Comment by justatdotin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by justatdotin | Hacker News Reader

I'm a long-term remote worker. At first it was challenging. After a year of trying to create boundaries, I gave up.

Twice I'd had a 'bad' friday, only to have solutions reveal themselves while I was gardening over the weekend. I realised it did me no harm that my mind strayed to work while gardening, and in fact I was glad of it. So I made a decision to abandon attempts at erecting artificial structure, and quickly realised that trying to impose separations had caused more stress than it resolved.

I found it liberating to stop trying to 'leave work at work', and to not be upset if my thoughts stray to work when I 'should' be off the clock. In return, I stopped trying to block out the rest of my life from my home office. I enjoy a busy life with various community responsibilities and being able to give some attention to these (and family) during 'work hours' is something I value highly. In return I'm happy to perform work activities outside office hours as it suits.

I understand why this won't work for everyone, but for me, trying to set boundaries - which many people had told me was the way to maintain balance - was counter-effective. If anyone is having trouble setting boundaries; consider not.

For me the most important thing has been recognizing that I respond better to some boundaries than others.

Time boundaries are notoriously difficult to use well without a coercive force dragging you forward. For folks with executive function difficulties that often turns into the procrastination/anxiety brew that makes them seek out pharmacutical help. But time is often sought after first because it has a seductive simplicity: First you do this for an hour, then you do that...except that you overrun one and have oodles of time leftover for the other.

Place boundaries, on the other hand, work relatively well for me. In that instance the work literally is wherever you left it, and going about your day means checking off a visit to different places. The places can be small: Absolute distance and volume aren't really the issue so much as the perception of travel, and organization emerges from this as a matter of ergonomics. Computers actually make place organization harder because they tend to cram everything together. It takes active resistance.

Social boundaries hold a kind of cross between time and place: Checking in with a person can be challenging if you have to actively enter their space, but easy if you agreed to show up at a common place and time.

Thank you for posting this. I definitely respond to the same boundaries but have not been able to articulate it until now.

Place boundaries are much easier for me for the same reasons.

Turns out it's really just different strokes for different folks and everyone's inner world operates in a way that they absolutely require certain things and absolutely should avoid certain others. It's just different for everyone.

I worked out I needed to stop listening to other peoples advice before I became aware of any executive dysfunction, because I realized that other people's advice barely matched up with my personal experience and was largely useless, so I should simply stick to trying things and seeing what works for me vs what doesn't.

I get the feeling the range of inner world's is much more vast and varied than people truly realize. Wish there was a good way to calibrate for that.

I came to similar conclusions for similar reasons. For one thing I often spend some ‘work’ time dealing with personal stuff so it’s a fair turnaround to think about work (or even work) over the weekend.

Before covid, I was reaching my office around 7am and most of my team would drift in around 10am - and I’d be leaving around 4pm... Now that I’ve been working from home I still start at 7am but it’s much easier to take a multi-hour break (usually spent on some hobbies or chores, or just chilling) and then go back to work later on for a couple more hours. So I’m getting more sleep and putting more work hours in, but getting a lot more personal projects done. And yes, it feels liberating, so I guess I’m lucky. (And very lucky to have a great manager at work!).

This was my experience. I'm seven years into remote working and I spent the first half absolutely fighting to force myself into a 9-5. I did all the habits that everyone typically recommends here. Separate office, machines. Get dressed in the morning. Keep regular hours.

I'm not a regular hours kind of guy. I want to put in a couple hours at 2 am. I want to sleep in. I'd like to go for a couple hour walk in the afternoon. Maybe chores or something personal was stressing me out that needed to be taken care.

Once I came to terms with just letting the two blend together, so much stressed came off my shoulders. Now, I'm available 9-5 on my cell if the team needs to chat -- but I get tickets cleared out when the I'm at peak motivation for that kind of work.

I'm far more productive then when I was trying to force myself to slog through unproductive afternoons. I got the hours in, but not the work. Now, I feel much more balanced between work and personal affairs.

Kind of an interesting take. Same for me, the solution to vexing problems often come in off-hours.

My solution for creating boundaries is not to banish wrong-think at wrong times, but to simply prioritize "my time" versus "company time". If I am on company time, that hobby idea gets jotted down for after-hours research. But after I am off the clock, my personal interests get my attention and work can wait, or gets just a quick notation so that I can refocus on my own priority.

Interestingly working full-time again after a stint of contracting has made this easier. When I was doing mostly remote contracting, it was harder to separate -- the urge to generate billable hours made it hard to enjoy my free time. Now that I have FTE -- my weekends are mine, damn it.

I find the world consuming problem from yesterday usually solves itself as I wake up and lounge in bed and let my mind drift a bit.

These didn't come to me as easily when I was "on the clock" to get out of bed and be somewhere at a specific time. (sometimes, in the shower)

It does mean I have to have my phone near the bed to rapidly record these small insights that come to me.

I fully agree with and arrived at the same conclusions.

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