Given a lot of people I know are experiencing working from home for the first time, I thought I’d like to share some tips and tricks that have worked for me. Working from home can be hard at the best of times, and this is far from the best of times. Let me assure you: nobody is working at 100% productivity these days. Even seasoned remote workers are stuck dealing with the uncertainty of the world, fighting the urge to check the internet at five minute intervals to see things have gotten worse or better. With that in mind, give yourself some empathy. This is hard, but working remotely comes with some upsides are very nice: flexibility, and unbeatable commute, etc.
With that preface said, let’s get into it. How do you work from home effectively?
Habits
The first trick to working remotely is to maintain the habits you had at your normal job, and impose a few at home to help keep you sane. I often joke that the first rule of remote work is “Wear Pants”, but in that joke is a grain of truth: make sure you get dressed. Do your normal routine for getting out of the house.
I found when I started it was really valuable for me to go for a walk in the morning: 10-15 minutes to act as a ‘pseudo-commute’ to let my brain change gears was really valuable. Two and half years in I don’t tend to do this any more, but perhaps as Addie gets older and her sleep schedule normalizes we’ll try to bring it back.
If you go to the gym at certain times during the day, maybe you can’t do that right now, but figure out how to do some exercise at those times.
Take your lunch hour: And make it a full hour, and don’t read your email or do other ‘background work’ during it. Go watch some TV, hop on a video conference and eat with your colleagues.
Work Space
Figure out where you work. Find some space in your space that’s your workspace. Ideally away from other people, to the extent you can.
Time Blocks
A really important aspect of working from home is establishing what your work hours are. If you work for a flexible organization like Mozilla, there’s no reason those hours need to be 9-5, but, for your own sanity, choose the hours that work for you, your family and your team. Perhaps it makes the most sense for you to get up early, work from 6-9, then from 1-3, and again from 7-9; whatever you decide is fine, but choose a set of hours, and stop working outside them. The dirty secret of remote work is that it allows your work to bleed into the rest of your life if you let it, and that’s a recipe for burnout.
Distraction and Focus
You’re going to get distracted. You’ll have times when you can’t focus. You have a few different options for how to handle those.
Block Those Distractions
If you have internet distractions, one option is to use some tools to block your distractions. I get great use out of both LeeechBlock and Self-Control. These help stop me from the ‘I need to wait five seconds for an operation to complete, quick let me check the news and twitter and oh god an hour has gone bye’ loop.
If there’s noises in the house, I find that using a noise generator can be really valuable. I like ‘natural’ white noise, so for example this “white rain” is a pretty excellent tool, because it blocks out voices and things, without sounding like you’re in some sort of engine room. Speaking of engine-noises though, this sound of the Enterprise idling is fun too.
Accept Them
When you work remote, you forget just how much time you spent at the office wandering around, chatting to colleagues in the hallway. It’s difficult to recalibrate your notions of ‘productivity’ to remote work, but one important aspect is acknowledging you can’t always get shit done; sometimes you need to wander away. Go for a walk, make yourself a coffee, deliberately read some news. It’s ok!
Video
While chat systems like Matrix and Slack are useful, and we’re all doomed to email forever, be aggressive about choosing to hop onto a video call at the first sign of communication roughness. Finding you can’t type fast enough to express the thoughts you’re trying to? Losing track of what the other person is trying to communicate in their loopy email style? Hop onto a video call.
It doesn’t really matter how. We use Zoom at work, and it’s pretty nice. But Skype works, or even in your browser there are video conference systems like Whereby. The important thing is to get something setup with your colleagues such that you can be talking to each other in a a couple of minutes if you decide to go video, rather than spending a bunch of time fighting your AV setup.
Doing Video Calls right:
- Wear headphones. Anti-echo software is really good these days, but if it goes wrong it’s crazy distracting. Please; wear headphones.
- Chose the best microphone you have available. A lot of software will echo your voice back to you: try the microphones you have (often laptop, and headset ones), and choose the one that sounds best to you. It’s important.
- Put the camera on a steady surface: Nothing like giving your colleagues sea sickness as your camera bobs and weaves while you balance your laptop on your knees.
- Mute yourself if you’re typing (especially if you are using the microphone built into your laptop). The sound of typing can be really really annoying!
Conclusion:
Remote work can be hard, but it can also be fantastic. Give yourself space and time to figure it out, but you can do it.
If you have questions, let me know!