As someone who developed their career from the comfort of their bedroom, I always find it very interesting to see people all over the world from different cultures experiencing the same basic issues with this kind of work set up.<p>I absolutely loved working from my bedroom for years. It was great (despite the common down falls like the ones listed here). My family used to make fun of me at parties and seasonal celebration "OH YOU'RE NOT IN YOUR PAJAMAS TODAY", but joke was on them after a couple of years - I was making 5 to 10 times what they were per year, and I was waking up at 8:50am with no commute.<p>I eventually ended up investing in building my own "detached" office in the back yard - a dedicated space set up for working. This was by far the best thing I ever did. It created a visible boundary between home and work life, and I still didn't have to commute or work in any clothes other than my pajamas the majority of the time.<p>I couldn't image going back to a bedroom now. But even more so, I can't imagine how painful it is for people to sit in traffic every day, stressing they might be late, burning money on fuel and their car, and waking up earlier than they really should.<p>It's pretty reasonable to think you might spend $100 a week on a commute straight out of your own pocket. That money is gone forever. Now consider if you invest that money over 30 years in some low to medium risk areas and average 10 - 15% per year. That's a healthy addition to your retirement fund of around $1,500,000, plus a good amount of extra sleep.<p>EDIT: Okay 15% is maybe a bit hopeful and lucky. But still 7 - 10% will make a difference in your retirement.
> Buy a whiteboard and write the goals for the day on it, for instance<p>As a solo dev the biggest productivity booster for me, from a physical and mental aspect, was purchasing a whiteboard. It honestly feels like some sort of hack. Prior to having one I would use pen and paper but that didn't quite scratch my itch - if I made a mistake I would have to scribble it out and that space was now wasted. I can't quite explain why but on a whiteboard my brain juices just flow. Made a mistake? Wipe it off. Need more space? Wipe it off (or purchase additional whiteboards).<p>My high school maths teacher once said something that has stuck with me since - "When you're stuck on a problem, start fresh on a blank piece of paper." - he must've meant a whiteboard ;)
When people envision working from home, it seems that "wearing pajamas" is a common trope.<p>That is not a good idea.<p>The thing about clothes is that they're part of a routine. I.e. I wake up, make some tea, put some fresh clothes on, turn on my computer, and now I'm in work mode. Ideally. In practice it doesn't always work like that, but it's still far better than waking up and just sitting down in front of my computer. Having a routine is really important for not getting lost.<p>They don't have to be business clothes or whatever, but just something fresh for the day. I'm the sort of nerd that wears chinos and a button up shirt even though I work from home and don't have video calls.<p>---<p>In addition, blurring work and personal life isn't good. You ideally don't want to work in the same room that you sleep, but this can't be avoided sometimes.<p>Variety is also key. Sometimes I go out and get work done from a local cafe for a change of pace.
Sometimes I have unproductive <i>weeks</i>. It can be hard to overcome the miasma by refactoring code or picking favourites.<p>I have found the easiest way to get out of the funk is to start making Todo lists of my life. Get the things out of the way that are bothering me or need to be done as a priority and then slowly chip away at it.<p>Productivity isn't something you can hack. There is a maximum that you can do without sacrificing the quality of your work, and your goal should be to maximize quality, not to plan your day out in five minute intervals, that's a great way to burn out.
I have switched from working in bedroom, to working in a dedicated office, to working in a co-working space, to working from home in a dedicated office.<p>1. Working from the bedroom is hell. It's fun for the first few months but then you are likely to have severe eye strain and become very sleepy.<p>2. Working from a real office sets boundaries and forces a schedule. You have to wake up at xx:xx time and drive to office. But traffic for a downtown area is hell, so is finding a parking spot, finding a reasonable place to eat, etc... After a while, I got bored of the fact that there is little human communication since I was alone in the office. Also, I thought about all the time I wasted commuting to the office.<p>3. Working from a co-working space was a boost for the first 2-3 months then downhill. I need multiple monitors, my own whiteboard, where to put stuff, etc... It's not very sustainable. And everyone seeing what you were working on was not really for me.<p>4. Working from a dedicated office in my apartment was a good change; but after 1.5 years, I feel like I have become super-lazy to do any going outside and more likely to instead go to the bedroom for a quick nap.<p>I'm thinking now of renting an office but instead in the residential area I live in (think 2-5 minutes drive, 10 max). That should be the best of both worlds; though my only concern is that the residential area is super sleepy and it might affect my mood.
> You would think that the more time you spend working, the more results you produce.<p>No, if you are a remote worker who sits at a desk and forces yourself to work at specific times solely because you feel you should be working, you are doing it wrong.<p>Go the other way. Figure out what times naturally work best for you, and work at those times. If you are sluggish in the afternoon, take breaks. Work early mornings, late nights. Go spend time with kids if you have them. Then sit down and work while they spend an hour at a friends house after dinner.<p>If you are remote, you should not be spending more time working. You should be working less hours, but more effectively.
Probably echoing something that's already been said here, but my number 1 advice to being high performing from your bedroom is _don't_ work from an actual bedroom. There's a psychological baggage of being in the room that you sleep in that shorts circuits the part of your brain dedicated to being up an active. It's not always possible but if there is another room with a flat surface in your home, do anything to make that your distraction free workstation. Did wonders for my productivity.
I personally hate working from home, and will only do it if there are reasons I can't work somewhere else, such as needing to be home for a plumber or being sick. I'd rather work anywhere else, whether that's an office, a library, or even a cafe.<p>My house is my sanctuary, it's my safe space where I can retreat back to after a day of work. I put a high priority on keeping my work life and my personal life separate. I won't work on weekends unless it's an emergency (I'm also usually not sober enough to work for those 48 hours anyway, even if the called).
> And most importantly, turn off your WhatsApp and Instagram notifications on your phone.<p>This one thing will make you high performing software developer working from anywhere in the world.
I've been a remote employee for 10 years now (plus 4 being a freelancer) and I've tried every productivity hack under the sun and the only thing that has worked for me is: do meaningful work.
> Refactoring usually is not going to be as tasking as working on a new feature<p>Maybe if you wrote the entire codebase yourself just a week ago so everything is still fresh in your memory.<p>In most real-world situations that is not the case, and refactoring becomes a careful task that leads to regressions even with testing in place.
For me 2 things helped to overcome the "drag" work:<p>- I only work from one place in my house, and it's not the bedroom. It's a dedicated desk. I do not work from anywhere else, and I don't do anything other than work at that desk.<p>- When I need to work on something boring, I set the time on my Apple watch to 1 hour, and get to work. When the timer is done, whether the work is done or not, I take a break.<p>In rare cases where I need to keep track of a ton of stuff, I haven't found anything better than a spiral bound notebook.
I'm single dad with 3 young kids and I would never change from working from home. After leaving the kids at daycare in the morning, I come home and quickly clean up the house. I do stuff like meal prep and laundry in pauses during the day. I spend quality time with my kids in the evening instead of doing chores. When they go to bed, I can relax, read a book and workout. I don't know how I would do any of this with 1-2 hours of commute.<p>In term of productivity, I'm more productive at home without the distraction of a workplace. I don't have any special setup. Just a laptop really. Not even headphones. I have a nice office space setup in my basement with a whiteboard and an extra monitor but I rarely use it. I'm more often working from the kitchen or living room.<p>I still love going to the workplace (or another place) from time to time. There's no substitute to interacting with people in real life.
> <i>The best thing to do in that situation is to accept the fact that you are not feeling in the zone. But the solution is not to give in into that feeling and start binge watching NetFlix either</i><p>Ah I disagree, as a sample side of one.<p>I tried pushing through for a while and doing a small amount of work / refactoring, but it didn't really click.<p>Finally decided to try not working on the days I wasn't in a groove, and have found that if I do, I have much better ideas and crank out a massive amount of work over the next couple days until I wake up feeling out of the zone.<p>Most people would probably benefit from not having a 2 day block weekend, but rather having downtime on say Sunday and Thursday. In the same way athletes have staggered rest days.<p>I'm lucky enough to have a job where I can do this, but it was also a semi-requirement during my last job search.
I work remotely and I agree with everything here except the title: don't work from your bedroom, have a dedicated space for it at home even if it's part of the living room. If you can afford a separate room for it, do that instead.
To those who have invested time in making a "task breakdown table":<p>Have the benefits of contextualizing your short-term goals outweighed the cost in time it takes to make the table for small tasks?
High-paid developers do not typically do "Finalize the columns of the Users table" kind of tasks. Typically, you have a set of complex products, and spend your days in reviewing designs and defining product requirements. The kind of tasks in this article is for beginner devs, and these rarely work fully unsupervised, hence pajama work is off the table
Working from home is my natural mode for the last 20 years. I use basement so privacy/distraction is not a concern. So far works just fine for me. I own/co-own couple of companies but no other employment. I mainly develop and maintain/sell/lease my own products and do the same thing as a consulting gigs for other companies.
For years I have worked remotely. And I think that I was more productive these days than when work regulary. All these advices I saw here, in my opinion are rubbish. Just sit down and do your work, all you need is your PC , pen and notebook. If you have difficulties to work in such manner change your job.
The API example seems a bit weird once you learn about API generators such as API Platform (Symfony), which basically generates the whole thing the author talks about in a couple of commands.<p>Learning the right tools is an important part of being a high performing dev.
Nowadays I find it more important to define what "high performance" means to me and enjoy it when it happen by itself instead of forcing myself into a scheme while destroying my health and happiness.<p>Sometimes for me the KPI is digging deeper than anybody else can and solve a real root cause issue. Sometimes it means simply not being in zombie mode in the evening (i.e. yes, actually working less). Sometimes it means finding something that may be less efficient but everybody can agree and do together.<p>In each of these cases having the right kind of tea and tea cup at hand is much more important than training the best scheduling techniques. ;-)
This is very unrealistic. Real life is, I will be constantly disturbed by slack, email, meetings, people petting on my shoulder. Other than all these, I probably can have 1 or 2 hours a day to concentrate on the actual development
I'm a college student and do most of my work from my dorm room, which is also where I sleep, eat, and socialize. For me, lighting is the main thing that helps me differentiate "work mode" from not-work mode. I have a video light mounted above my desk and a couple of bright 5600k plant lights in my window, all of which are on a light timer, in addition to my desk lamp. When I do work during the day, my desk is very well-lit. At night all of these get turned off (sometimes I turn the video light back on but set it to a much warmer color temperature and lower brightness for ambiance).
Everyone is different so this is only a "maybe think about this" tidbit and not advice:<p>I carved about 100sqft out of the corner of my bedroom for an office. And it worked well for a while. But I eventually found that I needed complete separation between home and work. I found myself always kind of at work and not sleeping as well.<p>So I moved my office into a basement room. The view isn't as nice but there's a concrete concept of leaving the office, shutting the door, and that's that. And now my bedroom is for sleeping (or sometimes building a fort).
I have been very lucky in that I’m completely flexible for working at home (in my study) or the office. I can say with certainty that I’m more productive (on average) at home than in the office. However, something I never imagined would be the case became reality:<p>I enjoy going into the office more. I simply miss the social aspect and the ability to chat about difficult problems in a break out space.<p>There’s definitely something to be said about the desire or dream of working from home and the reality of what your personality prefers.
Is there a reasonably priced VESA-monoitor-arm attachable whiteboard out there? Something like this[1] that's cheaper, or should I just build my own?<p>[1] <a href="https://www.ergotron.com/en-us/products/product-details/98-408#/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ergotron.com/en-us/products/product-details/98-4...</a>
I experienced a dramatic positive impact changing my home work environment from a dark, cramped area to a bright, sunlit room. Similarly I found that my productivity is significantly better standing (queue standing desk.) What’s remarkable in this story is how long it took me to realize how important the environment is to how successful you are.
I'd love to work from home but can't seem to find any remote gigs. I've applied to quiet a few with little to no response. I get tons of responses from non-remote / relocation opportunities. Any secrets? this article doesn't mention how to find one effectively.
I always have a blocnote next to me which is basically one continuous checklist. New tasks that I think of go to the bottom with an empty checkbox on the left. Whenever I finish something, or a task becomes irrelevant I cross the checkbox. Works well for me.
This article had many good ideas for improving remote work, but I had to laugh at this:<p>> That is why funded startups and companies spend millions of dollars in a really good office environment.<p>The proliferation of open offices says otherwise.
Why are we sharing such click-baity articles that do nothing to accomplish what they promise? At best, it should be titled "2 self-evident tips for increasing productivity". Either way, anyone who has reached the age of 20 would have learned these from experience. Quite honestly, reading this goes counter to what the title promises. Not sure why this is ranking so high...
off-topic: I like how that agency is selling "Faster pages" / "just like this website hence resulting in lightning fast websites."<p>But sending 1.3MB over the wire for a super simple website :D
Not high performing enough to make sure your website shows something with javascript off? That's a freaking blog and all I see is a white blank page. Using React for a blog is kinda over-engineering it nope?
Here's another angle - not saying it's correct, just different.
Why would you want to perfect working from your bedroom?
It's ok to WFH for a while, but i would not recommend perfecting it long term.
As a human being you should be looking to interact and socialize with other humans, in person, as well - this makes us better humans, more empathetic, more understanding to the needs and pains of others.
> working from your bedroom<p>If you read your contract as a remote worker, they often say that you must work from a dedicated work room in your house, so not working from your bedroom. Not sure if there's some specific legal reason for that.