5 Ways to Stay Motivated When You Work From Home

Evan Payne — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 15:34:58 +0000

Working remotely for a company, full time, is increasingly an option for software developers. I started working for my current company four years ago, and for the first twelve months, I commuted for two hours each way, every single day. After that first year, I requested (and was granted) a home office contract, and doing so has given me so much flexibility and joy that I would never go back.

But working from home has its own challenges, and one of the most insidious of those is loneliness. It is so easy to lose motivation when you're the only one in your space (because you've told your partner/kids/pets to leave you alone so you can work!). Work isn't just about those moments of flow we reach while coding! We all need to interact with other people, to bounce around ideas, to complain about injustices, to rubber-duck solutions, to explain precisely why the ending of our favorite tv show was botched by rushing through it...

I have been through my own cycles of "long, dark teatimes of the soul", and I found some things that helped me push through and come out the other side smiling and productive. I hope these tips help you too.

Cut down on sugar

When you're already in a vulnerable place, you have to be careful of your body chemistry. Sugar (in your snacks or in your coffee) is great for a little push of energy, but it doesn't last, and worse, when it wears off your mood will crash. This is just feeding the negativity, so cut it out. Stick with water or tea, maybe honey instead of cubes of sugar, and don't buy that box of red vines, I'm serious.

In general, maintain healthy habits. Cut back on the bad ones (smoking, caffeine, etc), and treat your body as a temple.

Stir your pots

A lot of modern remote work is done asynchronously, and it can be hours before someone replies to your 7am "Hi there!" message. My own way of getting around this is to embrace it, and give myself permission to drop a note to anyone I like to interact with, at (almost) any time. The key here is to say more than just "hello". You are offering up a prompt for further discussion that they will respond to when they have time.

I call this stirring-the-pots, referencing cooking, where you avoid preparing dishes one at a time by having them simmer on the stove-top, only needed occasional stirring to keep them on course.

The prompts you send while stirring your pots don't have to be casual, often this technique can be used as a great way to get your own mind back into a productive state. By phrasing what you need from someone else on your shared project, you become a little more clear about what you are able to do even without them.

Be a playlist gardener

Another joy of modern life is the ready access to digital music. Music is such a powerful shaper of mood, and when you're feeling down, it helps a lot to have a playlist of songs that you know will get you into the right mindset.

These don't even have to be happy songs, or anthems. Just music that you noticed in the past got you thinking a certain way, or working a certain way. Drop them into playlists sorted not by the mood of the songs, but the moods they bring out in you.

Share your progress

It is very easy to lose track of just how much work you are accomplishing each day. Many teams have standups that help with this, but when you're working alone or on a side project, it can feel like you're just feeding your hours into a black hole.

I have a set of colleagues online that I'm shameless about sharing things with. Found an interesting solution to a problem? Let me show Pawel! Stuck halfway through something really cool? Natalia might have some insights. Finally finished a bit of refactoring that the client won't notice, but was totally worth it? I'll walk Shraddha through the pull request.

Even writing articles like this one is a way to switch to a different way of thinking and come back fresh to your other work, later.

Take a Hard Break

The biggest difference I see when I compare my standard "day at the office" to a day working remotely is the lack of breaks I allow myself.

It's so easy to wake up and roll over to the computer, and start an hour before anyone else. It's easy too to skip lunch when no one around you is getting up to go out. I personally have a hard stop at 5pm, but I can only imagine the hours I would spend at work if I didn't have that.

All of these little sacrifices don't seem like much at the time, but they add up to burnout if you aren't careful. To avoid this, I recommend "Hard Breaks". Set rules for yourself such as "no work from 1-2pm", or "before 8am" or "after 5pm". Be vigilant about enforcing those rules with yourself.

If you aren't working then, you will want to find something else to do, and that distraction has the potential to recharge you in ways that more work will never do. Go for a walk, read a book, enjoy the simple pleasures of life, and come back when your break is done.

Some days, you're still going to feel stuck in the mud. And that's ok. So long as you're the kind of person that truly cares about putting in an honest effort, then it's ok to go easy on yourself now and again. People in offices do that as well, they just call it "lunch" or "kicker/foozball" or "coffee"... For hours...

The most important thing you can do is to take them time to reflect upon your own personality. Be sure your needs are being met, and find your own methods to keep yourself from falling into bad habits. I've found my strategies, and as I said before, I'm never going back.

What are some of your tips?

Frontend, UX, and Embracing your Span

Evan Payne — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 14:00:21 +0000

I was reading a year-end article by UX Trends, about the struggles of the swiftly expanding UX career path, and I see a lot of similarities to what we are facing as Frontend developers and engineers.

Like many other modern tech fields, there are hundreds of mini-specializations that come along with the work we do. More than just CSS, HTML, JS, or frameworks, I'm talking about things like CSS Architecture, HTML Emails, Serverless, Server-side JS, or the build systems for those frameworks. The more you specialize, the further away you can feel from some parts of the knowledge people assume you have (based on your job title).

Span: Full-stack

Let's take the example of an Angular specialist. Someone that's comfortable sitting on that line between what's considered Backend or Frontend. They create components and also suggest API improvements. They understand how to model data, but also how to deal with User Interactions.

Now, let's imagine that specialist has the job title of Frontend Software Engineer. This fits what they excel at, and all is well. But then, suddenly, a new CSS feature is released, and the apps they build with Angular start to feel a bit outdated because they aren't taking advantage of this. Their clients begin requesting new features or redesigns that make use of this new feature, and our developer starts to feel like they are a bit of an impostor, not being up to date on the latest and greatest of the Frontend world.

Span: UI Developer

Or, take the opposite side, someone that is a master of applying CSS across all versions of IE and Safari and beyond, but couldn't write a Node app to save a small puppy from freight train. This person might also be comfortable on the line between Frontend or Designer, and happily take on requirements without designs, trusting in their own skills to make the right decisions for layout and spacings.

But if their title is Frontend Software Engineer, they will likely be forced to deal with JS. And eventually, they will encounter the assumption that they know how to work with websockets, or setup a greenfield project with Webpack. And while I believe they can, that's not the same as their wanting to, or finding it easy.

Misplaced

Both of these personas are Frontenders. But both feel slightly misplaced. Worse, no matter how confident someone is with the things they love to do, when facing something they struggle with, impostor syndrome sets in.

Reading about it, it seems we're not the only ones facing this. UX-ers also cover a wide spread, from copywriting to video-editing to user-research to design systems. In both cases, we are feeling the pressure that the tech industry has often felt: Explaining what we do to the outside world.

The Start of Something New

Maybe it's time to stop worrying about that, and to embrace our spans. Especially when we work in bigger companies, you can be allowed to just be "that coder that designs", or "that designer that codes". But for this to work, your company has to have a way to know what you're best at and to use your skills in the right way.

At Netcentric (where I work), I think we're moving towards this model. We have Pathways (FE, UX, BE, etc), and currently everyone is part of just one. In the near future, I can see each employee instead being part of communities based on multiple pathways. We can do this because we have a system in place (our Badge System), that lets us gather proof of our specializations. If I'm good at Angular, I collect the badge for it, if I'm good at using Sketch, I collect that badge, and yes, overall, I'm mostly in the Frontend. But a colleague that's on the cusp of FE and UX, or FE and BE, can be given work for either of their spans, and trusted to do it well based on their badges.

I can see that this is idealistic, and a lot more thought and repetition would have to go into it before it becomes a standard for the tech industry. But if you're in a position to change your own mindset to this, to embrace your spans, then I think you can at the very least speak up and ask for the kind of work you know you're best at. And that might be the start of something new.

DEV Community: Evan Payne