Working from home is a blessing and a curse. If you can relate to me, you have trouble staying on task at times. You get easily distracted by the television. You find yourself accidentally popping open a new tab to search for new music to listen to. And, you find it all too easy to start scrolling through Facebook and Instagram…while you should be working. It’s nice to have more flexibility over your work, but believe me, there are many things that can make working remotely difficult as well.
One quarantined father, who was featured in a recently-posted video, shows us exactly what it’s like to work from home with continuous distractions. As much as he loves her, his biggest distraction while working from home is his adorable, social butterfly toddler. Now that many of us are working from home too, we definitely know how he feels.
In the relatable footage, the working father is working from his laptop in what looks like his home library or personal office space. He seems to be concentrating just fine, that is, until his little princess darts into the room to say hello and give him chocolate. No problem, right? Just giving Daddy a snack while he’s busy at work!
But then things start to get more intense. The toddler loudly plays with her toy train, comes in to say hello to her father again, asks Dad to pick up her stuffed bunny, and even asks to sit on her father’s lap while she rambles about the most random of things. She’s too cute!
Although the video is funny and something we can connect with personally, parts of the video nearly brought tears to my eyes. The little girl wants so badly to spend time with her father, but he knows he has to continue with his workday. But from her perspective, she felt like she was being ignored. The pout on his daughter’s face and her big, sad eyes broke my heart.
Maybe it’s not so much that people are distracting us as we work from home but that work is distracting us from interacting with the people who mean the most to us. If we all worked a little less, maybe we would find it easier to reconnect with what matters most in life: our loved ones.
Watch the video of the toddler and her father below. You’ll feel all sorts of ways: happy, empathetic, tickled, and maybe a bit sad. But most of all, it might just be the eye-opener you need to realize that most of us could use a better work-life balance.
