For as long as our firm has been around, we’ve almost always had at least one person working remotely. All of us started our careers in the Denver office, but as spouse’s jobs pulled people to different places, we have adapted to having a more dispersed team. Because of this, we were in many ways well prepared for the current situation.  (See our other blog about our work-from-home infrastructure.)

Because several of us have spent years working from our homes all day every day, we’ve tapped into our expertise to prepare these tips for those of you who are newer to the ongoing work from home experience. Working from home can be hard. It can be especially hard if you didn’t get to plan for it and are potentially also caring for (hiding from?) children while at home. However, since we may be working at home for a while, what can make it easier? Whether you are working from a beautiful home office or from your kitchen table while watching your kids, here are some things that have been helpful for us and might be helpful for you. And if you do end up having one of those days where you can’t remember if you showered, you ate peanut butter straight from the jar, etc., remember that tomorrow is another day.

Like most Coloradans, I’ve been checking the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment’s COVID-19 case counts webpage daily. And as a Gen Xer, I was struck by the proportion of cases among those of us in our 40s and 50s, which seemed higher than I’d expected based on the size of our cohort in the population. So, I grabbed Colorado’s 2020 population data from DOLA and made this graph. As I’d thought, Gen Xers have more than our share of COVID-19 cases, though so does everyone over age 30. Compared to older groups, there are way fewer cases among young people aged 0 to 19, and just slightly fewer for people in their 20s.

Usually the Decennial Census is an exciting time for survey nerds. First, we get a wealth of new population data to use for our projects. Additionally, we learn how well any new data collection methods used by the Census worked. Plus, it’s just a really impressive survey effort. It’s available in more than 50 languages!

But beyond helping with survey methods, why is the Census so important? Sure, it’s nice to know how many people live in an area, but is it that critical? Actually, the Census provides invaluable data that determines all sorts of things, from Congressional representation to federal funding. Many organizations from all different sectors (e.g., private businesses, public government, local nonprofits, etc.) use Census data to plan. For example, it can help people decide whether a new elementary school should be built in a neighborhood, whether a new store would likely thrive in a new location, whether you should offer your programming in another language at your nonprofit, etc.

However, even before COVID-19 was ramping up in the US, the Census was already a bit behind in preparing for the Decennial Census. The printing was initially delayed, and they also were behind in their hiring goals for Census workers. But now COVID-19 has thrown a huge wrench in how the Census normally collects data, which might impact its accuracy. For example, normally college students are counted in their dorms, but with a significant portion of them finishing the year via online classes, the Census has had to change their approach. Additionally, the Census normally sends field workers to the homes of people who have not responded to the mailings. So far, those operations are suspended through the end of the month, and they may need to be delayed further.

If you’re like us, you’ve received ~1,000,000 emails from seemingly every organization in the world at this point with a subject line like “COVID-19 Update” or “How we’re supporting you during the coronavirus outbreak”

Using our qualitative analysis software, we thought we’d have some fun analyzing the language being used in these COVID-19 update emails. So, we analyzed the emails from 80 organizations across a range of sectors and industries to see what we might learn. This analysis is by no means intended to be representative of entire industries, but it does give us some insight into the messages being prioritized by organizations during this unprecedented time.

We grouped the emails into the following categories, then analyzed the text for the most frequently used words across each category:

1. Overall, capturing the most frequently used words across all 80 organizations (word cloud above)
2. Purpose-driven organizations, including education, cultural, and government organizations
3. Hospitality, transportation, and travel, including airlines, hotels, and transit
4. Food and retail
5. Health and wellness, including medical and exercise
6. Pet-related, including retail and veterinary
7. Market research, including vendors, associations, and our COVID-19 update
8. Financial institutions
9. Media and entertainment

For each category, we provide the set of organizations included in the analysis, as well as a word cloud with the most frequently used words by those organizations in their COVID-19 update email. Words mentioned more frequently are shown in larger fonts.  The location and color of words are simply for clarity in reading. Words that are obvious to such messages, like “coronavirus” and “COVID-19,” were removed from the analysis. Words that share the same root, such as “continue, continuing, continuously,” are counted together. The number of organizations studied in each category is indicated in parentheses.