Ask HN: Keeping sane while working remotely

I freelanced for several years and was in a similar situation. Then, my GF and I bought a house outside town on a couple of acres. I'd see friends once and awhile and of course had the internet, but it became extremely lonely (which is saying a lot as I'm a bit of a loner in the first place). My already suspect social skills were getting even worse. Sometimes I felt like I was going a bit nuts.

I finally got a job. It was great... there were people all around, politics, jokes, boring stories... it was somewhere I really looked forward to going. My GF was much happier as well. I was generally bathed, shaved and a whole lot more social. But I wasn't doing the same level of work, nor was I learning as much, nor was I making the money I could have. So.. I'm getting ready to leave and go back to work solo again. This time I leased an office in a high rise with a bunch of neighboring businesses in the downtown of the small town I live near. We will see what happens this time, but I predict having people around and a schedule will fix the problems that arose last time.

I feel for you. It's great at first not to go to a workplace but there are things one really starts missing and after a long period of time it becomes quite isolating.

I use to feel the exact same when I started working as a freelancer. i'd see friends once in a while but unless I decided to go out, I wouldn't more than one actual conversation a week.

Then a friend introduced me to bouldering, which islike rope climbing, but on much smaller walls, without ropes, and huge mats on the floor. I've always like sports, so I was hooked, but after 2 years now, what makes me stay is the people I've met there. I can go and exercise, get out of there completely crushed and happy, but I'll also meet people, some stronger than me who'll happily give me advices, help me, some just starting to whom I'll give an advice here and there, and after that we all have a beer, talk about our common passion for climbing, discover we have more in common and nowadays, more than half of my friends are climbers, and it's really great, we plan weekends out climbing, watch the competitions together and always have a great time.

Another nice thing is that most climbing gyms have a restaurant, wifi, when I just have to be on my computer but don't have much work to do, I just go there, plug my computer, work for a few minutes, go climbing, come back to check my emails, nobody cares, I have a great time.

So yeah, if you like sports, don't want to just lift dumbells (which I tried to do but got too booring to me) then climbing might be something great to do for your body and a place to meet really nice people. I'd just avoid rope climbing as it often requires a partner (unless you don't care bout the rope but I doubt it) and the feedback loop isn't as short (completing a 30m routes is more difficult than a 5m boulder in just one session).

The co-working space is a nice idea, though it can be quite expensive, that why I didn't do it. Cooking lunch for friends working near where you live might offer you a real break and an easy opportunity for you to see your friends too. Plenty of things you can do actually !

Join a co-working space, work from cafes (can be hard too) or rent an office with friends. Why? Keeping the work at work and enjoying the time at home will be a good strategy against burning out. Of course it will take you some time to commute or be more expensive than just staying at home, but it's a good way to stay sane. Maybe you can also create your own office in 1 room and be at home in the other rooms. But you might be tempted to work longer than what is healthy.

This comment is so spot on it's scary.

I'm at the second stage right now, back to office work and I'm feeling the same.

I'm really curious how it turns out for you, do you blog or something similar?

Why? I went from having very limited free time due to having a commute to having at least 3 - 5 hours every day after work. Even more if I woke up earlier.

I'm interested in learning how to use those hours that I never had before because I have been marathoning Netflix series and I'm not so sure that's good for me in the long run.