Hello, good evening! My name is Omagari from mgn Co., Ltd. In this article, I would like to share with you five things that my husband and I, who work remotely under the same roof, have devised to work with mutual respect.
Our situation
I am a web engineer and I live with my husband, who is also a web engineer.
My husband and I worked as web engineers at the same company and switched to remote working after the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. After that, I moved to mgn and I am still working remotely.
Problems that arose when we switched to remote work
For a while after the switch to remote work, we were both working at the dining room table with laptops. We also used a makeshift headset with a pin microphone to participate in meetings.
The biggest inconvenience was when we were in separate meetings. It was difficult to concentrate on the meeting I was in because I could hear the other person’s voice up close and direct. Even though we were using a pin microphone, I was also concerned about my voice getting into the other person’s microphone. As a result, when meetings overlapped, I would move to another room only at that time. It was difficult to continue working in a separate room that was not a suitable place to work, so it was slightly stressful to have to move each time.
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Problems caused by the change of employer
My husband and I initially cooked and ate lunch together at set times, and I would cook and eat dinner with her in the evening.
When my place of work changed, my work hours changed. At that time, we also had separate workplaces, which made it difficult for us to keep track of each other’s schedules and to feel that we might have to work overtime because of an emergency response. For lunch, it became difficult to know when the other person could take their lunch break, and it became difficult to timetable. For dinner, I had to force myself to leave work and start cooking, but the other person often had a hard time finishing work, and I felt bothered that I wanted to work a little more too.
Five things I’m trying to work out
A number of other minor problems emerged, so we discussed them with each other and improved the work environment.
Here are five things that had a big impact on us.
Separate spaces to work.
This is a key point that we improved early on. We now have and use separate work rooms for each other. It was difficult to get the rooms ready. But I think it is an inevitable aspect of living together and working remotely together. If it is difficult to set up separate spaces at home, co-working spaces may be a good option.
At first, I thought I could work the same way as when I go to the office. But I don’t have a meeting room at home. In the office, when you have a meeting, you move to the conference room, right? What if you don’t move and they are talking next to you all the time? And in the case of online meetings, you can’t hear the person you’re talking to and it feels like you’re listening to yourself the whole time. It’s worrying, isn’t it? Such situations inevitably arise.
So what about using earplugs? I used to work remotely using earphones for a while, but first my ears started to hurt, which led to headaches. The same logic applies to earplugs. I think it is not a good means of long-term use.
I would recommend separating the rooms to maintain concentration and to avoid losing productivity.
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Other advantages were that it was easier to switch on and off the work switch and to prepare a space in which you are comfortable working.
However, it is also true that there are limits to what an individual can do. There are cases where it is just not feasible to have individual work rooms at home. It may also depend on whether the company will pay for the use of the co-working space, or if you cannot work outside the home because the company-loaned computer is a desktop. It may be a good idea to consult the company once.
Eat lunch as you like.
We have stopped eating lunch together. It sounds like a lonely thing to do, but it’s easier because I no longer feel like I have to time it and feel guilty when I can’t.
We both eat what we like at the time we like. By what I like, I mean that I prepare what I eat. We don’t make things for the other person. Neither of us is that particular about food, so we keep it really simple. I eat cup noodles and pizza exclusively, and my husband eats various kinds of retort pouch meals and pasta in rotation on different days of the week. Sometimes we even eat leftovers from holidays.
It has also been a pleasant miscalculation to feel the happiness of “eating what I like”. When you become a family, you usually eat the same thing at every meal, don’t you? I am someone who really, really likes pizza and would like to eat pizza for every meal every day, but of course my husband doesn’t. When I asked him, I found out that he actually doesn’t like it that much. Sad. I also love junk food like cup noodles, American dogs and French fries. This is also the case with my husband… Sad. Even if it is good once in a while, we can’t eat together as a family meal as often as we like, just what I like. When we ate the same food as a family for lunch and dinner, I was craving for pizza. What if this meant that I could eat one meal a day of my choice? I am happy to be able to eat pizza more often.
But maybe only if the food I like is not expensive. A sirloin steak every day or something like that would be tough on the family budget. Incidentally, the pizza I frequently eat is Seven Premium Pizza Margherita, which costs 429 yen for four pizzas; I eat three pizzas in one meal, so about 315 yen (at the time of writing). I don’t think the average person eats three pizzas, so it’s even cheaper. Value for money! I can tolerate the golden Margherita because I can eat two pieces per meal.
Finally, we only eat together at McDonald’s when they have a limited-time-only hamburger, on a set date and time. It’s not something we’ve decided to do, but after repeating it a few times, it’s become a regular pattern. It’s not that often, and it’s a good opportunity for communication.
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Let’s make sure that anyone can cook dinner at night.
I have stopped making dinner myself, and have decided that the person who finishes work earlier should make it. We also started ordering meal kits so that anyone can cook.
Until then, I managed everything about what to make and what was needed, and I made sure that I made it. When we discussed with my husband how we could improve the situation, we discovered that because he couldn’t keep track of these things, he couldn’t help even if he wanted to. This is what is called ‘gentrification’.
So, I should manage the ingredients and only share the recipes in advance, but that was not the case either. You know, this recipe that I make on Thursday is the last recipe that uses onions, so I want to use all the remaining half-balls, right? Or that this ingredient in this recipe that I’m making on Friday should be replaced by this ingredient that I have left over. It is difficult to communicate all those irregularities, and it is also difficult to remember them all.
It’s easy for everyone to understand the recipe and what to use, and it’s also easy because I make it after work. After trying different options, our family decided to use a meal kit delivery service.
We use a service called Yoshikay. When you order, the food for the day is delivered every day (Saturday’s food is delivered the day before). You can also rent a delivery box, so you don’t have to worry if you can’t receive the food during the day due to meetings or other reasons. Recipes are delivered as an order form, which can be left in the kitchen, and then anyone can cook dinner using the ingredients delivered that day. The ingredients can be used up that day, so there is no surplus.
Before that, I used Pal System’s 3-day quick meal set for a bit. This is not a daily delivery, but a three-day supply of food delivered all at once. There were a few ingredients that were not used up, and especially vegetables and seasonings were often left over. I was not good at thinking of menus, so I could not make good use of the leftover ingredients. Also, the fact that it was only for three days meant that I had to think about the rest of the days’ meals, which didn’t suit me. If you like to cook or like to think about your menu, the pal system might suit you better.
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Set a date to shop and share what you buy.
I used to arrange dates and go shopping with them when I needed to. I basically managed what we bought. Since COVID-19 pandemic and the decision to refrain from unnecessary outings, we have set our shopping days to twice a week, on a fixed day of the week and at a fixed time. We also decided to share our shopping list. This turned out to be a surprisingly good device.
The reasons are similar to those discussed in the section on food. There is no need to coordinate dates each time and the items that need to be bought are shared. We have a set date and time to shop, so we coordinate our work so that we are both free at that time. If one of us is unable to go shopping, we know what we need to buy, so we can buy what we need alone.
The shopping list is managed using Alexa – we have an Amazon Echo in the living room, so we can add it by saying ‘Alexa, add 00 to the shopping list’ or manually from our smartphones. We have created Amazon accounts for each other as family accounts, so we can share the same lists.
One disadvantage is that you can’t target the day’s special offers. Also, depending on what you buy, twice a week may not be enough. We order meal kits, so I think this also means that we have to eat less often. Please discuss this with your partner.
Let’s keep in mind that overtime and emergencies are mutually beneficial.
Finally, I would like to talk about mentality. Although we have tried to prevent the work from becoming a personal responsibility, there will inevitably be times when you will feel like you are the only one who has to do it. For example, you may not leave work after having promised to do so, or you may be left alone to deal with an emergency.
(Unless, of course, they are working overtime because they are playing games under the guise of working overtime, or because they are playing all the time during the workday and not getting any work done! (Laughs) If it is really work, accept that you have no choice. If you get angry there, the reaction will come back to you one day when you do overtime yourself. In the end, get over it by separating it from the housework that one of you has to do, and then do something else to relieve the stress. I sometimes get over it by doing things like mental unification. I am sure my husband does the same.
Summary: Talk it over and make the work environment a little more suitable for you both.
Although we have presented five innovations, these are not the right answers. As we have mentioned in each of them, depending on you and your partner’s situation, these could be incorrect. They just happen to be innovations that work for us.
If you are both working remotely at the moment and are unhappy with your work environment, please talk to us about it. Instead of asking them to fix their dissatisfaction, consider introducing something to solve their dissatisfaction and you may find a good solution.
May you and your partner find it easier to work together!
