Some folks may be #RemoteWorking for the first time for an extended period, let me give you some hints and tips. I've been working from home for the majority of my career and have learnt a few things, please feel free to RT/share your experiences - a rambling thread (1/n)
1. Clock on/clock off. It's very easy for the working day to consume every waking hour. Just because you are working from home doesn't mean work should become your life. Stick to your normal working hours.
2. Have a lunch break. It's easy to just eat and work, but you aren't getting a lunch break then. It will feel strange, but leave your workstation and watch TV, or go for a walk - use the lunch break to get away from work. And take it fully!
3. If possible, have a separate area for working. Achieving a work/life balance is important and having a separate "work" and "home" area will help. If you don't have one - put your work laptop/stuff away and out of site when you are off the clock.
4. If allowed (depending on what is happening in your part of the world). Go for walk. Get some sunlight. Do some gardening. Just get outside - otherwise you'll get cabin fever pretty quickly.
5. With partners/kids make sure they know when you are working, you are working - you can't be disturbed (ofc use common sense here).
6. Keep hydrated, drink plenty.
7. Be social! Join a Discord/Slack, voice chat with friends and coworkers - #remoteworking can be exceedingly isolating, it's very important not to turn into a complete hermit (I'm still figuring this one out!)
8. Once you have accepted a couple of packages during the day, expect the delivery folk to use you as their go to drop off person. This comes with it's own benefits and disadvantages, but is something most folk don't think about.
9. If you do have an office in your home, keep it tidy. It's very easy to let stuff build up around you when you are focused on working. Also, if video conferencing remember you have a background - warn others in the house if you are on a live call.
10. Wear a headset when on calls, keep yourself muted when you can and other such common sense conference call stuff. Also, when sharing your connection with others, you may want to ask them to stop Netflix while you are on a call.
11. Get up and walk around when you can. You won't notice at first, but when you are in the office you are actually moving around a lot. Working from home stops that, it's worth taking a five minute break to walk around.
12. Unless there are time sensitive things (deadlines/meetings) do NOT feel guilty about doing personal stuff during the day. Maybe you need shopping or to pick someone up, just make up the hours later.
13. Remember to sleep. Remember to keep regular hours. It's very easy to get into a bad pattern of staying up late then waking up at 8.58 for a 9am good morning to your co-workers. Use your commute time to be productive, do the washing up or go for a walk.
14. If you are communicating via text messengers (e.g. non voice) with coworkers for the first time - remember it's a very different set of rules - people can come off as rude/bullish it's hard to determine if something is a joke just with writing.
15. Overcommunicate - it's very easy for folk to be forgotten about. Talk in meetings, tell folks what you are working on, ask questions. Find out what other people are working on. Talk as much as you can - it can help with the isolation.
16. If you use a second monitor at work, get one at home. It will drive you crazy otherwise. And if you don't use a second monitor, maybe consider it? It's an amazing way to increase productivity.
17. Background noise: working in silence can be tricky. Different things work for different people. Some like white noise, some like music, some like the tv on in the background. I switch between music/TV series I know off by heart, the background noise really does help.
18. Don't eat at your keyboard. It will get disgusting pretty quickly (shamefully speaking from experience here) - also keyboards are some of the most disgusting surfaces in a home/office. Yucky!
19. Don't feel guitly about working from home. I can't stress this enough. You are still being productive and doing your job, just in a different enviroment which presents its own challenges and advantages.
20. You are allowed to be sick when remote working. Treat it exactly how you would if you were sick and heading to the office. Take the day off, tell people you are ill and try *NOT* to think about work. That can wait until you are better. Do not try and power through it.
21. Keep up with the news, maybe watch the news during your lunch break? or have the news going on as your background noise. It's important to remember you aren't just alone in a bubble, the world is still turning.
22. Get your VPN set up (if needed) before having to remote work - it's much easier to get it sorted if you have a direct line to IT. Also test your VPN, make sure that you can connect from home.
23. IT folk - remember to check that your VPN can support the number of users who will be connecting during this time. But I'm probably teaching you to suck eggs at this point, but it's always worth a reminder.
24. Use a work machine for work (if you can), be warned if you are using a personal/home machine - some IT policies/suites can give remote access to your machine in ways you won't expect. And no sysadmin wants to stumble upon your Cthulhu fanfiction.
25. Try and wear pants (seriously no one actually does this)
26. If you need anything, then remember you can always ask - maybe your office chair isn't good for a prolonged work day - maybe you need a second monitor. You are still an employee at the end of the day and need your enviroment to be work friendly.
Sorry completely for spamming your timelines with all this :-) But I thought it would be good to share, please feel free to RT the thread and add your own thoughts. Remember, we will get through all this together! :-)
24.a. If you are working with PII (Personally identifiable information) it shouldn't be on your personal machine, GDPR is pretty important. Any work you do with this should be done on VPN via work server nothing should be local (IANAL ofc)
