Ask HN: Any tips for someone working from home for the first time? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Any tips for someone working from home for the first time?

14 pointsliface11 comments

I've been working at a variety of companies over the past five years and I've always worked in-house. I've just started as the Director of Sales and Marketing for a small startup with seven employees spread across the USA; we are all freelancers.

Some stuff about me:

- I'm 26 and live in the Bay Area

- Just moved into a new apartment with lots of natural light

- I have a decent desk but my chair is not ideal. Suggestions for office chair solution would be awesome.

- I will be doing a lot of conference calls and demos with clients

- We use Asana and HipChat for internal company communication

Advice I'm looking for:

- Productivity tips

- Organizational tips

- How to separate work from real life (one of the first things I've done is set up VirtuaWin with two desktops: "Work" and "Play" to have a physical separation)

- Setting up a home office

- Tools/hacks/applications you guys use

- Taxes/deductions/how to handle being a 1099-MISC employee

And basically any other advice you guys can give out. Thanks in advance!

* Define office hours for yourself. They don't have to be traditional ones, but knowing when you are 'on' and 'off' helps you stick to that. Enforcing 'not working' is as important as working.

* If you share your home, make sure that your cohabitors understand you really are working when at home. While that may sound obvious, it will help you draw a line in the sand should they ask you to be in for a delivery or repair person, etc - those things can be a real flow killer.

* Make your home office a separate room, if at all possible. If the door locks, so much the better: there will be times when a locked door will help you (either keeping others out or giving you that extra subtle indicator that stuff needs to get done).

* Have a clock on the wall - it's a cheap, simple, subtle way to increase the 'work' feel of the room you're in, plus it's a change in the depth of focus after hours of screen-distance reading.

* Take breaks, get out of the house.

* Participate in some kind of community chat (IRC, HipChat, Campfire whatever) to prevent going insane. Consider rationing your time on that chat, rather than having it as an open channel.

My biggest tip was to have a "work computer" and a "personal computer". Resist the temptation to switch the work computer on when you're not working.

Otherwise you want to get a good routine; none of that making coffee for hours, or doing the laundry. During the working-day you're supposed to work.

Otherwise the single biggest thing I needed was to leave the house every day - Regardless of how much food I had at home I'd always go out to the sandwich store every day to make sure I had some away-time, and a little conversation. (Granted most evenings I'd see people, but working day-in, day-out at home "alone" contact is important.)

Rather than having two physically separate computers, just having a work "user account" on the single computer might be enough.

I worked from home for seven years, and am doing so again as a contractor after a brief stint in an office that didn't work out (less than a month).

Having two machines made sense for me, along with two phones, but as a compromise two logins would work. The appeal of two hosts is that you do have the chance to write one off, or have it be provided/maintained by your employer.

I always used a KVM so I could only physically control one host at a time, but I guess you get the same clean separation if you used different logins.

I just started working from home in January.

My suggestions:

* A dedicated space is a nice to have. It helps separate the work/not-work relationship

* I have two computers for 3 reasons. First is work/not-work balance. Second is related but there's a clause in my employment contract that's basically "work done on company's computer is owned by work". Lastly, the company paid for the computer.

* I have a Herman Miller Embody chair though I've also used a Steelcase Leap (v1, v2) in my last job. Regardless of what anyone tells you, go sit in the chairs at a store. I found the Aeron to be uncomfortable for myself, even though everyone seems to love them.

* On setting up the office, make sure it's ergonomic. Get a monitor riser, laptop riser, footrest, or whatever else you need to avoid destroying your body while sitting all day.

* Make sure you take breaks. My last workplace used "Wellnomics" on Windows for break alerts, but it gets moderately annoying at times.

* I've been meaning to get a whiteboard for myself, just to get some doodling space. A notebook or similar would probably also be fine if you work with images or anything spacial.

I've been working from my home office for the better of 12 years. Not until recently did I opt to get an actual office space elsewhere. The main problem I had was that office and home hours were blurring to much together. While I was up and working by 7:30am, my days didn't end at 5pm. And when they did, I found myself working late at night. It really began to affect my sleep and my personal life. As others mentioned, define your time at work and at home as strictly as possible. The most important thing I found was spending a considerable amount of money for the best chair you can afford. With little distractions around you, you'll find yourself sitting for longer stretches of time.

It helps me to maintain a fairly inflexible work schedule along with a dedicated space free of outside distractions (ability to close door is a must). Since you don't mention having kids/spouse living with you, this will be easier. I've worked from home for the better part of almost 15 years now, both with and without kids, and I will say that kids change everything! I'm glad I learned how to work independently without kids because trying to do it with young ones around is a challenge.

I like the idea of just replicating "my desk" from my job at home and just "pretending" I'm actually at work.

I actually have two boots on the same PC, one OS is for work, one OS for personal stuff. That way, all the things I install for work don't interfere after work hours (and visa versa). E-mails are loaded then separately too, so I don't get distracted. That way, I have a complete separation. I'm not sure virtual desktops would be enough for me.

Here's a thread on tools from a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6906979

Have a backup internet connection in mind (maybe walking to coffee shop) if possible. You'll probably be considered responsible when it goes down which will probably happen.

Define you working hours and find a place where you work from.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com