Why remote work is hard and how it can be fixed

Yes, I think the lack of prep problem is underrated.

As a freelancer, I almost don't notice lock-down other than the cabin fever effects, because my home office is well-established. But, wow, that would have been different if I had been put in the position of building up that office infrastructure over-night, as things were shutting down.

And certainly the place-without-interruptions can be a challenge. I have lived in a home with a toddler and a cat -- well, that isn't exactly conducive to getting into "coding flow". Pre-lockdown, I had a chat with a startup CEO who likes to work from his home office when he needs a block of deep-work time. It is a big source of irritation with his wife that "door closed means I am unavailable" -- so yeah, just a place to hide is nice once in a while.

Spending my days trying to figure out Asp.net core identity while Peppa Pig is on full blast in the same room.

Yeah, I just got a colleague a laptop because their kids are using theirs all day. I think most people do not have a computer per person at home... especially with younger kids.

I keep an office and a gym in my finished basement and it works perfectly for that separation. Not feasible for everyone but if you have the space it’s totally worth creating the division.

>The psychological separation between home and work is so important.

Honestly, It varies by person. I've gone into an office increasingly intermittently for the most part over the past 15 years or so and don't even have an assigned desk any longer.

I have a dedicated office at home (which I also use for video/photo editing, screwing around with electronics, etc.) but I don't feel it has to be just a work-work room. I do videocalls from this room because it's where my good webcam is attached to my desktop system and where I've fiddled with lighting and background.

TBH though, half the time I work somewhere else in the house on a laptop.

But I've absolutely worked with a lot of people who pretty much came into the office every day even though they had no particular need to.

My overall conclusion is that most of the "rules" for working remote or WFH only apply to some people.

That's a matter of habit. The trigger before was space. "I am in the office - work mode on".

In WFH the trigger has to be time. We have a hard 9AM start policy, with 12 to 1PM lunch. That puts everyone on the same page and gets rid of the ambiguous "I wonder if anyone else is looking for me right now, and should I be working". You should absolutely know. If people don't respect it, it's their problem, but you should not be responding to people at 7AM or 9PM unless the sky is falling. No different from how it was before. This lack of boundaries is what really exhausts people.

Also, create a separate account on your computer for work. You should do that anyway to avoid screen share mishaps (no one wants to see your personal bookmarks and history).

At end of day, log out, killing slack notifications and email, and log into your work-free personal account. You are done for the day.

One strategy I've found is to work in a different room from where I "hang out". I think it helps your brain realize that this is work time.

One thing that helped me with this is routine. So I wake up, take a shower, get dressed, etc. just like I would if I were going into the office. It has to be a different routine than what you do on weekends. This allows me to be in that different "work" mental space. Hopefully you are able to find something that helps you.

I miss Union Station (I moved away)! It's such a cool place to hang out but never tried working there. Where do you post up, the cafe? I don't remember there being a ton of seats in there.

> putting in eight, or even six, solid hours

Especially considering that _nobody_ puts in eight or even six hours of "solid work" when at the office. That's something I intuitively knew for a while, but it came into stark contrast once I started consulting and tracking my time. I only bill for the time I _actually_ work. And doing 8 hours of mentally demanding, focused work per day is difficult AF. That's why people slack off in the office, have water cooler conversations, interrupt each other all the time, have meetings they don't really need to have, 1.5 hour lunch breaks, etc. If you had to actually work 8 hours a day, full throttle, few people would stick with it.

The flip side is the productivity of doing 8 hours of focused work per day is truly staggering when you tally it up at the end of the week (which I also do, and you should do, too, if you work remote - otherwise you'll be "invisible" no matter how much you contribute). And WFH plus mostly async communication is very amenable to being able to focus.

I'm surprised that people see going to an office as a solution to this difficulty though. I'd 100% rather be around family than in an office.

I've been managing fine by being available during the day, not stressing and just living in the moment. I get the heavy lifting done early in the morning or late at night. Just like in the office... my most productive hours have always been either before everyone else gets in or after everyone else goes home.

Wish I could upvote this 1000 times.

Really? I find the opposite is true, if you aren't pushing commits that speaks pretty loudly.

I have also found that many people have problems with async/written communication or even just paying attention to email or tasks. It is related to their general competence, communication skills and habits, and level of interest.

It is a big problem.

For me if they can't handle git comments or slack then they can usually manage to show up for a phone call. And in my projects that is generally not the best, but it is good enough to be able to keep projects moving forward.

If it was a programmer rather than manager or client who did not reply to chat/email or handle git properly, in my opinion there is no excuse and that is a fireable offense. I mean, it should be fireable for managers and clients too but sometimes keeping the gig seems worth it.

I hated this at first but at work when we moved to wfh we started using gitlabs time tracking features on all tickets. At first I felt like it made me rush everything to hit the estimated times and lost quality but after a few weeks I just ignore the estimated time and do it as fast as possible without sacrificing any quality. No one actively checks the time or cares if you go over as long as there is some extra quality to show for it but someone might question the fact that you spent hours on a very simple bit of work which keeps me on topic because I want to have something to point to to show where those hours went.

I just shared a few of my thoughts in response to the comment below

Metrics didn't work for me other than a binary, honest assessment of whether or not I worked on a particular day 'in good faith'. I treat it as a negotiation between my present and future selves. When you resolve to do something in the future, you are telling your future self that you know better than they do. This often fails for people because you have a much better understanding of your intent and reasons when you make the decision than when it is time to act. To counter this I decided to strengthen my 'resolve', which I define as the strength of my decisions. If my decisions are strong, they are much more easily recalled and felt when it is time to act.

In my experience there has to be a balance though. I can't always live by the decisions I have made in the past. I have to have some time each week where I live purely in the moment, with no prior plans guiding my actions. This way my future self doesn't begin to resent my past self.

At first it is odd to reason about yourself as different people at different times, but now I find it odd I ever thought to project an unchanging version of my present self into the future, as if time was not a factor to be considered.

That's an interesting idea that I haven't heard discussed yet. I think it makes a lot of sense, as the remote vs in-office divide is more pronounced when the experience isn't uniform.

>I really prefer meeting folks in person

I mostly don't do that in an office but I do for traveling/events which are pretty much off the table for an indefinite time. I meet far more of my colleagues at events than I do at my company offices. That's the difficult thing for me right now.

I'm pro-office, and I'm not a manager or anything. I just prefer working in offices, and prefer when my colleagues do too, because I find face-to-face interaction much more satisfying.

Way to exemplify OPs point.

I mean, I consider myself Pro-office because I like to personally interact with my coworkers, and I also enjoy the feeling of camaraderie that comes when a bunch of people get together to tackle a certain problem. Depending on your company, a lot of things can also get sorted out quicker when you can talk face to face to your manager/colleagues (though good processes and practices can mitigate this somewhat).

I don't have strong opinions on whether other people should or should not WFH, however. I don't see the need to make this an us vs them issue, at least not when talking between us regular programmers (I am in favor of taking the fight to the higher-ups, though).

I think you explained it right. Over the last couple of years I started working from home more and more to the point that I'm considering going full remote after this pandemic.

The way I see it is an evolution from old-school thinking to the future of work. Going remote IS going to be the future that we like it or not. Every year our collaboration tools become better and better and as new generation come into the workforce they will increasingly start by being remote first.

It is as if you drove a car after using horse your whole life but a subset of people want to convince you that everyone should go back to horses because it's easier to have that "feeling of camaraderie" with your engine.

I dont think your claim is logical. It is not logical to assume that newer means better for everyone. The return to office can be rational move back after doing move that made things worst.

This is confusing own subjective preference and own evaluation shortcut with "objectively better".

And I am saying that as someone who plans to work more from home after covid ends.

Will you stop it with the "oh no extroverts" stuff? I am definitely an extrovert, and I greatly prefer working from home. With only a few days here and there (certainly not necessarily every week) to meet up with people face to face. I am more productive like this, and much happier.

Being an extrovert does not mean that you need or enjoy the company of any people any time.

The world is not split into two distinct groups - introverts and extroverts. Rather it is curve with majority of people somewhere in the middle. Only few people are on the either extreme end of that curve.

I believe this was heavily referenced in his original 4-hour work week book, where he describes his early businesses.

Read the book if you haven’t, it’s all in there. You’ll get much more benefit than finding out about the supplements I suspect. I recall something about him introducing himself to people as a drug dealer when asked what he did for a living.

Like the others have said, it's not a secret: it's in his book. He didn't even own the supplement company or anything; he was just a dropshipper.

You know you can disable notifications right? That gives you the same peace of mind. If it's someone important you just tell them hey, I'm in the middle of x, I'll get back to you at y time. Most bosses respect healthy boundaries, and if they don't that's usually a red flag.

Not everything needs to be responded to right away, my mind was blown when I first saw an eisenhower matrix. I encourage you to check out this! https://www.google.com/search?q=eisenhower+matrix

I have not had any issues with this. I do not have work email or IM on my phone. I work the same hours as I did in the office. At the end of the day I close my laptop and put it to the side.

When I was last onboarded--well, quite some time ago--one thing my manager did that was useful was to connect me with a number of different people in the company and had me set up 1:1s with them both as a get-to-know-them thing and to start working together on various areas of interest. Many, maybe most, of them weren't in the office as I was anyway.

Wow, you've hit the nail on the head about what I need as I continue onboarding on to a new team at work. I was shuffled around right when our state shut down. Indeed, figuring out how and when to ask what questions has been exceedingly difficult. It's super hard to ask for time with people I haven't even met properly.

I imagine it must be terrifying to be a commercial property owner while people are on the verge of working out they don't need your service.

"By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's." -Paul Krugman