11–20 of 38 posts
I go to a co-working space. It's worth the $150-$300 per month for a shared space.
If you want to do business go to a place where other people are doing business, otherwise you might be like these guys...
Working from home is not for everybody, and can create a myriad of unexpected issues, some of which can be easily solved, others require more effort. For others it can be a blessing.
The one thing to bear in mind, though, and which is repeated often in the responses below is that by working from home a lot of necessary actions which force you to structure your daily life suddenly fall away. Getting up, showering, dressing, getting to work, etc, don't just prepare your mind to get into 'work' mode or whatever, but also force you to think about grocery shopping, breakfast, dinner, planning for the weekend, planning recreational activities and more.
The advice here is good but it only confirms for me that I would much rather commute to and from an office every day than work from home.
I have seriously underestimated how important human contact is, even if just with effective strangers.
If it's not compatible with you, you will start a countdown clock to ??? once you start on this journey.
Working inside an office is apparently like having guard rails for an invisible road that many people do not require, but people like me might not thrive without.
I'm now faced with the awkward fork in the road of going back to my old job, which would (probably? hopefully? gladly?) take me back, or forcing some evolution to make myself compatible with this prison I fought so hard to procure.
I am very distractible. It was and remains very difficult. However, I think I'm in a zone now where work is a place I go to in my head, rather than a place that exists in reality.
Meta-advice: keep trying things. There is no settled consensus. For now, this is a very individual choice.
How you work at home / live your life:
Some people advise a strict separation between work and home. I don't agree. The best benefits of working from home are cooking more of my own food, doing chores during the day, and working the hours that I choose. Exception: never code from your bed.
I have put some effort into making my desk area nice. It helps.
The real question is staying motivated when you don't see faces, or hear voices, or are even in physical proximity to anyone that you work with. I find that I need voices/faces to believe that anyone cares that I exist. I have a very supportive spouse, so a lot of that is taken care for me. Even so I leave the house once a day, minimum. I often go to the library, cafes, or restaurants. And I have a regular "hack session" with a friend of mine in a similar situation on Mondays. Mostly we just chitchat with the excuse that we might actually hack on something, but it's important.
How you work with co-workers:
General theme: many things that used to happen randomly or accidentally now will have to be done intentionally.
You probably have standups or some other regular way to check in with your co-workers. Keep doing those and take them seriously. Always ask more questions than you think you should. You don't get chances to ask them later.
Build informal and private channels for your team. It's important for your team to have a place where your team talks among yourselves and where you feel you have privacy. My current company isn't that nosey (and we're the Slack admins anyway) so a private Slack channel works. If you have to go to Signal or Keybase, do it and say it's for "emergency ops".
In other companies where I've been remote, or part of a remote office, I've found that the Donut Slack app has been very helpful. It just randomly assigns you a "date" of sorts with a co-worker, and it is almost as good to do over video chat. You need these kind of random unstructured interactions with coworkers both for your social needs and to be effective in a large organization. It may seem weird to take a coffee to your desk and have no official business talking to a coworker, but it really helps.
1. Have a dedicated area that you only perform work. Don’t use kitchen table. It’s good for your mental health to have a dedicated area where you only work and when you’re not “at work” - don’t use that area. 2. Get dressed for “work”, including shoes. Don’t make you’re comfortable as if you just rolled out of bed and wearing sleep clothes. Get up. Get dressed. Putting on shoes is important. It tricks your mind into…
Working from home shouldn’t be about “working comfortably” it should be about working in a “small office somewhere”. Forget you are at home.
You can switch this off for 30-45 minutes during lunch. Then maybe take the rubbish out or deal with screaming kid, etc.
1. Have a dedicated area that you only perform work. Don’t use kitchen table. It’s good for your mental health to have a dedicated area where you only work and when you’re not “at work” - don’t use that area. 2. Get dressed for “work”, including shoes. Don’t make you’re comfortable as if you just rolled out of bed and wearing sleep clothes. Get up. Get dressed. Putting on shoes is important. It tricks your mind into…
I roll out of bed, put on comfy pants, and shamble over to my work/ gaming pc. When I get hungry I go cook something. When I need to think through a problem I go clean the house, do dishes, or lay back in a comfy chair and think. If I need to get something done around the house or run an errand, I just go do it. If I need a nap, I take one. I do try to get up at 8AM and stop at 4:30PM consistently (mostly to be available for calls), but sometimes I get carried away when no one is home and work into the night or through the weekend (guaranteed time with no interruptions).
I'm probably about 4 times more productive working from home than from our office. It's very relaxing, I get some cleaning done, and I don't feel a strong need for much of the rigid structure you've described.
Spot on about socializing though. I live near our office and if I didn't have the option to pop in for a less productive but more social day, I would have to find something to fill that gap.
1. Have a dedicated area that you only perform work. Don’t use kitchen table. It’s good for your mental health to have a dedicated area where you only work and when you’re not “at work” - don’t use that area. 2. Get dressed for “work”, including shoes. Don’t make you’re comfortable as if you just rolled out of bed and wearing sleep clothes. Get up. Get dressed. Putting on shoes is important. It tricks your mind into…
I'd like to offer a dissenting point of view on some of this. I roll out of bed, put on comfy pants, and shamble over to my work/ gaming pc. When I get hungry I go cook something. When I need to think through a problem I go clean the house, do dishes, or lay back in a comfy chair and think. If I need to get something done around the house or run an errand, I just go do it. If I need a nap, I take one. I do try to get…
There's about eight desks in our room, and during the day, aout 4-5 are in use. It helps me a great deal to go out in the morning, go to my office, and have the luxury of a good desk with a big monitor, an atmosphere that encourages working and sometimes a little chat at the coffee machine.