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How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)

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Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)

#71

Post by jiggy2011 »

bencpeters wrote: post #51

I've been working from home for about 6 months now, and relate to a lot of what's in this article. The scheduling can be super tough - it's way to easy to get distracted on the internet and blow an entire morning doing absolutely nothing. Overall, the thing that I think has kept me both productive and sane is working hard to have external passions. For me, it's outdoor sports like rock climbing and mountain biking, a…

Yes for sure, try and at least get lunch with someone a few times a week and have a hobby of somekind.

Working from home can absolutely destroy your social skills, especially if you end up working at weird hours. When you do go and meet people you can sometimes realise that you have absolutely nothing interesting to talk about because all you have done for the last month is sit in your house in front of your computer either working or trying to work.

Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)

#72

Post by ed209 »

dpcan wrote: post #46
ed209 wrote: post #21

I've worked from home since 2003. I really enjoy it, especially now that I have a little girl. Unfortunately, the added focus you get from working in an office is lost to possibility of being able to do anything anytime. And what's bad about that, is that you tell yourself on certain tasks that "you can do it anytime, and I'll just post to HN now". An ordered todo list is the most important tool you have when working…

I've done the same. Been at home since 2001 and now I'm even using a mini white board to create a list of things to do before 2pm. Some of those things are on the master to-do list, others are just the things off the top of my head, but if I set a mid-day deadline, there's hope that all will get finished.

I got myself a magnetic whiteboard and some magnetic A4 sheets that I cut into strips. Each one has a to-do on it so I can change the order / move them around easily.

I like the idea of doing the tasks before 2pm. Might try that.

Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)

#73

Post by jiggy2011 »

king_magic wrote: post #3

I've personally found that I do not enjoy working from home. I think he hits the nail on the head with the "Crippling Depression" part. As a software engineer, I do my best work alone, in my head, but I need real-life interaction with my team for my work to feel meaningful.

Yes, this is true. Sometimes you need to see emotional feedback to your work in order for it to feel worthwhile. Just sitting at a computer ticking things off a todo list and occasionally pushing things to source control doesn't provide much satisfaction.

Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)

#74

Post by 8ig8 »

jroseattle wrote: post #9

I've worked from my home office for the past few years, and I've figured out it's the ideal solution for my work pattern. I have a good work ethic, and stay very productive (better than when I'm in a client's offices.) And IM is a life-saver with the teams I'm on. The biggest challenge to transitioning to WFH was not the kids. They respect my office as a workspace and really go out of their way not to interrupt me. N…

Same here. When I was working out of the house, I would frequently say to my SO: "Pretend I'm at work."

I wish it was something I addressed better up front.

For others, keep in mind that it's a two-way street. If you want your SO to give you space to be 'at work', then it is important for you to stay in work mode on a predictable schedule.

Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)

#76

Post by nosignal »

jroseattle wrote: post #9

I've worked from my home office for the past few years, and I've figured out it's the ideal solution for my work pattern. I have a good work ethic, and stay very productive (better than when I'm in a client's offices.) And IM is a life-saver with the teams I'm on. The biggest challenge to transitioning to WFH was not the kids. They respect my office as a workspace and really go out of their way not to interrupt me. N…

I've gone through that from the opposite perspective. My SO works from home and sometimes when I'd have a sick day, or a public holiday or whatever I'd wander into the study and have a chat, or pop my head in to offer a cup of tea or something. To me she would seem kind of standoffish or dismissive. It took me quite a long time to wrap my head around the fact that she wasn't being rude or ignoring me, she was working.

Funny how the brain works. I obviously knew it, intellectually, but I would still get a bit bummed out or wonder if she was mad at me or whatever when she'd sit in the house "just being on the computer" for 7 hours and not talk to me. Especially when I wouldn't normally be home, I'd be looking forward to spending a bit more time together. Sometimes I'd give her a hug or something and it took a while for her to mention "look, it's not that I don't like you, it's just like how you would feel if I turned up in your office and gave you a cuddle while you were in the middle of doing something - my brain is in full work mode, it can't instantly switch to affection mode". This reversal of opinion - imagining having my SO around my office wanting to hang out and chat and have coffee and how distracting and kind of irritating it would be - is when it finally clicked for me.

Of course now I feel foolish for ever thinking that way, and all's well. But I sympathise with your wife!

Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)

#77

Post by keithpeter »

joeyh wrote: post #20
johnnyjustice wrote: post #2

Yay for the mention of the Pomodoro Method, it is quite effective and has gotten me through college. Your reasoning however for learning to be interrupted in our life, is something I am not necesarily sure about. Are humans just simply bad at long stretches of focus? I am not sure but i am and thats why I use the pomodoro.

The Pomodoro Method seems to consist of setting yourself up to be interrupted every 25 minutes, and picking a task that can fit. This is great if you're busy learning something, since studying in well-defined chunks with time in-between will aid retention. It's murder if you're doing work that involves flow and a complex mental state, like programming, since it can easily take 20 minutes to get into a fully productiv…

I use a mechanical timer and I use the pomodoro method for routine tasks like marking, doing reports &c (I'm a teacher). It helps my motivation with fairly basic tasks.

For anything where flow might be important, I don't use the pomodoro and I block out a stretch of time. I work on those tasks at home as a large open plan office becomes impossible.

Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)

#78

Post by mountaineer »

jockc wrote: post #61

How did all you people find jobs that allow you to work from home? I would love to try it, I just don't see many programmer jobs that allow this.

My first time, it was part of the job (acquihire) offer, as the company was 70 miles away. I did 2 days a week in the office though. On my 2nd time working at home now. After 2 years at my current company, I wanted to move to Boulder, and asked to work remotely. They said yes.

Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)

#79

Post by cageface »

toumhi wrote: post #63
cageface wrote: post #49

I've been working from hotels in Europe and Asia for almost a year now. The freedom is exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. The best days are those when I somehow manage to write something in a day that would have taken me weeks of wading through office politics. The worst days are those when I feel like I haven't accomplished anything and can't stop thinking that nobody's holding a paycheck out for me at th…

working from hotels for a year? wow, i'm impressed. I did travel/work for 5 months this year (Southeast Asia), and welcomed very much to stay at an apartment for 1 month (in Vietnam). Don't you feel lonely/unmotivated to do it that way? IMO hotels are not very conducive for creativity, and the quest to find a connection every day was a bit tiring at times. Something I missed was not getting to know other people doing…

I did rent a house in Nha Trang for five months, so I haven't been in hotels the whole time. I don't think I can do this forever either but it's been fun.

Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)

#80

Post by gaelian »

johnnyjustice wrote: post #2

Yay for the mention of the Pomodoro Method, it is quite effective and has gotten me through college. Your reasoning however for learning to be interrupted in our life, is something I am not necesarily sure about. Are humans just simply bad at long stretches of focus? I am not sure but i am and thats why I use the pomodoro.

I have experimented with Pomodoro, but for me it was actually more because I thought it might be a good way for me to remember to take breaks. I don't usually have the problem of not being able to sustain focus for long periods. Sometimes I do but more often than not, my problem is forgetting to take breaks, a habbit which - as I get older - I'm finding my body less forgiving of.

Whenever I read about people having trouble maintaining focus or I see people around me with the same issue, I wonder what it is about my life experience that may have made the difference. There's a few things that spring out to me:

  1. I was introduced to meditation at a young age
  2. I spent a lot of my youth playing pen and paper based RPGs
  3. I spent a lot of my youth reading novels when I wasn't playing pen and paper RPGs
  4. I spent a lot of my youth painting miniatures for table-top war games and playing said war games when I wasn't reading or playing pen and paper RPGs
A common thread I can see through all these activites is that one is using one's mind, one's imagination, more so than having images and entertainment thrust at you by a monitor or TV.

I believe these activities assisted in cultivating an improved ability to focus generally, and particularly to focus on tasks that are not immediately accessible. This focus has served me well in my professional life.

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