uh hi kanchan nice to have you and thank you for making hi thank you for making time today for this interview and as we as i know that you have been working for last 30 year and major part of the these 30 years you have been working from home so what message do you have for working women and also keeping in mind how working from home could be a challenge for women especially over to you content yeah thanks people nice nice to be able to talk here in this forum i just you know like you said it's been 30 years and 18 of that has been working from home and it's you know it's been a transition trying to get comfortable early uh comfortable with that whole working from home environment it hasn't been easy it wasn't the easy journey i started doing this when nobody else knew what working from home meant and what it was it was definitely a big challenge for the family to get adjusted to my needs i remember that the week used to go by i hadn't seen people i had to learn how to you know i always was trying to listen to a voice and trying to associate a voice with a face and a name because i couldn't see people at that point we were only doing these meetings over uh phone conferences so it was and then you know establishing relationships with people we had never seen and then being able to get that level of confidence from them that you can you can do your job and you can manage the needs of the business working from home you know you have to establish all of that so that was in itself enough of a challenge but then then the whole set up from working from home from the home side was interesting enough because you know you when you're working from home the assumption is that hey you're available to do all the chores or you're able to go pick up the kids or do all of that so building up all of that was you know uh that was a journey that i went on and then i remember my fridays when it came to fridays when i you know and i was ready to say okay let's get out of the house guys you know i'm done with the week and then everybody else used to come home was like friday it's time to stay home we don't want to come out right so it was super challenging because our expectations were not aligned so it it took a while for me to get the hang of it but some of the things that i feel like you know really helped me get through the initial stages was structure and routine and what i did and i till today in the 18 years i still do today no matter what time my meeting is whether it's morning or 6 30 in the morning or 5 a.m in the morning i used to go into the office go into my room where i used to work all dressed up makeup and clothes and shoes and everything ready like i'm going to work that routine kind of helped me make me feel that i was going into the office made me feel that you know i was ready to be productive and it showed in the work that i did that helped a lot from a work standpoint from a family standpoint it was it took time and it's today that you know everybody comes back and tells me now we realize what you struggled through and how hard it was for you but it's not easy and especially in the pandemic as everybody else is getting you know getting used to this idea i think you know it it it is definitely a journey that we are all embarking on and you know don't be disappointed if it takes a while to establish that rhythm where you and your family and everybody else and your work people feel start to feel comfortable that you know it's working it's a journey so just enjoy the journey and keep keep at it uh thank you and it was an awesome tip because it directly hit the like you know point you know for me since i am also working from home that you know have a structural routine dress up fully well and treat it as a normal working day and the challenge you know it's a journey we need to kind of rediscover ourselves um so further in the same line you know since uh we are talking about women um so sometimes i feel that you know women take a backseat considering they are managing home and expectations around you know their role as a homemaker and working in the work life they take a backseat they don't lean in they kind of you know take it easy so would you like to advise something about how they could challenge themselves more to grow in career so a few of the things that you know i have done and i can only talk about from my experience that what i would what worked for me and everybody's different so not everything works in the same manner but my recommendation my my some of the things that i struggled with initially was just the whole trying to balance everything trying to make sure that just because i was working from home on a phone line behind nobody would see me that i wasn't forgotten that you know i was visible out there in my work environment for people to see you know what i was contributing and you know be able to communicate my point of view and be able to be heard right so to and again all of this happening we thought before the pre webex days and we pre-zoom days so things that really i i kept reminding myself and i told my fellow uh friends as well as you know i always had this mantra which i live by and i tell my girls this too is you know always be be ready to be outside your comfort zone if you're in your comfort zone whether you're at home or at work you want you know you'll struggle you'll not be able to grow if you can get yourself outside your comfort zone be able to express how you feel what your point of view is you know whether you like or dislike or you know whether something that you see or something that you worked on needs to be out there have the confidence to be able to talk about it and you know get step outside of that zone where you say oh no no it's i've done it it's good enough right you know be able to take credit for what you've done and be able to have the confidence that no matter whether you cut it doesn't come out right at least you've taken a first step towards expressing yourself you'll only get better over time so my suggestion is for women whether it's at home whether it's at work just be comfortable being outside your comfort zone challenge yourself okay yeah that's well said basically we should challenge ourselves and whatever we are doing we should do a little bit more kind of you know bring out yep and i think there's one other thing that i'd like to add like some things that worked for me and i was uh thinking about that right so for me working from home i had in-laws living with me i had my husband who traveled the world every three weeks and then i had two young girls and then i had a very demanding job and things that i realized i ended up doing was to be able to get time for me it was important for me to prioritize me time to be able to build you know factor in some uh some kind of workout and then i decided that what since i'm working from home i'm saving on gas and dry cleaning i said i can put that money into getting some household so getting some house help really made it easy for me where you know i wasn't just stressing out over everything i was being able to balance you know and put my prior i had my priorities which was you know i wanted to have time with the girls or be able to work out i tried to you know de-prioritize going out and eating out and got some help from outside and used my money there so that i could balance everything so again we all have to always evaluate what's priority for us and how do we want to make that priority uh make sure that we know what's important and what's prioritized for us we need to figure out a way to work make that work for us and everybody needs to go through that journey themselves to figure out what's more important and what are you willing to give up to go get that what's important to you thank you so much for sharing your insights and i can summarize you know one you said is challenge yourself by stepping out of comfortable comfort zone be comfortable outside your comfort zone challenge yourself and the other one is to figure out on your journey what's re-prioritize you know have outside help with the household chose so that you know you can relax so that is equally important and this has been amazing talking to you kanchan thank you so much and we will catch up some other time again thank you for giving me the opportunity appreciate that i love you bye-bye thanks cheeto thank you
