Comment by igetspam | Hacker News Reader

Comment by igetspam | Hacker News Reader

Dedicate a work space and stay far away from it, when you're not working. Maybe get a large whiteboard to hide it from your field of vision when not working (bonus: whiteboard!). Separating work from personal is the most critical part of being able to work from home without always being "at work." I'm lucky enough to have been remote for years, so COVID hasn't changed my pattern but I know the pattern can be hard.

Also, wear pants. They don't have robe fancy but don't sit around in your pajamas because then you're never really "at work" and you'll never stop being somewhere in the middle.

The people who suggest taking a walk are spot on too. You have a rather small space for being remote. Having a "going to work" routine helps you mentally prepare and the reverse does... well... the reverse. If you like beer/wine/pot/games/etc, getting your favorite at-home vice/hobby going after work is another good mental signal.

Good luck! Stay safe (mentally and physically)!

I have two laptops - work and personal. When it’s time to shut off work, work laptop and cell phone go away, personal one comes out. Works pretty well.

What doesn’t always work for me is the physical detritus after a work period - notes, papers, books etc. and even more so, the psychological carry over from difficult or prolonged periods of work.

I find that if I work 10 hours a day (common) during the work week, for weeks at a time, if I take a break, it will take a minimum of 3-5 days with lots of naps/downtime to process the “work carryover effect” and return to a state where I can truly think about what I personally want to.

Anybody else?

Same. Two computers, two chairs, two separate spaces.

As soon as I sit down in a chair, that persona takes over.

I have a separate hardrive on my work computer that I installed Windows on. I reboot and do my personal stuff there (games, bills, or whatever). It's convenient because it's not straightforward to reboot into a different HD/OS.

This means that if I need to go back to work, I need to shut down my personal stuff and reboot. I call it my "commute."

Shoes. For me, I have to put on street shoes. Pants too, of course. It's all part of sticking to a routine that I would do if I was going to work in an office. I wear jeans and t-shirts rather than business causal, but I shower, shave, and dress like I'm going to an office.

Taking a walk is a great idea, especially for separating the end of the work day from personal time.

(no offense intended) idk why but i everytime i read about wearing shoes indoors my mind goes into a loop thinking "but why". i can't help it, it happens every time even though i've read about it a dozen times and should feel just indifferent to this. such a strange cultural difference

The first part is great advice but unfortunately not always easy for those in small apartments where that space is precious. One thing that has worked for me is to instead try to detach my work space from being purely work, and give myself time in that space to do "me" things, whether it's reading, video games, creative endeavors...

Also giving myself a specific window of "work time", with an alarm set to tell me its time to stop and switch off. This has helped more than anything else.

The first part is great advice but unfortunately not always easy for those in small apartments where that space is precious.

Yeah, I struggle with that for this very reason. I have one room in my apartment that was already my home-office / library where I would sit to work on my personal projects and what-not. Now with this pandemic inspired WFH situation, it's just the best place in my apartment to carry out my normal work day. It's also still the best place to work on my own projects or just sit and study. Sadly that means that A. I wind up spending way too much time in here, and B. change of room isn't much of an option in terms of demarcating the boundaries between "work time" and "my time".

But if I close down my work laptop, go take a bath (see other comment), and the later come back in this room with my personal laptop, I get a pretty good sense of having transitioned from one mode to the other.

Doesn't help with the sense that I spend too much time in this room though. I gotta get back into bike riding more again or something, to have an excuse to spend more time outdoors.

I started taking off my shoes at the office because it's helpful to let your feet breathe.

About small apartments, I work on a desk in my bedroom, back to the bed. It's not as having two rooms but almost.

When I worked in a tiny house next to my bed, I tried several alternatives but the situation was untenable. I had to move to a more distant and cheaper region because that was easier to solve than the lack of space. I hope you can find a space solution because while working at home it is a matter of mental health.

Delete Slack and work email off of your phone. This is also one of the reasons I prefer working from an office. The drive home disconnects everything and I reset for not work.

This is my hardest thing to do. My gaming setup is the same as my work desk. This usually results in me gaming less during the week, but some days I have literally spent 12+ hours at my desk.

I have two partitions for this very reason. One partition has all my development stuff, including work tools, second partition is on Windows and doesn't have anything remotely work related on it.

I was referring to physical space. I work on a macbook, game on windows, but I'm still sitting in the same chair for either task :)

That was my de facto setup for the occasional (once a month or less) remote work. When lockdown happened, within a week, sitting in the same spot all day started feeling bad. I realized that I moved into a house last year with spare bedrooms, so I got my work stuff up there (picked up peripherals from the office) along with a table from the basement, just so I could sit in different places throughout the day.

A physically separate workspace was what make the difference to me. I used to work in the kitchen and I honestly thought I could disconnect when the day was over.

Then we moved to a bigger apartment and I got a full corner of a room as my mini office, and it's a world of difference. I would not have expected it to be such a big deal had I not tried and experienced it myself.

I did WFH for a while using my work laptop as work environment and my imac as home environment, which helped with switching modes. But because the laptop was broken for a bit I ended up moving entirely to the imac as a dual use device. To keep separation I have set up a separate virtual desktop with a totally different background and a different web browser, just for work. I also have a ritual for starting and ending my work day, with the way I set up the apps on the virtual desktop and the way I shut them down again. It works surprisingly well to switch modes, especially after habituation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com