My best pieces of advice, as someone who’s worked from home for ten years or so now:
Anywhere from one to three times a month, I meet up with another friend of mine who also works from home at a bar/cafe/restaurant and we set up shop and work while we hang out. I’ll admit that sometimes there’s more hanging out than working, but considering it’s all pent up I don’t feel too bad about it. This is doubly important if you have small kids or some other reason why your social life outside of work might be curtailed.
It sounds silly, but: if your office is on a different floor of your house, only use the bathroom of the floor you’re not on (even when you’re not working). This gets you up and down the stairs multiple times a day and gets back some of the exercise you lost from working from home.
Take a walk every morning. A good one. You don’t have to worry about a commute so you won’t be late to work. Walk around the neighborhood, listen to the birds sing, etc. It doesn’t have to be a long one, just fifteen minutes or so (though my usual route is around 30 minutes).
Most importantly, spend time with your family. If you’re like me (and I know I am!), you’re often eager to get to work and, because work is so accessible, you can make excuses to get to work as quickly as possible. Don’t let that mean less time with your kids or your husband/wife/partner. (Right now I’d normally be downstairs playing but I’m waiting for an email from a customer that will affect what time I officially start working, alas…)
I think it depends on the dog and how used to being outside he/she is. One of our rescue dogs was fine going outside but it wasn’t until 6 months later that he got REALLY into it and tries to get me to grab the leash sometimes. He’s 7 or 8 years old and has CDRM so it’s not like he’s super healthy.
I have been doing remote work for 5 years and I think the “work room for work” and “don’t work in your pyjamas” rules are overrated. I am doing just fine typing this from my couch while waiting for a build to finish.
Same here; I think the rules for “transitioning from office-based work to remote work” are very different from “effective remote work for someone who’s used to it”.
I work from home about 2 days a week (at my last job it was 3 to 4). I often didn’t shower until the end of my work day and I’ve never been in a place large enough to have a separate work room.
I do run multiple X servers. Ctrl+Alt+F8 is my work X11 instance and I have a different username for it. My git repos have my work/home laptops as each others remotes so I can push branches back and fourth without touching origin. (I often squash some of those intermediate commits before creating a real origin pull request).
I often find my time at home is way more productive. Open work spaces such and even my fancy noise cancelling headphones can’t drown out some of the chatter around me.
As someone who has been working remote for almost 4 months now and it has been an interesting experience thus far.
Previously I was commuting 50-60ish minutes each way to work, so I was fairly excited to not have to put up with that drive and the traffic.
A few times I’ve felt really strange being in my house for the whole for a few consecutive days, so going out and grabbing a coffee helped me a lot. I would work at a coffee shop or something, but my employer sent a desktop as opposed to a laptop.
I also no longer enjoy spending time in my room - I also believe it is important to have a separate room/space set aside for remote working, but I don’t have that luxury right now. I work about a foot away from where I sleep so just “relaxing” after work isn’t very appealing anymore.
I still do sometimes feel like I am on an island since I can’t turn around and ask a question, but I’m trying to over-communicate more to solve for that.
Those are just some of my thoughts on remote work thus far thanks for the post! :)
I suppose - I did initially ask for one, but they sent me a more powerful desktop instead for some reason. I’ve never heard of getting a desktop for work until now lol.
It’s not for everyone. It really is not. Some people prefer having other people around, some don’t.
I understand why they’re saying this, but it makes me wonder… how badly to you have to need to have other people around for it to be worth putting up with a commute?
Say you sleep 8h a day and work 8h a day; that leaves 8h to spend on yourself that you haven’t allocated to your employer or the demands of your body. If you travel an hour each way for your commute, are you really so reliant on having other people around that it’s worth sacrificing 25% of your hours for it, not to mention the residual wear-and-tear on your mental health that driving in a city incurs?
We’ve normalized the daily commute to the extent that a lot of people don’t even question it, but when you sit down and look at the numbers they’re frankly somewhat horrifying; we consider it normal to sacrifice a quarter of your life just for this anachronistic practice.
We’ve normalized the daily commute to the extent that a lot of people don’t even question it, but when you sit down and look at the numbers they’re frankly somewhat horrifying; we consider it normal to sacrifice a quarter of your life just for this anachronistic practice.
No doubt a lot of people are in that situation, but working in the office doesn’t automatically mean a miserable commute. I have a ~15 minute bike ride into work, and it’s awesome. Some days the commute into the office is the best part of my work day.
On the flip side, I pay a bit higher rent to live in the city (Boulder) instead of further away in the suburbs. It’s totally worth it for me, but I understand why it’s not for everybody.
I get this sentiment, but it only really covers car commuters. a longish bike commute can be nice, and sometimes subway or train commute time is all the time a person has to themselves.
that said, I work from home and have no desire to go back, even though I never commuted by car.
My best pieces of advice, as someone who’s worked from home for ten years or so now:
Anywhere from one to three times a month, I meet up with another friend of mine who also works from home at a bar/cafe/restaurant and we set up shop and work while we hang out. I’ll admit that sometimes there’s more hanging out than working, but considering it’s all pent up I don’t feel too bad about it. This is doubly important if you have small kids or some other reason why your social life outside of work might be curtailed.
It sounds silly, but: if your office is on a different floor of your house, only use the bathroom of the floor you’re not on (even when you’re not working). This gets you up and down the stairs multiple times a day and gets back some of the exercise you lost from working from home.
Take a walk every morning. A good one. You don’t have to worry about a commute so you won’t be late to work. Walk around the neighborhood, listen to the birds sing, etc. It doesn’t have to be a long one, just fifteen minutes or so (though my usual route is around 30 minutes).
Most importantly, spend time with your family. If you’re like me (and I know I am!), you’re often eager to get to work and, because work is so accessible, you can make excuses to get to work as quickly as possible. Don’t let that mean less time with your kids or your husband/wife/partner. (Right now I’d normally be downstairs playing but I’m waiting for an email from a customer that will affect what time I officially start working, alas…)
Yep, walking is something I just realized I should’ve mentioned but forgot.
Either go for walks, or like in my case, get a dog. Mine forces me to go out at least three times a day. :)
TIL I have a lazy-ass dog.
I think it depends on the dog and how used to being outside he/she is. One of our rescue dogs was fine going outside but it wasn’t until 6 months later that he got REALLY into it and tries to get me to grab the leash sometimes. He’s 7 or 8 years old and has CDRM so it’s not like he’s super healthy.
I have been doing remote work for 5 years and I think the “work room for work” and “don’t work in your pyjamas” rules are overrated. I am doing just fine typing this from my couch while waiting for a build to finish.
For my first two years working remotely I had a dedicated office in my house. I think that helped me to build the discipline and boundaries necessary.
6 years in, I can work effectively and with balance in about any situation.
Same here; I think the rules for “transitioning from office-based work to remote work” are very different from “effective remote work for someone who’s used to it”.
I found out that when my home office became my work office my new home office was the coffee shop after working hours.
I work from home about 2 days a week (at my last job it was 3 to 4). I often didn’t shower until the end of my work day and I’ve never been in a place large enough to have a separate work room.
I do run multiple X servers. Ctrl+Alt+F8 is my work X11 instance and I have a different username for it. My git repos have my work/home laptops as each others remotes so I can push branches back and fourth without touching origin. (I often squash some of those intermediate commits before creating a real origin pull request).
I often find my time at home is way more productive. Open work spaces such and even my fancy noise cancelling headphones can’t drown out some of the chatter around me.
As someone who has been working remote for almost 4 months now and it has been an interesting experience thus far.
Previously I was commuting 50-60ish minutes each way to work, so I was fairly excited to not have to put up with that drive and the traffic.
A few times I’ve felt really strange being in my house for the whole for a few consecutive days, so going out and grabbing a coffee helped me a lot. I would work at a coffee shop or something, but my employer sent a desktop as opposed to a laptop.
I also no longer enjoy spending time in my room - I also believe it is important to have a separate room/space set aside for remote working, but I don’t have that luxury right now. I work about a foot away from where I sleep so just “relaxing” after work isn’t very appealing anymore.
I still do sometimes feel like I am on an island since I can’t turn around and ask a question, but I’m trying to over-communicate more to solve for that.
Those are just some of my thoughts on remote work thus far thanks for the post! :)
You should ask your employer for a laptop then. It looks like it’s affecting your work.
I suppose - I did initially ask for one, but they sent me a more powerful desktop instead for some reason. I’ve never heard of getting a desktop for work until now lol.
I understand why they’re saying this, but it makes me wonder… how badly to you have to need to have other people around for it to be worth putting up with a commute?
Say you sleep 8h a day and work 8h a day; that leaves 8h to spend on yourself that you haven’t allocated to your employer or the demands of your body. If you travel an hour each way for your commute, are you really so reliant on having other people around that it’s worth sacrificing 25% of your hours for it, not to mention the residual wear-and-tear on your mental health that driving in a city incurs?
We’ve normalized the daily commute to the extent that a lot of people don’t even question it, but when you sit down and look at the numbers they’re frankly somewhat horrifying; we consider it normal to sacrifice a quarter of your life just for this anachronistic practice.
No doubt a lot of people are in that situation, but working in the office doesn’t automatically mean a miserable commute. I have a ~15 minute bike ride into work, and it’s awesome. Some days the commute into the office is the best part of my work day.
On the flip side, I pay a bit higher rent to live in the city (Boulder) instead of further away in the suburbs. It’s totally worth it for me, but I understand why it’s not for everybody.
I get this sentiment, but it only really covers car commuters. a longish bike commute can be nice, and sometimes subway or train commute time is all the time a person has to themselves.
that said, I work from home and have no desire to go back, even though I never commuted by car.