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Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

One thing that a lot of people miss in the whole "Work from Home" discussion is the fact that not everyone has the ability, talent, skills and experience to be able to work from home. It is the hard truth and lot of us don't want to admit that. It is extremely hard to work from home and stay accountable, productive and not to mention focussed. It is just very hard. Even for senior/experienced folks. It is not a one size fits all solution. If you are junior who needs a lot of guidance and help on the job, WFH is even worse.

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I'm terrible at it! For years, I've organised a day a week to work outside the office and outside the home. I know I need a planned task saved for that day, and I need physical separation. Covid is a giant pain in the ass and I hate it because it makes that "not in office" time no longer special and focused/effective. It's just one huge slog of Slack, Zoom and mail hell.

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

Way too many people enable way too many notifications on all sorts of platforms, which is admittedly the default. (And way too many people expect people to always be instantly available when they send a message/chat/email/phone call.) I'm actually pretty reachable during the workday. But maybe because I worked for the first part of my career in a world where I wasn't reachable if I wasn't sitting at my desk, I'm not terribly sympathetic to those who feel they need to reach me instantly.

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.

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