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How to Work Remotely Without Going Insane

Scott White on November 01, 2019

The future of work is remote. In recent years, fully-remote companies like GitLab, Zapier, and InVision have proven that a remote culture is not ...
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Jared

Great tips! Having a defined area where I work (one that doesn't have any of my entertainment vices), has been a huge push to my productivity.

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Scott White

🙌 "Environment vices" is a great term

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Darryl D. • Edited

Been working remote and freelancing remotely for quite a bit of time and have some super specific tips I can share

  • a daily journal of your work life helps deal with isolation
  • switched from texting friends to Marco Polo, again helps with working in isolation.
  • plenty of tools available to transcribe zoom meetings
  • pomodoros helps prevent getting distracted by all the comforts of home
  • make sure you know you have a Hotspot on your phone (saved me many times when Comcast went out)
  • work remotely !== only work from home. Get out the house and work at least once a week (library, coffee shop, coworking, park, etc...)
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Brian De Sousa

Great tips! Having a morning routine to trigger the start of the work day is key. I've just started working from home primarily a couple months ago. My routine starts with logging in to quickly see if there are any fires burning, dropping my kid at the bus stop and then making myself a coffee. Once the coffee is brewed, the work begins! I need to figure out how to make the fridge less accessible though :)

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Jasond_Official

And I am reading this when I should be working.

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gholden • Edited

I work remotely and your advice is good sound. I make sure I separate my living space from work space. I'm fortunate to have a dedicated office in my house, where I only go to work. I've also used local hot desk spaces.

I think it generally works if your working in a remote first organisation. When an org has a bit of remote and mostly collocated the organisation need to make sure any comms include the remote team members.

I've not encountered loneliness as I have family and friends who live with or near me.

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jamescalviniv

I needed to read this! I don't think i'd be able to keep my sanity if I didn't have my own dedicated room (a.k.a my office) to work. One huge difference I noticed within myself is that my spontaneous conversation isn't as quick as when I was in the office. I used to be quick on the responses when it came to small talk but now i'm like "huh?". Luckily my wife works from home also so I'm not completely muted but she does all the talking most of the time. I'm just usually saying "really, ok, for real, wow, no she didn't, whaaaat". Thanks for sharing this post!

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AlbertoM

I sometimes work from home and the biggest struggle is to keep focused, not reaching for my phone and start getting distracted on Reddit/Facebook etc...

I don't think I'd be able to work remotely all the time but sometimes it's nice to just stay home

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Maroš Beťko

For me, working at office was more like that. I felt like I was actively slacking whenever possible just to get the required work hours at the office done for the day. And I felt absolutely unproductive because of that.

Now when I work from home, if I don't feel like working since early morning I take my time and relax. And that way when I start later it feels much less forced. Also at home you don't have to follow any office hours or transit. If I feel like working at 10pm at sunday because I just got the best idea about the task I'm solving, I just can.

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Shauna Gordon

It's largely due to the fact that you only sometimes work from home. Without doing it as part of a routine, you don't build in the habits that you have when going into the office is the routine. For you "home" equates to "personal time."

It takes a bit more mindfulness and discipline, but you can retrain yourself to not be so distracted even if you don't work from home very often.

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AlbertoM

Yeah, i guess you are right

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Erick

"When daddy is in his office, he aint home." is the rule when I started remote working.

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Nikola Brežnjak

Thanks for your post 👍. Btw, walrus seems interesting, I am checking it out now.
I wrote a somewhat related blog post a while ago here on dev.to, and I would really appreciate your feedback on it if you get a chance: dev.to/hitman666/how-to-make-it-as...

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Max Ong Zong Bao

I think another thing is probably finding group activities so that you won't be that lonely.

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Shauna Gordon

I think a lot of people mistake "working in the vicinity of people" to be equivalent to "being social" when it's really not. It's just enough to get your "fix," but the quality really isn't there if you actually look at it.

Getting out to user groups, lunch with friends, game nights, etc. takes a bit more mindful effort, especially at first and if you don't have an established routine, but the quality skyrockets, in my experience.

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Jack Wu

Good article.

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Madison Swain-Bowden

Great article! I already found myself doing a few of these things as I started working remotely more frequently, but how you've codified them is extremely helpful.