
Working from home – things no one talks about - fallenhitokiri
https://www.timo-zimmermann.de/2020/03/working-from-home-things-no-one-talks-about/
======
reaperducer
There are so many of these work from home how-to articles because they're
trendy, but almost never useful.

I worked from home for ten years, then back to the office for three, now back
at home. I can tell you that what works for one person does not work for
everyone.

For example, I am most productive in the morning, and wake up motivated and
ready to work. For that reason, I don't take a shower until lunch, then use
the afternoons to sort of wind-down with less productive things like meetings,
reports, and such.

My father worked from home in the 80's. He was the opposite. He was better in
the afternoon. Because of that, he had to force himself to take the mornings
seriously. He did that by getting up every morning at 6am, doing the full
getting-ready-for-the-office thing, and even went down to the corner store for
coffee every day as a sort of "commute."

He would end up at 8am sitting in his home office in the laundry room in a
full suit and tie ready for for the day, while I'm still in my sweatpants
until after noon.

(Equipment-wise, from working home in the 80's was very different than it is
today. Think a big desk with three rotary telephones, filing cabinets, a VFD
calculator, and a Telex machine.)

~~~
throwaway713
What I find strange is all of the people who don't like working from home
trying to talk _everyone_ out of it, including the people who do want to work
from home. Look at all of the comments on HN with people claiming that it
doesn't work generally, rather than just for them specifically. I don't
understand the mentality — "it doesn't work for me, therefore I'm going to
actively work to make sure you have to come into the office too."

~~~
Tade0
They're afraid that this will become the norm and their office chit-chat times
will be over for good.

Or worse: they don't _like_ being at their own home, so the thought of staying
there is terrifying.

That's at least what I've gathered from those I talked with.

I mean, if someone is saying that a 40min commute in high traffic still
doesn't tip the balance in favour of remote work, then they apparently either
really like being in the office, or really dislike staying home. Parents come
to mind for the latter, but most of the people I've known who have 4+ children
work remotely, so this doesn't add up.

~~~
bitforger
> Parents come to mind for the latter, but most of the people I've known who
> have 4+ children work remotely, so this doesn't add up.

It's multifaceted. It might be fine if you own a large enough home that you
can have a dedicated working space, with a door.

Even without kids, I find it extremely difficult to work from home without a
dedicated space. If I try to work from the living room, I end up doing living
room things (like playing video games).

For some people, though, the idea of engineering your environment to change
your behavior is either impractical or unheard of, which is what I think gives
these people the general impression that "working effectively from home is
impossible."

~~~
Fire-Dragon-DoL
This is again very personal.

I love my kid crawling on me while I work, she sits on my lap and watches
around or hug me a bit.

I work in the living room, my wife is there, my kid too. The desk is equipped
for work, to be clear (good chair, screens etc.), I occasionally play games on
it in the evenings (not often, to be fair) and I work in my "home clothes".
Been doing this for over 10 years now.

I have my rules: if I don't work enough or I see I lose focus often, I'll work
more hours. If I work too much, I'll work less the next day.

The other day I was even shocked realizing how much time people spend chatting
at work, my day seemed more intense at home than their at the office.

To everyone its own. My style has been working great and a hug or cuddle from
wife/kid is a great boost to my productivity!

------
yurlungur
You know, last week when we were starting to WFH I thought of it as a blessing
in disguise since I always liked staying indoors and often take a day or two
to WFH per week to focus on docs etc.

However, once everyone is WFH the experience turned out to be less than ideal
to say the least. I found that I worked more, worked more at overtime hours
and have been more stressed out than usual.

I think it really had nothing to do with my habits and preparedness. I already
had everything set up (multiple displays, standing desk etc which I've had for
a long time) and had almost no productivity drop on my side. However, now all
my colleagues are pinging me, the video meetings take longer to finish since
people are talking over each other and now I'm asked to write much more
documentation and communications for rather trivial matters instead of just
talking to someone face to face for a couple of minutes. People (management)
also have less respect for normal work hours.

In the end I think if your company doesn't have the preparedness and more
importantly the systems ready for remote work, you won't be ready for full
remote work either.

I just hope people will begin to adjust to the new normal better as time goes
on.

~~~
jasonkester
_> I found that I worked more, worked more at overtime hours and have been
more stressed out than usual._

Here's how I deal with this:

The work computer lives in my office, which I close up and leave at the end of
the work day. None of my other devices have access to work email, and none of
them receive any form of work related notification ever.

If you ping me about something after I've signed off for the evening, you'll
get a response in the morning after I've had my coffee.

Everybody else is free to work around the clock if they like. If they need me,
they can catch me while I'm at work.

------
mattbee
I read my wife the headline and we both thought of the same thing -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_DNpTMKXk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_DNpTMKXk)
\- which this article skips over completely. Disappointing.

~~~
znpy
thanks for the good laugh

~~~
7177Y
And now that both halves of the two income household are working from home,
well...

I'm investing in Durex.

------
vvanders
Pretty decent list, as someone who's full-time remote let me add one more:

At the end of the day send your manager a quick email of what you did and
things that happened. You shouldn't spend more than 5 minutes and there's
never an expectation of a reply but it's a great way to fill them in and
augment the in-person conversations that happen in the office.

~~~
biomcgary
As someone who is a remote manager of remote colleagues, I would ask any
employee giving me a daily update to stop. It is one more distraction and I
prefer to evaluate people for their long-term productivity rather than daily.
I may be an outlier though.

~~~
smcameron
For many years, I used to have a little html file I called "log.html" (just
plain html) and at the end of every day before I left, I'd add a section at
the top, dated, separated with a horizontal rule <hr>, with notes about what I
did that day, and also little things I learned. When it came time to make my
weekly status report, I'd refer back to it. I could also search through it and
find various bits of information I'd written down. And if other people
wondered what I'd been up to, they could look at it too.

~~~
raister
Yes. I do this. In Gdocs though, name is productivity, where I add the day in
format [dd/mm/yyyy] followed by bullets points on things I thought and did
during the day. It also helps me to wrap my mind around in the following
weeks, like, what was I thinking? then I go back to the log, and remember the
trail of thought leading to my decisions. It is quite worth a while doing this
I reckon.

------
rsynnott
My main problem with it isn’t so much productivity (if anything I’m possibly a
little more productive). It’s more the isolation (not helped by the fact that
my country is now closing everything down). The only person I’ve talked to in
person since Wednesday was a supermarket cashier. Assuming this goes on for a
few months I have serious doubts about my ability to stay sane.

~~~
Tade0
In my case the first crisis came after three months.

It gets better after that.

~~~
rsynnott
I'd definitely hope not to be doing this for three months!

------
mirimir
TFA is loaded with good advice.

However, there's one thing missing: Track your time, say in 10-15 minute
blocks, with short notes about what you're doing. That can be integrated with
your calendar.

I consulted for many years, simultaneously for multiple clients with multiple
projects, so that was essential for billing. But I can imagine that it'd also
be useful if you're dealing with managers with little experience of working
remotely.

The idea of videoconferencing from home creeps me some. It's a privacy issue.
And I do love working in bathrobes. It's comfortable, and makes for less
laundry.

~~~
dillonmckay
I am willing to bet a decent amount of work from home folks don’t wear pants.

~~~
justrudd
I work from home full time now. Have been for about a year. Before I started
working from home, jeans, chinos, etc. for 10+ hours a day wasn’t bothersome.
But now? They bug me. I do have different kind of sweatpants to wear during
work hours. That does help demarcate the work day.

------
eu
No devices will help you do your job when you have a few kids and the spouse
is also supposed to work from home..

~~~
RomanPushkin
this. When management is no-kids, it's going to be a problem

------
k__
Working from home for 6 years now.

What worked for me:

Sleep till noon

Checking mail/chats

2-4h creative work (design, coding, writing) interleaved with mail/chats if
the flow won't hit

Checking Mail/chat

<30h work weeks

only <4 meetings a month

See that you have to find time for work and not for life.

------
romanows
I really dislike video chat for full-time remote work. Video chat is still too
lo-fi to approach the utility of in-person meetings and has the same downsides
(grooming, dress, other appearance-based stereotypes). What's wrong with
voice?!

~~~
thaumasiotes
> What's wrong with voice?!

What's wrong with text?

~~~
system2
Text is one way. You cannot have a fluid conversation via text. Voice and
voice+video are faster, plus they carry more information, prevent
misunderstandings etc.

~~~
nottorp
More MIS information? Text forces you to think before you type.

Perhaps you don't like having a record? :)

~~~
system2
Yes, good luck explaining things to people who can't understand basic
instructions via text. You might use it for "records" to protect yourself, but
getting things done is easier. When I ask someone 'do you understand', in text
it might sound very aggressive and sometimes offensive. Via phone or video, it
is much more relaxed. If you are concerned about recording, just use screen
capture and save it somewhere for a while. Even text cannot be used as a clear
evidence, the other person simply says 'I didn't understand that sentence that
way'.

~~~
nottorp
Why are you thinking of liability? I'm thinking of not having to take notes...

------
thih9
> But please do not share your enthusiasm for the cat that looks like Garfield
> with everyone on the call.

This heavily depends on the company culture, tone of the meeting,
participants, etc.

Basic savoir vivre still applies, interrupting someone to loudly admire a pet
(or whatever) would simply be rude.

But if the discussion stalls and if it’s not a meeting about personnel
reduction, I see no harm in saying that Mr Fluffy Paws looks especially nice
today.

------
intopieces
>Make sure you have a fixed schedule. Get up. Get ready. Do your job. Sign
off.

This is the most important one. I sign on at 8:30, I sign off at 5:30, and I
turn off my laptop and phone until 8:15 the next morning to give time to hook
everything back up. No exceptions.I take a 1 hour lunch where I might continue
a slack conversation but also do some yoga / Ring Fit.

~~~
tluyben2
> This is the most important one.

Like what everyone already said here; it depends on the person. For me that
does not work.

I start work at home when I wake up, which can be 3 am or 1 pm and I work
until I do not feel like it anymore, which can be 1 hour or 20 hours. Been
doing that for 25+ years (not sure what the average is but I would say around
7 hours), works fine.

------
shartshooter
I was making the typical hour trek from San Francisco to Mountain View for
four years, every day. Decided to move away and started working remotely 100%.

Not having the eight hours back in my week was life changing. Habits, health,
relationships have all improved.

It feels like there are always going to be roles, teams and companies that
must work together face to face, if we can culturally shift away from going
into an office, it could really improve quality of life for lots of people.

For many others it may hurt them as work is a big social outlet. That’ll have
to be taken into consideration.

I think we’ll see a big shift culturally over the next year as much more of
the public potentially gets used to what it’s like working from home,
companies may find it really helps(or hurts) their bottom line.

This could end up hurting as productivity will be terrible if everyone’s
distracted with news on covid and employers associate that loss due to being
remote.

Ultimately, post-crisis, expectations around how people work will
significantly change.

~~~
throwaway713
Do you miss SF though?

~~~
shartshooter
Food, talent, energy - yes

Traffic, expensive everything, too much focus on work - no

------
ladzoppelin
I think working from home is amazing but it does take some adjustment. Good
internet, exercise and Slack/Mattermost "visibility" (Participating in non-
work related channels) is really important to have a good experience. Just
another opinion.

------
Tade0
Here's something I haven't seen mentioned and long term it makes a huge
difference:

If so far you used public transportation to get to work or just walked and
otherwise didn't do any exercise - start. 30 minutes of mild yoga is enough.

Remote work often comes with a double whammy of less exercise and increased
snacking - both will make you put on weight.

I've put on 15kg over the four years I've worked remotely and now after two
months of office work already lost 4kg, because there's this hill(20m height)
I have to descend every day to get to work.

You keeping your balance in the bus every day really adds up over time.

------
lukaszkups
The catchy title part 'no one talks about' is a bit overstated I think, as I
could use it in my piece from 2018 as well for example:
[https://lukaszkups.net/notes/truth-about-remote-
work/](https://lukaszkups.net/notes/truth-about-remote-work/) \- imho I've
managed to capture there some details that are often overlooked in recent
trendy articles too (and also not mentioned in this thread's blog post as
well) ;)

------
Razengan
Perhaps an office should become a part of all future houses, just like
kitchens and bedrooms, to help with focus, privacy and discipline/scheduling
etc.

In the long run, working-from-home will only be a win, in so many aspects of
society: reducing daily traffic and the associated stress, reclaiming the
space taken up by office towers and parking lots, all of which will improve
overall public health and increase leisure time, which would boost local
economies and even travel industries and so on.

------
tudorw
Working from home is a chance to experience unbridled flow, as a home worker
since 96' I would say just do 3 or 4 hours a day for the first 2 weeks and
resolve all those personal and home things that are on your mind, clear the
runway for some real productivity :) For now the only other tip applies only
if you get irritated by distractions learn to be more gracious, I found it was
the irritation I brought to the party that broke the flow, not the
interruption itself.

------
farrarstan
As someone who is on my feet all day everyday working with metal, probably
inhaling bad fumes, no healthcare no benefits: that font is absolutely gouging
my eyes out homie

------
rwmj
On the subject of conference cameras I can fully recommend the Logitech BCC
950 ([https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/product/conferencecam-
bcc950](https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/product/conferencecam-bcc950)). It's
ideal for work from home and you won't usually need to use headphones with it.
On the downside it's pretty expensive.

------
kazinator
> _If you are uncertain how to properly make sure you get a healthy lunch and
> dinner check “Fitness YouTube”._

Why would you not know that if you're working at home, if you knew it while
working at work?

Or, if you didn't know when working at work, why would you start caring when
switching to working from home?

------
hocuspocus
I don't really see the need to use headphones. Almost nobody in my team does,
and we were already working from home ~50% of the time before the current
situation.

Despite all the bad things I want to say about the Macbook Pro provided by my
employer, its speakers and mic do a pretty good job during videochat.

~~~
zwayhowder
The problem is the microphone is too good. I just bought my entire team
headsets because I'm sick of the background noise from other rooms or in one
case his next door neighbour coming over the macbook microphone. Also it stops
people shouting which my experience is most people do when on speakerphone,
despite the fact that they have never needed to.

It would be fine if your team is used to this and understands mute buttons and
whatnot. Not fine when its an employee who doesn't mute and types at 100wpm on
the same macbook.

~~~
hocuspocus
We understand mute buttons. :)

And there shouldn't be a lot of typing involved unless I'm in a 1:1 pair
debugging/troubleshooting session, and even then it's not exactly reaching 100
wpm.

I can't say I've been bothered much by background noise, that's actually more
often an issue in the office. In the following weeks there will probably be
more of it due to kids being home, but we have no choice here.

------
klyrs
The folks I eat lunch with are doing a daily zoom meeting at our lunchtime, to
help with the isolation.

------
teunispeters
Good camera suggestions there. Nothing else there should be a surprise.
Although honestly, a webcam on a laptop should be fine too, or tablet. But
headphones are a really good idea for conferences.

------
downtide
The flip side is that when you are stuck in a busy noisy office, the only
place you want to be, is at home to concentrate and do your work. Stuck at
home too long, and need the office. Balance.

------
kjs3
Don't pretend that WFH makes it OK to have your dog barking in the background
all meeting. Yes, we had a ton of WFH newbies this past week, and this in
particular is driving me nuts.

------
aasasd
I wonder how many people need to start popping vitamin D when switching to the
shut-in lifestyle—especially if living father north. And how many of them will
know that they do.

------
aaron695
And I'd buy things sooner than later.

I doubt stores have appropriate stocks for the change over.

------
planetzero
I've been working from home for a decade. I've worked at many companies and
been part of the hiring process for remote developers.

Most people just don't have the discipline to work remotely. I think
productivity will be reduced overall and it might prevent remote working in
the future.

~~~
finaliteration
I really believe that working remotely or from home is a skill that needs to
be developed over time in most cases. There may be some people who are just
naturally better at it, but the first time I had a remote job we went from
five days in the office to five days at home abruptly and I was horrible at it
and inefficient at my job.

With my current job we started doing 1-2 days of working from home a week over
the last year or so. Doing it part time has given me a chance to develop the
skills and space needed to be successful and now that we are being pushed into
it full time I feel a lot more prepared for it.

I do agree, though, that for most people who aren’t used to it or haven’t had
a chance to develop the skills needed it’s going to be a rough transition and
productivity is likely to decline, at least temporarily. Some of that may be
due to working remotely, but I’m sure at least a part of it is just due to the
general circumstances and anxiety surrounding it.

~~~
Swizec
But like didn’t you go to high school or college? Did you never have to study
at home? How does one get into the modern office workforce without ever
learning how to be productive when left to their own devices? I don’t get it

For me working from an office or working from home is literally the same
thing. I’m on computer with headphones on and talking through slack.

~~~
finaliteration
> _But like didn’t you go to high school or college?_

I was home schooled for K-12 but I did go to college and I was actually pretty
effective at working on my own. But I think the nature of the work you’re
assigned in college is different from that of the workplace, at least in most
situations. For example, college won’t necessarily teach you how to
communicate effectively with a remote team, how to stick to a schedule even at
home, how to set up a space so you can take calls, etc.

I also think I sort of unlearned the skills needed after being forced to come
into the office between X and Y time of the day for several years after
college, so when I was suddenly left to my own devices again it was a
difficult shift. Had I jumped straight from college to a fully remote job I
may have done a bit better.

Now that I’ve relearned those skills I much prefer a mix of working from home
and being in the office, that way I get a good balance of focused time at home
and social time at the office.

~~~
Izkata
> For example, college won’t necessarily teach you how to [..] stick to a
> schedule even at home

If anything, I'd say it's especially good at teaching the opposite if you
dormed on-campus - how to fit work in between randomly-timed socializing.

------
jmccorm
My number one tip for employees is a simple one: above all else, _be
responsive_. If your company has an instant messenger app, your response time
should be in _seconds_ , not minutes. If you're going on a small errand or
putting together a snack in the kitchen, it is to your benefit as much as
everyone else's to update your status. A simple 'be right back' goes a long
ways. When managers can't get ahold of people working from home is when they
start to ask questions, run VPN reports, and reign things in.

In reading the comments below, this seems to be wildly unpopular. I can
understand where they're coming from. Being available may be very appreciated
by others, but it really hurts when you're deeply involved in something. I
manage this by marking myself as busy when I know I'm about to dive deep into
something, but you can't always see it coming, and I can understand the
resistance to this approach.

~~~
bitexploder
This destroys deep work. If you are paid for deep work you have to balance
responsiveness with getting your work done. Don’t be unavailable, use status
messages wisely, and set up an SLA that makes sense for deep work. “Seconds”
is not reasonable IMO. Depends on your role, I suppose.

~~~
znpy
> This destroys deep work

yes, but not everybody has to do deep work all the time.

for example, part of my job is to be available to colleagues for consultation.
it might be something to which i can quickly respond "ticket or gtfo" or "busy
right now, could you ask me again in 10-15 minutes?". But it could also
require me immediate action (some production environment is failing).

As a company culture it is important to empower people to tell "not now", to
educate people to only tell "not now" if you actually can't right now, and to
train yourself to write "not now" without losing focus.

------
joeax
I figured it was only a matter of time before all the WFH "advice" articles
would start. This guys's been doing it for 2 weeks and he's already an expert
dispensing advice. I've been WFH for 8 years, so reading this is a bunch of
LOL.

Regarding headphones, this is not an issue once you move into a dedicated
office space in your house. One thing I use to hate is taking headphones
on/off every time there's a call. Regarding set hours, that's totally a
preference. I work late at night sometimes because I feel like it. WFH means
flexibility and not commuting means sometimes I get a jolt of inspiration to
work off hours. I don't mind because the trade-off is I get to take time off
during the day to attend school events for my kids.

Remote work is a lifestyle change for sure. More loneliness, more discipline,
less water-cooler gossip. It requires the right mindset and personality that
some of you don't have, and I'm sure you're itching to get back to the office.

~~~
red_trumpet
2 weeks? He writes he hasn't worked in an office for 20 years.

And yeah, not everyone might have a dedicated to office area in there
apartment, and this still would not prevent any typing noise.

