There are so many of these work from home how-to articles because they're trendy, but almost never useful.<p>I worked from home for ten years, then back to the office for three, now back at home. I can tell you that what works for one person does not work for everyone.<p>For example, I am most productive in the morning, and wake up motivated and ready to work. For that reason, I don't take a shower until lunch, then use the afternoons to sort of wind-down with less productive things like meetings, reports, and such.<p>My father worked from home in the 80's. He was the opposite. He was better in the afternoon. Because of that, he had to force himself to take the mornings seriously. He did that by getting up every morning at 6am, doing the full getting-ready-for-the-office thing, and even went down to the corner store for coffee every day as a sort of "commute."<p>He would end up at 8am sitting in his home office in the laundry room in a full suit and tie ready for for the day, while I'm still in my sweatpants until after noon.<p>(Equipment-wise, from working home in the 80's was very different than it is today. Think a big desk with three rotary telephones, filing cabinets, a VFD calculator, and a Telex machine.)
You know, last week when we were starting to WFH I thought of it as a blessing in disguise since I always liked staying indoors and often take a day or two to WFH per week to focus on docs etc.<p>However, once everyone is WFH the experience turned out to be less than ideal to say the least. I found that I worked more, worked more at overtime hours and have been more stressed out than usual.<p>I think it really had nothing to do with my habits and preparedness. I already had everything set up (multiple displays, standing desk etc which I've had for a long time) and had almost no productivity drop on my side. However, now all my colleagues are pinging me, the video meetings take longer to finish since people are talking over each other and now I'm asked to write much more documentation and communications for rather trivial matters instead of just talking to someone face to face for a couple of minutes. People (management) also have less respect for normal work hours.<p>In the end I think if your company doesn't have the preparedness and more importantly the systems ready for remote work, you won't be ready for full remote work either.<p>I just hope people will begin to adjust to the new normal better as time goes on.
I read my wife the headline and we both thought of the same thing - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_DNpTMKXk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_DNpTMKXk</a> - which this article skips over completely. Disappointing.
Pretty decent list, as someone who's full-time remote let me add one more:<p>At the end of the day send your manager a quick email of what you did and things that happened. You shouldn't spend more than 5 minutes and there's never an expectation of a reply but it's a great way to fill them in and augment the in-person conversations that happen in the office.
My main problem with it isn’t so much productivity (if anything I’m possibly a little more productive). It’s more the isolation (not helped by the fact that my country is now closing everything down). The only person I’ve talked to in person since Wednesday was a supermarket cashier. Assuming this goes on for a few months I have serious doubts about my ability to stay sane.
TFA is loaded with good advice.<p>However, there's one thing missing: Track your time, say in 10-15 minute blocks, with short notes about what you're doing. That can be integrated with your calendar.<p>I consulted for many years, simultaneously for multiple clients with multiple projects, so that was essential for billing. But I can imagine that it'd also be useful if you're dealing with managers with little experience of working remotely.<p>The idea of videoconferencing from home creeps me some. It's a privacy issue. And I do love working in bathrobes. It's comfortable, and makes for less laundry.
Working from home for 6 years now.<p>What worked for me:<p>Sleep till noon<p>Checking mail/chats<p>2-4h creative work (design, coding, writing) interleaved with mail/chats if the flow won't hit<p>Checking Mail/chat<p><30h work weeks<p>only <4 meetings a month<p>See that you have to find time for work and not for life.
I really dislike video chat for full-time remote work. Video chat is still too lo-fi to approach the utility of in-person meetings and has the same downsides (grooming, dress, other appearance-based stereotypes). What's wrong with voice?!
> But please do not share your enthusiasm for the cat that looks like Garfield with everyone on the call.<p>This heavily depends on the company culture, tone of the meeting, participants, etc.<p>Basic savoir vivre still applies, interrupting someone to loudly admire a pet (or whatever) would simply be rude.<p>But if the discussion stalls and if it’s not a meeting about personnel reduction, I see no harm in saying that Mr Fluffy Paws looks especially nice today.
>Make sure you have a fixed schedule. Get up. Get ready. Do your job. Sign off.<p>This is the most important one. I sign on at 8:30, I sign off at 5:30, and I turn off my laptop and phone until 8:15 the next morning to give time to hook everything back up. No exceptions.I take a 1 hour lunch where I might continue a slack conversation but also do some yoga / Ring Fit.
I was making the typical hour trek from San Francisco to Mountain View for four years, every day. Decided to move away and started working remotely 100%.<p>Not having the eight hours back in my week was life changing. Habits, health, relationships have all improved.<p>It feels like there are always going to be roles, teams and companies that must work together face to face, if we can culturally shift away from going into an office, it could really improve quality of life for lots of people.<p>For many others it may hurt them as work is a big social outlet. That’ll have to be taken into consideration.<p>I think we’ll see a big shift culturally over the next year as much more of the public potentially gets used to what it’s like working from home, companies may find it really helps(or hurts) their bottom line.<p>This could end up hurting as productivity will be terrible if everyone’s distracted with news on covid and employers associate that loss due to being remote.<p>Ultimately, post-crisis, expectations around how people work will significantly change.
I think working from home is amazing but it does take some adjustment. Good internet, exercise and Slack/Mattermost "visibility" (Participating in non-work related channels) is really important to have a good experience. Just another opinion.
Here's something I haven't seen mentioned and long term it makes a huge difference:<p>If so far you used public transportation to get to work or just walked and otherwise didn't do any exercise - start. 30 minutes of mild yoga is enough.<p>Remote work often comes with a double whammy of less exercise and increased snacking - both will make you put on weight.<p>I've put on 15kg over the four years I've worked remotely and now after two months of office work already lost 4kg, because there's this hill(20m height) I have to descend every day to get to work.<p>You keeping your balance in the bus every day really adds up over time.
The catchy title part 'no one talks about' is a bit overstated I think, as I could use it in my piece from 2018 as well for example: <a href="https://lukaszkups.net/notes/truth-about-remote-work/" rel="nofollow">https://lukaszkups.net/notes/truth-about-remote-work/</a> - imho I've managed to capture there some details that are often overlooked in recent trendy articles too (and also not mentioned in this thread's blog post as well) ;)
Perhaps an office should become a part of all future houses, just like kitchens and bedrooms, to help with focus, privacy and discipline/scheduling etc.<p>In the long run, working-from-home will only be a win, in so many aspects of society: reducing daily traffic and the associated stress, reclaiming the space taken up by office towers and parking lots, all of which will improve overall public health and increase leisure time, which would boost local economies and even travel industries and so on.
Working from home is a chance to experience unbridled flow, as a home worker since 96' I would say just do 3 or 4 hours a day for the first 2 weeks and resolve all those personal and home things that are on your mind, clear the runway for some real productivity :) For now the only other tip applies only if you get irritated by distractions learn to be more gracious, I found it was the irritation I brought to the party that broke the flow, not the interruption itself.
As someone who is on my feet all day everyday working with metal, probably inhaling bad fumes, no healthcare no benefits: that font is absolutely gouging my eyes out homie
On the subject of conference cameras I can fully recommend the Logitech BCC 950 (<a href="https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/product/conferencecam-bcc950" rel="nofollow">https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/product/conferencecam-bcc950</a>). It's ideal for work from home and you won't usually need to use headphones with it. On the downside it's pretty expensive.
> <i>If you are uncertain how to properly make sure you get a healthy lunch and dinner check “Fitness YouTube”.</i><p>Why would you not know that if you're working at home, if you knew it while working at work?<p>Or, if you didn't know when working at work, why would you start caring when switching to working from home?
I don't really see the need to use headphones. Almost nobody in my team does, and we were already working from home ~50% of the time before the current situation.<p>Despite all the bad things I want to say about the Macbook Pro provided by my employer, its speakers and mic do a pretty good job during videochat.
Good camera suggestions there. Nothing else there should be a surprise.
Although honestly, a webcam on a laptop should be fine too, or tablet. But headphones are a really good idea for conferences.
The flip side is that when you are stuck in a busy noisy office, the only place you want to be, is at home to concentrate and do your work. Stuck at home too long, and need the office. Balance.
Don't pretend that WFH makes it OK to have your dog barking in the background all meeting. Yes, we had a ton of WFH newbies this past week, and this in particular is driving me nuts.
I wonder how many people need to start popping vitamin D when switching to the shut-in lifestyle—especially if living father north. And how many of them will know that they do.
I've been working from home for a decade. I've worked at many companies and been part of the hiring process for remote developers.<p>Most people just don't have the discipline to work remotely. I think productivity will be reduced overall and it might prevent remote working in the future.
My number one tip for employees is a simple one: above all else, <i>be responsive</i>. If your company has an instant messenger app, your response time should be in <i>seconds</i>, not minutes. If you're going on a small errand or putting together a snack in the kitchen, it is to your benefit as much as everyone else's to update your status. A simple 'be right back' goes a long ways. When managers can't get ahold of people working from home is when they start to ask questions, run VPN reports, and reign things in.<p>In reading the comments below, this seems to be wildly unpopular. I can understand where they're coming from. Being available may be very appreciated by others, but it really hurts when you're deeply involved in something. I manage this by marking myself as busy when I know I'm about to dive deep into something, but you can't always see it coming, and I can understand the resistance to this approach.
I figured it was only a matter of time before all the WFH "advice" articles would start. This guys's been doing it for 2 weeks and he's already an expert dispensing advice. I've been WFH for 8 years, so reading this is a bunch of LOL.<p>Regarding headphones, this is not an issue once you move into a dedicated office space in your house. One thing I use to hate is taking headphones on/off every time there's a call. Regarding set hours, that's totally a preference. I work late at night sometimes because I feel like it. WFH means flexibility and not commuting means sometimes I get a jolt of inspiration to work off hours. I don't mind because the trade-off is I get to take time off during the day to attend school events for my kids.<p>Remote work is a lifestyle change for sure. More loneliness, more discipline, less water-cooler gossip. It requires the right mindset and personality that some of you don't have, and I'm sure you're itching to get back to the office.