Stay Home Stories, Part 1

Welcome, Home Office Mode

We don’t know if you feel the same, but we somehow thought of home office as the most chill and idyllic way of working. No coworkers that interrupt you, wearing your PJs all day long and doing your project management on your sofa. Well. Five days in and our perception slightly changed. 

Remote work, here we come 

Due to the Coronavirus and the measures taken by our government (which we’d sincerely like to thank for showing the kind of leadership that is needed in challenging times like these), we went to remote work mode last Friday. Meaning: we packed all the necessary things in our office (including our very important stock of sweets) and adapted ourselves and our homes to this new way of work. In the beginning this looked like an easy thing to do and we would really love to share how quickly we adapted to this new lifestyle. But let’s face it: In uncertain times nothing comes easy and as we at Female Founders truly believe that leadership needs to be authentic, we’d like to share how we really feel about the current situation and how we try to stay productive and healthy. 

What we really feel like

We’re confident to say that we’re all optimistic, future-oriented people who want to change things, who want to create, who challenge the status quo and who support others. Given the current circumstances, it feels like we’re being held back on the peak of our motivation and everything that was set for the upcoming months, is now being challenged or cancelled. And let’s face it: That feeling sucks. 

The good news is: We’re all in the same situation. In the last couple of days several people from the Female Founders community got in touch with us and shared their thoughts, fears and questions (thanks for your trust!). And although there is a lot of uncertainty and doubt, we still got the impression that there’s an incredible amount of hope, solidarity and support out there. And that’s exactly what will help us all to overcome this crisis. 

What we all can do 

Next to staying at home (and we really encourage everyone to do that), we came up with some ideas on how to support us as a team, our friends & families and you as our community. To share these ideas and to show you how this new way of life works out for us – and of course to hopefully entertain you a bit – we’re introducing the Female Founders #stayhomestories: 

On our blog, we’ll share weekly updates on

• how we adapt our new work routines
• how we’re progressing in terms of personal goals 
• the tools that we’re using to work remotely
• and maybe some fun stories (just maybe ;))

On Instagram we’ll share home stories from our team, friends of Female Founders and of course: your home stories which you can share with us by using the hashtag #stayhomestories and tagging us @femalefounders.global

Let’s get this started

We’re kicking this series off with the resolutions and routines the Female Founders team came up with. As mentioned, this is week number one and the plans are big. Stay tuned for updates on how things are going.

Catharina

With her background in the consulting industry, Catharina definitely has a strong interest in efficiency and optimizing things. No surprise that she’s using the time she’s saving on  transportation on more important things: Catching an additional hour of sleep and taking the time to kickstart the day with a vitamin c boost (hello soda lemon). To organize her day, she’s creating excel lists containing her to do’s and sorted according to priorities. Breaks from the desk work are again used very efficiently by going for walks – her goal is to walk at least 5km a day (and yes, she’s tracking it on her smartphone). If the afternoon low hits her hard – or if she wants to treat herself for being productive – chocolate or sweet stuff is her go to thing. 

Emely 

After some intense weeks working on our website and digital channels, Emely decided to turn quarantine into some well-deserved “me-time”. Following the saying “When we can’t focus on anything else, let’s focus on ourselves”, she started to establish some new routines like early morning or late evening runs (or other types of workouts). She even quit smoking (heavy support from the rest of the team 😉 and started to read more. Keeping a diary also became part of daily life, helping her to reflect. Her general approach to the current situation: Use the free time as an opportunity to reflect and find personal balance in this current state of imbalance. 

Lena

For Lena, this week is focused on adapting to the new situation and coming up with new routines. In terms of work she’s currently focusing on rather strategic topics, research and preparations for the third batch of our startup accelerator Grow F. To support her family & friends, she’s scheduling regular calls – especially with people who live alone. What’s definitely on her agenda for the upcoming weeks: doing sports on a regular base (running, workouts & yoga) combined with eating more junk food 😉 Her go-to workout: The Sally Challenge (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rACy-0g1CuY) which she tries to do every day. 

Lisa

Thanks to the intense last weeks, Lisa’s body decided faster than her mind to adapt to the lockdown mode. Meaning: she got sick (what an appropriate way to start quarantine). As this gave her some time to make plans for the upcoming weeks, she got pretty creative (and probably a bit too enthusiastic about what she’s going to accomplish). Currently on her quarantine-achievement-list: setting up a proper project management file (using https://www.notion.so/), doing the overdue book keeping (sing Hallelujah), setting up a proper schedule for her days including workouts and regular calls with her closest friends, improving her language skills and reading some books. And on the less productive side of life: she’ll re-start doing something she hasn’t done in years. If you want to guess what this might be: drop us an email 😉 The mystery will be solved in the upcoming blog post. 

Mirjam

With a baby girl at home, Mirjam’s days have mainly been focused around the little one in the last months – which is why she’s already somehow used to constant changes in her daily routines. One of the current highlights in her days: going for – at least a very short – walk around the block, where she’s observing that people start greeting each other (and yes, she’s living in Vienna ;). Also a very important part of her day: staying connected with her family to give them the chance to see the little one growing up. Thanks to technology, even in times of quarantine, the grandparents (and coworkers) can keep track of the little one growing up. 

Nina

It took her quite some days to adapt to the new situation. It has been shared on social media quite a bit – as many other people she also went through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. What helped her to get to the stage of “acceptance” was restructuring her day and getting into a more strict routine than usual. She is used to being very active, working at a coworking space, having many face to face meetings, having lunch with the Female Founders team or business partners and meeting friends for dinner / drinks or sports in the evening. Now her daily routine is clustered into work (duh!), where we switched to home office and daily video check-ins with the core team, followed by sports (online yoga classes for the win!) and studying. Yes, you’ve read that right. She recently enrolled at university to study art history. Usually, this would be an in-person program, but due to the current circumstances, her university also had to switch to home learning. She now spends her evenings deep-diving into iconography and historic architecture and found that’s a great way to switch focus and avoid checking news portals every five minutes. Apart from that, she tries to check in virtually with her friends – especially those living alone – and family on a regular basis, to make sure everybody is doing fine.

 Thanks for reading our first quarantine story, which was written wearing a jogging suit while sitting on the couch and being disrupted a couple of times by coworkers via Whatsapp, Slack and eMail <3