Note: I like my job. Really, I do. I just find that I'm much less motivated to do as I much as I used to.
Has anyone felt a lack of motivation and/or job fulfillment when working remotely? What strategies have you used to combat these feelings?
My anxiety has also been a bit worse (understatement) through all of this (I don't do well in social isolation). I've also had to force myself to do what should be habit, but breaks down when stressed. When I'm stressed I have a hard time viewing an activity as a set of smaller activities, it becomes a monolith. This stresses me out even more, even for stupidly small tasks. So I'm explicitly writing down the steps I intend to follow, where in normal times I wouldn't have to. This gives me smaller, more tangible things to accomplish. I've also increased my accountability. Not just with the boss, but with colleagues. I'm writing a paper and I'm sending out short snippets to everyone periodically to review what I've done (as I'm still relatively new, their feedback is important anyways to ensure accuracy). So every couple of days I want a section completed (draft) to send out, and I take their feedback and update the previous sections. Repeat until done. Even if I only get a couple people sending me feedback it's something that helps.
Anxiety makes me hypercritical of my work. Getting positive feedback on my work gives me a bit of confidence back (it shouldn't be lacking, I'm a competent technical writer, but anxiety wrecks me). Seek out those small victories, and break things into smaller tasks to make them a bit more frequent. Waiting a month for feedback is not going to keep me motivated, but days or a week is perfect.
Another issue for me is just starting work. Once I'm moving I'm moving. The office gave me a delightfully crappy laptop for teleworking that struggles with even a handful of open applications, but I suffer the sluggishness and keep working copies open in the appropriate editor. Even small amounts of friction can have a major impact so removing it (by keeping the documents or source code or whatever) open and just an alt-tab away makes a big difference for me. I minimize reboots to once or twice a week (which really makes it struggle after a few days) for the same reason. Getting back into a good working state is friction, so always have the system in the proper state.
I think over-communicating actually is a trait that the most successful remote workers share. I like the accountability point you made as well: you don't want to send your boss an empty email at the end of the day. I think I'll give this a go.
Why do you think your performance dropped with WFH? Is it the social isolation bit?
Between the social isolation and the low level of work in those few weeks, it killed my momentum. I hadn't actually become part of the team here yet (not the fault of any person, just the timing). All of that, plus my tendency toward anxiety problems, just mounted and my focus and motivation were lost. When things started opening back up with a limited return to work I was still outside any of the development teams in most ways. I was in the office every 3rd week, and the people I had been working most closely with (due to social distancing requirements and the size of cubicles) were there the other 2 weeks.
Then I started really falling behind, and when I finally got my head cleared up a bit I took a while to get moving properly again. I'm mostly back on track now, finally had a good talk with the boss. It was also very hard to finally call him (I hadn't seen him in person in months because of the rotation) and say, "Hey, I've had crippling anxiety for a couple months and restarted therapy. I'm getting better but I'm behind." That was anxiety inducing on its own. But like getting started on work, once we spoke it went well (that's been my experience throughout my career when this has happened, now three times over the last 15 or so years).
I also eat lean and avoid most foods during the day. At the office I can force my self to focus -- no bed or TV nearby -- but at home even a large sandwich can put me to sleep.
Also, certain activities I just don't do during the day while working remotely. No TV, no sitting on certain chairs and couches, only certain kinds of clothes, etc.
But the same kind of thing happens now that I'm going back to the office, but nobody else is here.
Sorry, I don't have a solution...
Don't know if it's because working remotely lacks that, or if there's something inherently just different about video calls for collaboration.