
Ask HN: First time working from home; what to do or not do? - ashton314
I&#x27;ll be working as a full-stack developer part-time for the next few months from home. It&#x27;s a small team of about three or four devs that I&#x27;ve worked with before. It&#x27;s a really nice company and I&#x27;m looking forward to going back to work for them. However, I&#x27;ll be working from home for the vast majority of the foreseeable future, and this is my first time working from home. Any advice on what I can do (or not do) to maximize productivity, reduce distraction, and facilitate teamwork?
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tiffanyh
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 thinking your not “at home”.

3\. Treat your working time as work.

Just because you’re home, don’t go get the mail. Take out the quick trash. Or
other small errands around the house.

You’re work time should be for work. And just because you’re at home, don’t
let others (spouse) trick you into doing house hold tasks.

4\. Remove distractions.

If you like to game during the day, literally disconnect your Xbox during
working hours.

5\. Leave for lunch.

You can very easily get cabin fever by staying at home all day and night. Go
outside for lunch. Even if you just pack your lunch. It’s important to
movement and to get outside.

6\. Establish a strong social outlet.

Most people don’t realize that working from home is incredibly lonely. It’s
easy to get depressed. Find an outlet to talk to people.

~~~
caseymarquis
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 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.

~~~
jrowley
I’d echo this response. For me the added mentally energy of resisting the
desire to take out the trash, clean some dishes etc is just a distraction
because I worry about getting it done. I just take care of what I need to take
care of at home chore wise and then trust myself to get enough work done to
not feel guilty.

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pdimitar
I'll skip the pretty standard advice here that basically boils down to "put
clear boundaries so your brain is tricked into thinking you are at an office".

This brain hack never worked for me so I'll give you mostly the reverse
advices:

1\. Make a very comfy work place at home. It can be at your gaming machine as
long as you don't stop work to game or browse HN/Reddit/what-have-you.

2\. To build discipline, you have to change your mindset to goal-oriented and
not hours-oriented. It's not about putting your arse at the chair at 9:00 and
getting up at 17:30. Not at all. It's about "I want to achieve X and Y today".

3\. One thing from the other advices I do like is: make sure you get social
and human contact every now and then. It's _extremely_ easy to never talk to
anyone ever again if you work and rest at the same real estate. Go out for
coffee or to pack lunch. Do that to refresh your brain and to have an excuse
to exchange a few phrases with people.

4\. If you are not a person that has an exact work and rest schedule, that's
quite fine; everybody has been telling me that I shouldn't work a minute
outside the work hours but I never found this to be productive. I sometimes
had days during which my work hours have been all a haze and then I got a
power surge at midnight. As long as working at random hours does not depress
you (it does depress many though, have that in mind!) then it's quite fine to
do it.

5\. Dressing for work is something that I, again, found optional. I am quite
fine working in my pyjamas and I never felt lazy because of it. Dress comfy!
I've spent days with pyjamas and a blanket on my legs.

\---

Truthfully, your biggest hurdle is NOT to think "I am at home, I can slack".
There are multitude of ways to cope with that but mine was to switch to a
goal-oriented mindset and not an hours-oriented one.

If you can overcome the laziness because you're at home and are not closely
supervised then honestly, you'll be just fine.

------
digitalsushi
As someone 90 days into a full remote from home job, I would highly recommend
you meditate on whether you are the sort of person that actually wants to
exist in what could effectively be a prison in the shape of your home. (Or
wherever you decide to work from.)

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.

~~~
ktm5j
This sort of thing varies from person to person. For example, my wife and I
are both very introverted and don't really need the human contact part. My
wife does work from home full time and loves it.

I can do almost 100% of my job remotely and so I work from home one day a
week. I could do more work from home, but my coworkers can't do their jobs
remotely so I don't want it to be unfair for them.

Personally I would recommend against going back to your old job, even if they
welcome you back. That won't look good on a resume. Give yourself some time,
let your superiors know that this is an adjustment for you and they should be
understanding.

~~~
Trias11
Disagree with "That won't look good on a resume".

Quite an opposite.

Lots of good reasons why professional could get back to previous place: more
interesting project, being valued, maintained good relationshiops, etc...

------
codingdave
Listen to all the advice from everyone who works at home, and then throw it
out. Everyone is different, and everyone finds their own most productive setup
and techniques. So try different things. Take people suggestions and see how
they work, but feel free to reject them if they don't feel right for you.

My personal advice is to make sure you do not work too much the first couple
months. It is easy to let work become a pervasive part of your life when your
office is always right there. So find ways to make a clear break between when
you are working and when you are not.

At the same time, do not just replicate the office experience in your home.
People who set aside a desk, get dressed, and work standard hours from home
are completely missing the freedom of the experience. I tend to work in blocks
of time over 12 hours each day... I get up early (4 AM), work for a couple
hours, then have breakfast with my family... then work more, then go on a walk
with my wife, then work more, etc. If I need a break, I will stop and play a
game for 15 minutes or so. I take lunches, I run errands, I do things. After 4
PM, I shut work down for the evening and just spend it with family or on
hobbies. Find the balance that maximizes your productivity for work, but that
also lets you enjoy flexibility and freedom.

------
sombrerobro
Yeah, I recently started working (full time) from home too (about 6 months
ago). In my particular case I combined starting remote work with moving to
another country which made one negative aspect of remote work more acute:
social isolation. It should definitely not be underestimated and it is very
helpful to build things into your life that involve you in others' lives
directly. Additionally having a good routine, and being intentional about it,
goes a really long way! Figure out what works for you and what does not. For
me, I chose one room in my apartment where I work, and when I leave that room
I avoid work.

On the plus side, I think working from home can bring you much closer to
family - it is crazy to think I spent so much time at work!! 9+ hours of my
waking life was away from the people closest to me. Working from home gives
you _a lot_ more flexibility so make the most of that! Wanna work at a cafe
today? Go for it! Wanna sleep in a bit? Go for it! (but do not do this at the
cost of a healthy routine). Make it a treat yo' self kind of thing. Good luck
and hope you can make the most of this new mode!

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Anon_C0ward
So it really depends, I see a lot of responses below and it really depends on
your ability to work and focus (everyone is different), but for me,
personally, I have a KVM and I have different setups for different levels of
concentration. Nobody is ever 100% productive, don't try to be. When I start
work, I log in and put my work system on my main monitor and focus on my
morning work routine. I triage things as needed (I support many different
systems), then I take a break to grab a coffee and take care of my morning
routine. I return and work on anything important first and depending on how
things go may do another work task or 2 before lunch. After lunch, I triage
anything new that's on my list, then shift work to be a secondary focus for a
while (personal system as main monitor, work system off to the side). I do
this for about an hour, after eating it takes time to regain full
productivity. Then I shift back to my work system, on my main monitor, do some
more work until people start leaving the office, once things are quiet, it
becomes secondary until I log out for the day. This mimics real office life to
some degree, it adds in time to de-stress and take it easy, but it allows you
to maximize your productivity in bursts without getting burnt out. As for
teamwork, I personally prefer group chats when there's an issue we're
tackling, but I'm always a fan of a quick 1 to 1 phone call to discuss things,
when needed. People always know if they send me an IM, I'll be there and
willing to help. Biggest mistake I see people making - Feeling guilted into
working until burnout. Put in your 40 hours, don't expect 100% productivity,
but do your best and take the work seriously.

------
cerberusss
Find a co-working space near you. I'm currently working two days a week at a
local shared office and rent my own desk.

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.

------
throwaway7288
My partner is also remote and I work from home. This probably the best
possible working situation I've ever had. Just do work when you're feeling
productive, go for walks, get out of the house in the morning. Don't over
work, because once you've set that bar you can't lower it. Realistically you
will get done in 2 hours what takes an office worker a whole day.

------
fpalmans
To make the advise from HN more relevant, perhaps it is better to follow up in
a week or two and describe your experience working from home. Are you indeed
easily distracted? Or, are you working crazy hours? Are you more/less
productive? Are you happier? Are you less stressed, more stressed? Are you
eating more/less, etc. It is also relevant to whether or not you live alone,
have a family...

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.

------
halfjoking
You may be different but I find it impossible to work from home.

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...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3lhfVpLL4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3lhfVpLL4)

------
jeremiecoullon
A lot of the advice here is good!

For me: what helped was easing into it: I would only work a bit from home for
an hour or 2 in the morning before going into the office (it was during my PhD
so no one was monitoring my time).

When I got more comfortable working from home I started doing entire days, but
not the entire week. Eventually, I started working only from home. This way
meant that I could set up good habits (they'll be different for everyone)
before doing it all the time.

------
x0ner
Don't just have a dedicated area, make it a place you want to work from. It
seems obvious, but once you're working from home, it's easy to just cobble
together a workspace in a room and call it an "office". Your office should
feel comfortable, a place you want to spend a good amount of time in, but is
not distracting. At the end of the day, it should also be a place you leave in
favor of living life. I wrote about my home office just in case you want some
ideas, [https://medium.com/@9bplus/my-home-
office-f531f662fc51](https://medium.com/@9bplus/my-home-office-f531f662fc51).
Been working from home for 2 years now.

------
octokatt
Get a gym membership, and make a plan to use it. The time you used to spend
commuting is now at least partially for the gym.

Going to the gym gets you out of the house, adds the physical activity you
might lack, and will help with the weird bouts of depression that _can_ come
with remote work.

Since you're on a small team, I'd add that finding a hobby or show everyone
likes and can be a safe topic of conversation to bond over, even when things
are stressful, will help keep lines of communication open. Making a
watercooler Slack channel with that topic helps a lot.

------
neilk
Hi. I've been working from home for about 1.5 years and have had spells of
working remotely from coworking places.

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.

------
Ruth_K
I`m working from home for quite a long time already. If you`re interested I`m
a writer and that`s an example of what I`m writing:
[https://ivypanda.com/essays/compare-and-contrast-paper-
the-v...](https://ivypanda.com/essays/compare-and-contrast-paper-the-vietnam-
war-and-korean-war/). All that was mentioned by people here is important, but
the most important when you`re working from home, it`s to schedule work
perfectly. If you`re wouldn`t have scheduled work would be never-ending.

------
joeld42
One thing that really helped for me was "walking to work", I would walk to a
coffee shop a few blocks away and then back home and go straight to my office.
It really helped having a clear routine to delineate working time from home
time.

Communication is the biggest challenge. Try to talk to your co-workers every
day and overcommunicate even if it seems too much. Making quick screen
recordings and narrating them for even little things is invaluable, it seemed
like a hassle at first but soon you get the wrinkles out of the capturing side
of it and people really appreciate it.

------
bowlich
One item that is often overlooked that I wished more remote team mates would
do: Get a business line for your internet connection or better yet, get a
second line and use it only for work so you can segment your network
activities between home and work.

You want a static IP address for at least one on-all-the-time box to route all
traffic through and get a domain pointed at it. You don't want to have to deal
with an ISP that thinks they can determine which ports you want open.

------
psv1
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.

~~~
fpalmans
Though I feel most of the advice is centered around a subset of concerns wrt
working from home, I want to hear more about your thoughts. Can you please
elaborate?

------
steven_noble
Do you with others? In particular, with children? Then it's crucial that you
have an office or similar with a door you can shut. Then you have to nicely
train everyone you live with to not do things like shouting to you through the
shut door on the assumption that you're free because they can't hear you
listening to a conference call.

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mooreds
I wrote about the challenges of remote work here:

[https://www.culturefoundry.com/cultivate/digital-agency-
life...](https://www.culturefoundry.com/cultivate/digital-agency-life/what-
are-the-challenges-of-remote-work/)

Try to avoid/mitigate them :)

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thisone
A lot depends on the expectations of your workplace.

Roll out of bed whenever and work in my PJs? Not when my meetings are all over
video.

Change up my work hours to take random long breaks and work odd hours? Not
when a fair portion of my work is collaborative.

You need to take the time to find out what works for you.

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memn0nis
For me, the most important thing I do is "act" like I am at work. I.e.,
shower, shave, put on work clothes, sit at a desk, and only take the type of
breaks I would in an office environment (e.g., make coffee)

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Trias11
Go to bed early, wake up early. Go to gym before "work" early morning.

This way your mind and body will be full of energy, sharp and fresh

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mudasirtumarm
Do whatever in which you have an interest any access.

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lowkeyokay
Do not check HN

