know how easy it is to fall into bad habits. This is why I decided that I would share photos of my work wardrobe on Facebook each day. By doing that, I managed to create a ritual and an almost expectation that I will share a photo, which means that I have had to get dressed.

And so, I have dressed for success all week. I do admit that I wore leggings under my dresses and big fluffy slippers to keep warm, but other than that I was dressed as I would have been for the real office – including lipstick and jewellery! I further admit that I did change out of my office wear a bit earlier than 5 pm on the first couple of days because I was a tad too cold. (I will make changes to my office and wardrobe choices to address those issues next week.)

I shared several days ago that I have to put a couple of my 2020 goals on hold, which makes dressing for the home office more important. You see, one of my “soft goals” is to “dress for success” and I don’t want to have yet another delayed or deleted goal for the year. Because this is a soft goal, I don’t have any clear benchmarks to work towards. But I think that getting dressed every most days during the COVID19 lockdown. is a good step towards that goal.

Importantly, I have heard from others that they have enjoyed my week’s fashion parade. I had mentioned that I didn’t want to “bore” anyone with daily dress-up pictures, but one Facebook friend from The Homeland replied that everyone is home right now and that they need a bit of entertainment. So, I will do more Facebook fashion shows as time goes on. But not every day as my wardrobe isn’t that extensive! (I will be back at the charity shops searching for bargains as soon as it is safe to leave the social distancing and self-isolation practices behind.)

If you want to see what my first week’s office wear looked like, check out the photo gallery below!