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Working remotely, 4 years in

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Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#61

Post by katzgrau »

bkovacev wrote: post #46

After working remotely for 4 years I am switching back to the office at least 3 days a week and moving back to our company HQ in the States. Hardest challenge for me was staying in shape, because I lacked self-discipline to workout and eat healthy, but funny enough work didn't suffer and it was the most productive period in my life. It gets extremely easy to start slacking (no pun intended) and not do your work out.…

Agreed. Been WFH for six years and around year two I was probably the least healthy I'd ever been in my life. I had been waking up naturally around 8am every day which I thought was amazing, but I generally liked to be online by 9am so there wasn't much time to fit a workout in.

At year three I started waking at 6am to fit in 2-3 hours of personal improvement time, primarily working out and reading. Unless it's an emergency, I'm not doing anyone else's stuff within those 2-3 hours. I also go to sleep around 10, which takes some getting used to.

Today I'm the most physically and mentally healthy that I've ever been. I actually live close to NYC but the train / ferry commute would take those critical two hours away. Going to keep my current system in place as long as I can.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#62

Post by kbp »

randomdata wrote: post #58
masklinn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regardless, it remains that gender-neutral "they" was considered a suitable replacement, thereby indicating that gender was irrelevant to the subject of the comment all along. Of course it was, as specifically noted in said corrective comment. Your comment could either use the author's actual gender or not involve gender at all./ > The gender correction seems to be more about pedantry than confusion. No, the gender…

> Your comment could either use the author's actual gender or not involve gender at all. To be clear, I was not the one who originally used gender-neutral "he" over "she". > No, the gender correction was about getting the author's gender wrong. Due to overzealous pedantry, or a misunderstanding of what "he" means in english? Understandably not everyone comes here with english as their first language, so I can appreci…

> overzealous pedantry

Some people might consider it pedantic to insist to someone who was confused by a choice of wording, and offered a less potentially confusing alternative, that actually it's fine because it's technically correct, regardless of how people understand it when they read it.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#63

Post by randomdata »

kbp wrote: post #62
randomdata wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your comment could either use the author's actual gender or not involve gender at all. To be clear, I was not the one who originally used gender-neutral "he" over "she". > No, the gender correction was about getting the author's gender wrong. Due to overzealous pedantry, or a misunderstanding of what "he" means in english? Understandably not everyone comes here with english as their first language, so I can appreci…

> overzealous pedantry Some people might consider it pedantic to insist to someone who was confused by a choice of wording, and offered a less potentially confusing alternative, that actually it's fine because it's technically correct, regardless of how people understand it when they read it.

Absolutely it is. Nothing wrong with pedantry per-se, but with respect to this particular discussion it helps to understand the motivation to understand if the person is not clear on what "he" means, which we can help correct to prevent future confusion when future comments use gender-neutral "he", or is just trying to have some fun, which we can safely ignore.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#64

Post by bkovacev »

fyfy18 wrote: post #52
bkovacev wrote: post #46

After working remotely for 4 years I am switching back to the office at least 3 days a week and moving back to our company HQ in the States. Hardest challenge for me was staying in shape, because I lacked self-discipline to workout and eat healthy, but funny enough work didn't suffer and it was the most productive period in my life. It gets extremely easy to start slacking (no pun intended) and not do your work out.…

Could you elaborate a bit more on your morning routine plans? I’d like to get up earlier and do more productive things before I start work (I’m remote and flexible), but as it doesn’t get light here until 8am at this time of year, I find it really hard to get up early.

Currently the sunrise here is at 6:45-7am. I'm up between 5:45-6:00 by myself anyway, but I usually just waste that time checking email/reading HN/reddit. I will make sure to not check phone until 7am. These are my plans and of course there is a big chance that I do not achieve all of this at once, it might take some adjustment, but if I do not check my phone, read and workout it's a win for me. I want to allocate 3-4 hours for myself in the morning.

Getting up early is an amazing feeling, but I learned that by tiring myself for a week, eventually your body will go to bed earlier and you'll wake up earlier. Do it for two weeks and you should be able to become an early riser.

5:30ish - wake up, bathroom etc

5:45ish - Have breakfast. Want to eat slower so I allocate 30 minutes.

6:15ish - 7:00 - read/cook lunch and dinner.

7:00am - head out to the gym

9:00am - back from the gym

9:30ish shower, eat, check email

10 - start working or an hour long nap depending on how I feel.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#65

Post by kamaal »

Just playing the Devil's advocate here.

These days I work with a person who was working remote for around 5 years or so. He now works with us full time. There are somethings you forget and forgive me for saying this, you also gain a lot of bad habits. The worse among them being ability to work with a team and collaborate. You also lose out on learning from technical discussions, practices going on in the industry, colleagues who share things. And most important of all ambition that comes from peer pressure. You sort of lose out on so many things that it will hard to start working with a team again.

Sure if you are at the top of your game, you can drive things on your terms. But please rethink your stance. Also, its quite hard for long term remote workers to start working with teams. Many bad habits crawl to the workplace. Most important of them being dysfunctional communication, sometimes its as simple as committing code and writing documentation.

Remote workers can be bad cultural fits for almost any culture. Simply due to the fact that they are exposed to none.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#66

Post by randomdata »

Stratoscope wrote: post #31
randomdata wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He, by definition, is gender neutral and fine for use when the gender is unknown or irrelevant.

That used to be true, but not in contemporary usage. Either "they" or "the author" is a much better choice today.

"They" has become more common in contemporary usage, I agree, but the fluidity of the english language allows for any of the above. "He" is still common enough that the dictionary still records "he" as being gender neutral. There is really no wrong answer here as far as english is concerned.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#67

Post by ibz »

5+ years here. Definitely not looking back to go to an office. After doing the DN thing in Asia for a year, I bought a farm house in my home country in Europe and moved over here. Being able to live in nature instead of in a city is an amazing, life changing experience. I often have people over visiting me - either friends or couch surfers. Planning to AirBnB the barn as well, which I converted into a nice big loft. I don't feel much lonely - I can always chat with neighbors - everybody knows everybody here in the village. Or I can drive to the city whenever I feel like. I love the fact that I've never used an alarm clock (except when I need to catch a flight or something). And yet I am always getting up earl and full of energy. I often nap during the day, which I love, and would be hard to do in an office. I sometimes disappear for a couple of hours to do some work in the garden. And I sometimes check on work on weekends. Overall, the flexibility about how you spend your time and where you live is what makes remote work worth it. You also need the discipline though.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#68

Post by randomdata »

masklinn wrote: post #36
randomdata wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He, by definition, is gender neutral and fine for use when the gender is unknown or irrelevant.

> He, by definition, is gender neutral and fine for use when the gender is unknown or irrelevant. Not in english.

English is a fluid language. The original commenter could have even correctly used 'Buhurah' instead of 'He' if most people would understand that it meant the author of the article. Although, unlike 'He', which is commonly used to refer to people of all genders to the point that it is recorded in modern dictionaries as such, 'Buhurah' is likely to leave people confused as to the subject matter.

The fact that you were able to successfully recognize that the person who used 'He' was specifically referring to Julia Evans without having to question that person means that the message was conveyed quite succinctly and the subject was perfectly understood, which is correct from the perspective of the english language.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#69

Post by thenaturalist »

ibz wrote: post #67

5+ years here. Definitely not looking back to go to an office. After doing the DN thing in Asia for a year, I bought a farm house in my home country in Europe and moved over here. Being able to live in nature instead of in a city is an amazing, life changing experience. I often have people over visiting me - either friends or couch surfers. Planning to AirBnB the barn as well, which I converted into a nice big loft.…

Mind sharing if/ how it's possible to visit? I'm starting out to work remotely and travel and would come by.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#70

Post by nul_byte »

bkovacev wrote: post #46

After working remotely for 4 years I am switching back to the office at least 3 days a week and moving back to our company HQ in the States. Hardest challenge for me was staying in shape, because I lacked self-discipline to workout and eat healthy, but funny enough work didn't suffer and it was the most productive period in my life. It gets extremely easy to start slacking (no pun intended) and not do your work out.…

> Hardest challenge for me was staying in shape, because I lacked self-discipline to workout and eat healthy, but funny enough work didn't suffer and it was the most productive period in my life.

How do you expect that will be fixed by spending more time in the morning and at the end of the day commuting to work?

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