Working from home - Day 11
Tags: watercooler, remote, webdev, development
Published: 2020-03-29 13:07:48

---
title: Working from home - Day 11
published: true
description: Continuous journey of working from home due to COVID-19 outbreak at the world. This is my journey, my challenges in trying to be productive and completely changing my work habits from office first to remote first. 
tags: watercooler, remote, webdev, development
cover_image: https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/shysenyjfjbuikwf7v3d.png
series: working from home
---

## General

Surprisingly, on Thursday, 26th March 2020, things changed completely. Somehow my wife and I were in a really good flow. 

Our daily plan (share in the [previous post](https://dev.to/fokusman/remote-work-journey-day-10-2aoc)) more or less worked very well. I realized somehow that even as a family, we are group and could end up in the same group dynamic phase Tuckman first defined.

I enjoyed the time with the kids, we played and laughed a lot. As the weather wasn't that nice as whole family we went for a short walk, bought 2-3 things from nearby turkish supermarket and went home. 

I still feel the need for at least one short walk per day. All in all, it was the first really good remote (wfh) day over almost 2 weeks.

## Work

No Meetings. And it was GREAT! I finished a small task of getting rid of a pinterest integration and it's waiting to be live soon. So far the data is also showing that on a day2day basis there is not much traffic expect 3-5 spontaneous peaks of some stylists. I guess these are newly hired ones which are some marketing.

We have an Employee Ressource Group (ERG) program and together with 3 co-workers, I co-created the Muslim Community Network ERG to organize and empower especially Muslim co-workers. Beginning of 2020 was already successful for our small group and luckily we organized a Kick-Off event one day before the whole company moved to remote. More about [Zalando's Initiatives](https://corporate.zalando.com/en/company/celebrating-diversity-promoting-inclusion)

Due to Corona, we can't meet in person or plan any event, yet we started doing weekly check-ins so we have some chat about corona, our muslim community and their conspiracy and why germans buy so much toilet paper 😂

## TIL

This time it's a non-technical learning about Tuckman's [group theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_development).

My hypothesis is that also as a family, we have similiar stages:

- **Forming:** As a family, you will regularly have this stage. When you marry, when you finish studies, when you both start a career or become parents. These days, it's surviving Corona pandemic and still be able to take care of kids, family and job. The stretch.

- **Storming:** The state we are more or less in. `This stage often starts when they voice their opinions and, as a result of this, a conflict may arise between team members as power and status are assigned.` (Wikipedia) So yes, we had conflicts as everyone is raising voices. I think we are still in this stage for some time because over the weeks, the whole family dynamics will change. 

Other stages are **Norming** and **Performing**. I hope that at the end of this whole `experiment` we will end up in a Norming or Performing state as a family.

Take care, #stayHome and [#washYourHands with Lyrics](https://washyourlyrics.com/)