What are your best tips for working from home?

I had a great conversation yesterday with some coworkers about working from home, including why some prefer it and others hate it, and our productivity tips. I've been working from home more frequently for health reasons, and I'm trying to get better at it! For example, I make an effort to get dressed and ready every day as though I was going into the office. Then, I try to leave my house for a few minutes, even if it's just for a walk around the block.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to most effectively work from home! What do you do to make your space more welcoming? How do you make sure you stay on task, or conversely, how do you make sure you remember to stop working at a certain time? How do you communicate with your team when you work remotely? I'm interested both in productivity tips, as well as self care tips, as I know that lots of folks feel more anxious and pressured to get things done when they work from home.

Comments

[Olivier Chauvin]

First time working from home and I love the flexibility of it!
Here are a few tips that I followed ever since the epidemic started.

1. Do not work in your bedroom. Often I find myself sleeping instead of working when I'm in the bedroom. I recommend you move to somewhere that has a desk, good light, and no bed.

2. Set a schedule. This is very important. You should keep a clear schedule to track your progress. My colleagues and I use Quire to collaborate on our projects. This helps us assign individual tasks to different people and also check if the progress is going well. It also has reminders so that we can know clearly when the deadline is.

3. Start work the same time you would normally enter the office. This helps you maintain your original routine, and also stop you from slacking off.

4. Take breaks. Taking breaks help you clear your mind and stay focused, I usually take a break after two hours of working non-stop. I would go make a cup of coffee, let my dog out to the backyard, or throw a few hoops before I get back to work.

Hope this helps! Don't give yourself too much pressure and take some time off to enjoy the flexibility of this. Stay safe :)

[Tom Metcalfe]

I've been working remotely for over a year now and here are my takeaways:

• Regular working hours and making people aware of these. For example I’m normally around from about 8:30 - 5, but never past 5. If that changes for whatever reason I let everyone know
• Responding to messages right away. Its difficult for people to know if you’ve read a message on messenger and are looking at it or if you haven’t seen it. I tend to let people know I’ve seen a message and give them a rough timeframe of when I’ll respond. Usually I’ll ask when they need a response by and work off that
• Getting out of the house! Can highly recommend going out for a walk if nothing else once a day. Only 10 minutes to clear your head
• Keep your phone in another room
• Never try the ‘watch TV and work’ thing. It doesn’t work. I find music or the radio works well for keeping me on track
• Its tough to stay focused when there are dishes to do and that. Maybe something like the pomodoro technique is worth looking at? It doesn’t work for me, but it might for you
• appear.in is the best conference system I’ve found and its free
• Take advantage of being in your own home. Lunchtime naps are the one!

[Meek Banks]

My best friend and I have been preparing for our launch for 11 months. We DRAMATICALLY improved our productivity with Workplace by Facebook and Zoom. We have regular Zoom meetings and use Workplace like Slack.

The real key to productivity has been the accountability and 2nd pair of eyes. Some call it "peer review." It has worked so well that we have incorporated it into our onboarding/training program.

[Kevin Lewis]

I find the Pomodoro Technique super useful. I try and stay on one task without context switching for 25 mins, and enforce a 5 min break between pomodoros. Every 4, I take the dog out for a walk and get a screen break.

[Mohamed Diouane]

Hi Fen,

For me i can not focus at home so i choose to work at cofee shop with good ambience.

[Nick Janetakis]

I've been a freelance developer for about 20 years and 99% of the time I work from home.

For the past ~5 years or so I've been doing:

• Walk ~3-5 miles a day in multiple 30min to 60min blocks, every 3-4 hours.
• Standing desk, where I typically wear flip flops and stand 95% of the time.
• Optimize for comfort (shorts, tshirts, etc.)
• If you like music, alternate between headphones and speakers to give your head a break (if you wear serious business studio quality headphones)
• Spend as little time as possible scanning Reddit, HN, dev.to (sorry Ben :D) and try to limit this to maybe once or twice a day
• Besides walking / exercise, take a legit meal / mess around break (Youtube for fun, games, etc.) at some point.
• If your job requires email communication, try to get it done as early as possible, and avoid Slack unless it's absolutely necessary (to ask questions, get feedback, etc.)
• If you find your brain is melting, take a short break because it'll save time in the long run

My brain is wired to finish things as fast as possible, otherwise I'm not happy. I don't mean to rush, but overall I'm much happier if I put in 10 hours one day if it only means doing 6 hours tomorrow, rather than 8 + 8.

With that said, I don't really stick to any real schedule. I get up when I wake up and goto bed when I'm tired. I only use alarm clocks when I'm traveling, in which case I usually set like 3 of them even though I'm a light sleeper, I'm super paranoid I'll miss important wake ups.

Also, if you're dealing with clients in different time zones, always communicate to them with their native timezone. Make things as easy and pleasant as possible for them.

[Michael Whitis]

The biggest pain point for me was setting the expectations of my family that working from home requires the same focus as working in an office. Just because I’m “at home” does not mean I am there to babysit the neighbor kid, run extra errands, or do chores during my work hours. I am still “at work” when I’m in my office.

[K]

These are just the things I started (or stopped) doing after a few years of working from home, but I have to say I don't always work "from home" often I work from the homes of my girlfriends.

I try to set a goal of things to do for the next day, so I can start work right after standing up.

I stopped setting an alarm and sleeping until I felt rested.

I stopped using chat/phone nine to five and do more communication via email and issue trackers, so people stop bothering me all the time, haha.

I stopped to work in hours, but in tasks. The day is done when the task(s) I did felt enough work for the day.

Lately, I started to think about what I want to do for the week and write it down, so I have a list of accomplishments at the end of the week. I tried to fill this list with enough stuff so I don't feel overwhelmed but still had the feeling I am productive.

The problem is that you always can do more, but you still have to live your life XD

[Jaime Trejo]

When I work from home I find these things to work for me.

First, I make sure to actually dress like I was heading into work. It helps my mindset think that it's not the weekend or a slack off day. Second, I have water available wherever I'm working and take a few walks outside or indoors when I need a small break.

[deleteme deleteme]

I've been working remotely for all of my career (8 years+). Here are some tips that have helped me thrive:

1. Keep your work environment separate from any other area of your living space. When you're here you're in work mode. Period.

2. Do not have any work related things on your mobile phone. No Slack, no company email, nothing. At most I have Pingdom alerts when required in case shit blows up.

3. Invest in a great microphone. You don't want to be "that guy" that uses a terrible mic.

4. 9am sharp, "Good morning!" in Slack. 5pm sharp, "see you tomorrow team!" - On time, reliable is what you want to project. Being reliable is very rare for people. Be that person. People learn to respect your work-hours if you follow this advice.

5. Over-share. You never want a client or someone on your team to ask what you're up to. If they ask you have failed as a remote worker. Give frequent updates on what you're up to. You'll keep on task, but more importantly people won't bother you.

6. Be very careful about how you express yourself. Your facial expressions or body language doesn't go through the wire, people will take what you say at face value. This happens even with a webcam!

7. Enjoy the perks of being a remote employee! Dentist appointment? Go for it! Want to go on a Costco run early monday morning? Why not! Dog park Wednesday afternoon? Yep! As long as you over communicate and do your work, no one will care, believe me.