What do you do on a quiet wfh day?

[BakersKitchen]

My whole team including my boss seem to be on annual leave today and summer is a quiet time for us anyway. Altogether - not much to do!

Work-wise I have monitored my emails in case anything comes in (it hasn’t), so I have:

• done some life admin and made a few phone calls
• walked into town to get a few bits
• made my husband some lunch
• started on some baking I wanted to do at the weekend
• watched some of the series I’m watching

Anyone else had a quiet wfh day? What do you do with it? I always feel like you can’t actually take it “off” because you are meant to be working but I also don’t see the point in being chained to my desk when there’s not a lot going on.

I do as much housework as physically possible when I WFH. In fact I refuse to do any cleaning or washing unless it’s in work time.

I wouldn't have been able to any of those as I would need to be contactable on Teams, which was only on my work laptop.

Sorry to be a kill joy, but threads like this worry me. There is a big anti-wfh agenda out there, with lots of calls to be back in the office, and I can see this being picked up by certain news sites who hate working from home.

For me working from home is one of the best things that could have ever happened, but I worry it will be taken away for most of us in the near future if employers think people are doing housework and running errands on company time.

I absolutely agree with you.

My work was never so quiet that I had time to the stuff mentioned on here, apart from the odd spot of mumsnetting.

Cooking

Laundry

Jigsaws

Shopping

Exercise

Tidying up

Put 2 x washing on. Made dinner. Made a couple of craft items which I had been meaning to finish for ages. Completed all my mandatory training for work. Called TfL and sorted out a refund on my oystercard which Ive been meaning to do for 2 weeks now !
So yeah lifemin and some work catchy up stuff

They are clearly not... which is my entire point.
Any minute now there'll be a post complaining private sector workers are hard done by and public sector workers should be stripped of their gold plated pensions....

The OP has already explained this is not the 'norm'.

Some roles are purely reactive not proactive.

If you're waiting for someone else to do their 'bit', there is nothing to do.

Totally agree, it is endless. Never nothing to do, like ever! Just having lunch at 3.30pm.

Edited to add: public sector worker.

I work by billable hours. Nothing to bill means I’m not getting paid. So I might run some errands or do some chores, but unless I have a longer day sometime in the same pay period, my pay will be smaller.

a good quiet day is just one where I can focus on one work project without interruption.

When I'm having a quiet day I tend to tidy up/delete work emails and files/documents on the system, do some forward-planning. Things that I might struggle to do when it's busier. I only ever do house-related things before I start work, during lunchtime or when I finish work. I'm actually quite shocked at what some people on this thread report they are doing, if it's actually all true.

My job is reactive. My old job I WFH but had to be at my desk, also reactive - it was a call centre so no calls, nothing to do. I would usually read or use my phone as I was stuck at the desk

Public sector and there’s always something to do.

It may be my suspicious nature but there’s been a lot of these ‘I’m not doing much when I’m wfh’ threads recently.

Yep this exactly .

That's not a wfh issue you shouldn't have to make an effort to pretend to be working. ask your manager for more work

Same. I can see the news article now:

”Jigsaws, Christmas movies and baking: Mumsnetters reveal what they’re REALLY doing while ‘working from home’ “

Working from home is a privilege, and something that didn’t exist for most of us until a few years ago. Let’s not ruin it by giving the wfh haters something to get their teeth into and use as an excuse to demand everyone back to the office.

I use it doing housekeeping - deleting files no longer needed etc, odd jobs that I never quite have the time to do normally, look into something I need to brush up on, maybe chat to a colleague, learn something that might be useful to know.

Doesn't WFH mean Working From Home?

Just to keep in the spirit of the thread, I'm guessing 'housekeeping' here means work housekeeping, rather than er, keeping the house.

Wouldn't want to add any fuel to the flames

I’ve scrubbed my house from top to bottom and had 2 estate agents round to do valuations. It’s been a great day!

It’s 11:15am here and so far I have:

1. Met a friend for coffee (10-11am)
2. Sent one email

Left to do in the working day:

1. Send 2 more emails
2. Lunch out with DH
3. Get eyebrows done

I’ve learned to just enjoy quiet WFH days.

Filing
mandatory training
"voluntary" training - we have to do a minimum of 10 hours per year on personal development. There is an online library we have access to with plenty of good and interesting topics.
re-organising my emails
Improving some ancient spreadsheets
Preparing some IT tests

I may do more laundry and write a shopping list but no way I am out of the house or away from my desk for long.

At the moment a "quite day" comes once in a blue moon so I have plenty to keep me busy with the above on these ones.

I generally try to do CPD at the quiet times as I have a minimum amount I need to do each year due to my job. I am also a member of a external committtee (relating to my job) so its a good chance to read papers for that. I would occassionally nip out for errands during work time if it was urgent but am surprised at the number of peopke meeting friends for coffee etc.

Quiet work day here! I actually managed to catch up for once! Got loads done as no meetings

Shocked at some of these 😅

So many people taking the piss our of their employers on here.

On "quiet" days I always had a backlog of non urgent jobs to do.
If my Teams light showed me away from my desk for too long questions would have been asked. It was private sector BTW.