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When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

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Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#41

Post by jader201 »

rqtwteye wrote: post #26
jader201 wrote: post #6

I’ve been working from home 100% for going on 10 years. I’ve had a mix of experiences re: disconnecting from work, and three things that I believe are key: 1. Work out of a separate office, ideally with a door. Don’t go in that room except when you’re working. If you work from a laptop, (mostly) never take it out of that room. Obviously some don’t have this luxury, but if you do and you’re not doing this, I highly su…

Good points. I religiously turn on my laptop at 9 in the morning and turn it off at 17:30. During that time I am always reachable but after that the laptop is off and I have no work related apps on my phone. Also: when I am on vacation I am gone and won’t work. My team has my phone number for extreme emergencies but that never happened so far.

> Also: when I am on vacation I am gone and won’t work. My team has my phone number for extreme emergencies but that never happened so far.

If you're already doing #1 (don't take your laptop out of the office) and #2 above, then this is automatic. But yes, those should especially be followed when you're on PTO.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#42

Post by wmwragg »

jader201 wrote: post #6

I’ve been working from home 100% for going on 10 years. I’ve had a mix of experiences re: disconnecting from work, and three things that I believe are key: 1. Work out of a separate office, ideally with a door. Don’t go in that room except when you’re working. If you work from a laptop, (mostly) never take it out of that room. Obviously some don’t have this luxury, but if you do and you’re not doing this, I highly su…

Yep point 1 I think is the most important, but if you don't have the luxury of an office at home, having a start of work process, and an end of work process is really important e.g. at end of day, close laptop, put away in a drawer, and tidy up work paraphernalia, then sit down and have a cup of tea while reading a book. It mentally bookmarks the start and end of work, and allows your mind to reset from work mode.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#43

Post by stavros »

spacemadness wrote: post #39
athenot wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point 1 is very important, I can confirm with also a decade of doing this. One note I'd like to add is pay attention to your lighting, have a special "work-mode" set of lights that you turn on when you work and then turn off when you are no longer working. I use the same work desk for non work stuff, but I turn off my "office lights" and it's a completely different vibe. Everyone's tastes will be different but as for…

Anecdotally, I don’t find point 1 to be necessary at all. Points 2 and 3 are vital, however. As long as I cut work off at the end of the day, I’m fine.

I agree with you. I continue sitting in my home office after I stop work, and I don't feel tempted to check in at all. #2 and #3 are paramount to me, though.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#44

Post by dijksterhuis »

tra3 wrote: post #27
jader201 wrote: post #6

I’ve been working from home 100% for going on 10 years. I’ve had a mix of experiences re: disconnecting from work, and three things that I believe are key: 1. Work out of a separate office, ideally with a door. Don’t go in that room except when you’re working. If you work from a laptop, (mostly) never take it out of that room. Obviously some don’t have this luxury, but if you do and you’re not doing this, I highly su…

How do you disconnect and shutdown the problem solving part of your brain? I’ve found that writing a log or a daily summary, a core dump, if you will, helps me disengage. But not always.

I’ve found doing a “fake commute” where I go for a walk for 30-60 minutes after work is pretty helpful.

being able to decompress walking around a leafy park is much better than trying to decompress stuck in a busy train with no seats.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#45

Post by mikrl »

NoahECampbell wrote: post #12
mikrl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds exactly like something an adversarial participant in the SWE market would say to make me burn out and drop out. Keep that forked tongue in your mouth!

I mean if you can't handle working when something breaks, you probably shouldn't be working there in the first place. Work is.....well work.

I will defer to my employment contract and stated hours of work. You do honour contracts… right?

More people than you think don’t, especially if the other party is less powerful and the jackal thinks they can get away with it.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#46

Post by freedomben »

tra3 wrote: post #27
jader201 wrote: post #6

I’ve been working from home 100% for going on 10 years. I’ve had a mix of experiences re: disconnecting from work, and three things that I believe are key: 1. Work out of a separate office, ideally with a door. Don’t go in that room except when you’re working. If you work from a laptop, (mostly) never take it out of that room. Obviously some don’t have this luxury, but if you do and you’re not doing this, I highly su…

How do you disconnect and shutdown the problem solving part of your brain? I’ve found that writing a log or a daily summary, a core dump, if you will, helps me disengage. But not always.

Not OP but many years of working from home.

The best thing I've found is Logseq. Any other note taking app would probably do, but the important thing is that it's a "daily journal" style where I brain dump relevant things into bullet points. This has come in really handy for many other reasons as well.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#47

Post by sezycei »

NoahECampbell wrote: post #20
bamfly wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is very common for people to immediately sign off for the day the minute their work day/shift is over and not do anything else after. If people want to do that then sure they can, but they also trade off the ability to earn raises and promotions by doing the bare minimum. So, when this happens, the employer is offering more money if the employee continues working? The employer is asking them to do that, and empl…

So what you're saying is you made an assumption about what I said, took that assumption and wrapped your entire thing about it without knowing it was true. I recommend taking things at a surface level and not trying to read 50 layers into it

While I agree with the general gist of what you're trying to communicate, the person you're responding here did no such thing. Take a step back and re-read; they're just following what you're suggesting to one possible natural conclusion. If you don't believe that's what would happen, you can state that without accusing your partner in this conversation of "reading too deep".

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#48

Post by ye-olde-sysrq »

lumost wrote: post #22
ttul wrote: post #7

In the 1990s, even as a software developer, I never answered emails after working hours. Why? Because we didn’t have access to the office mail server outside the office. It was physically impossible to work from home. Add to this the fact that I didn’t have a cell phone or a pager, so when I left the office, nobody could get in touch with me even if they wanted to. On reflection, the separation of home and work was s…

I'm honestly surprised that more companies haven't invested in broader vacation policies. My experience has been that the constant "on" state wears you down. The only way to get to "off" is to be OOTO officially for a week+. Add in parental responsibilities and you really don't have any headspace for yourself. Would love to have 5-8 weeks per year, that would let me take at least 1 week's worth of time per quarter to…

>Add in parental responsibilities

Out of curiosity, how many of your coworkers have kids?

I have 3, and I've always found it a bit ominous that even when I'm on large teams (8+) I'm typically still the only person with kids. So far:

1. job 1, team of 8, only 1 other IC had kids

2. job 2, team of 10, nobody else had kids

3. current job, team of 8, nobody else has kids. If you expand it to the suborganization we're in, you get ~16 people and only one other person has kids.

And it's not like these teams are mostly college new grads or anything, it's usually people like me in their 30's.

I always wonder how much of a disadvantage it is that other people get to clock out of work, enjoy an evening, sleep through the night, and then wake up and go to work. Whereas a parent is going to clock out of work and clock in to parenting, and then when it's kid bedtime, you finally get 2-3 hours to fit in personal time that's usually still not "you" time but is you spending time with your partner.

I'd never trade my kids for my career, and I find the time I spend with them incredibly fulfilling, but it's definitely extra load. And I do depend on being good at my job to help feed them and stuff. And I did opt into this, so it's hard to say it's "unfair". But I feel like our society doesn't need more reasons not to have kids given fertility is already below replacement rate.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#49

Post by JohnFen »

> There’s a lot about early 2000s culture I’m not eager to excavate, but this idea of the constrained workday certainly seems worthy of nostalgia.

It's not nostalgia to me. Except when working on my own businesses or a real emergency, my work ends at the end of the workday. It always has, and that has never changed.

Working outside of work hours is a choice, and one that I mostly choose not to do for other people.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#50

Post by wpietri »

wmwragg wrote: post #42
jader201 wrote: post #6

I’ve been working from home 100% for going on 10 years. I’ve had a mix of experiences re: disconnecting from work, and three things that I believe are key: 1. Work out of a separate office, ideally with a door. Don’t go in that room except when you’re working. If you work from a laptop, (mostly) never take it out of that room. Obviously some don’t have this luxury, but if you do and you’re not doing this, I highly su…

Yep point 1 I think is the most important, but if you don't have the luxury of an office at home, having a start of work process, and an end of work process is really important e.g. at end of day, close laptop, put away in a drawer, and tidy up work paraphernalia, then sit down and have a cup of tea while reading a book. It mentally bookmarks the start and end of work, and allows your mind to reset from work mode.

Agreed. I've been using RoutineFlow to help establish routines and it has been great.
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