Some love remote work; others hate it. Some of this is due to personal preference, but for many, this may be related to poor work habits. There are aspects of work that are easier to accomplish while in the office. We need to make additional efforts to ensure that these aspects are covered in a remote environment.
As with any aspect of our lives, “rules” are not things we need to follow but guidelines to experiment with to see if they will improve our situation.
Common issues can include:
Isolation is a prevalent issue with remote work, especially among people who tend to be more extroverted. It is also an aspect of remote work that the pandemic has made drastically more difficult.
Something that will be a theme throughout this will be a shift towards being intentional with things that were more natural in the office. Some companies have taken steps to create social opportunities for employees, and these are useful tools, but you don’t need to rely on them. This may feel odd initially, but scheduling time to hang out with friends, family, and coworkers can be an effective way to improve your social life. This is not to say you can’t spend time with people outside of that schedule, it is ensuring that you maintain a base level of social connections.
Digital communities don’t necessarily replace in-person relationships, but they are also an important tool that we have to keep us connected with other humans. For those of us that are more introverted this might even be more comfortable to going out to meet people. This has an additional aspect to being intentional about participating in discussion- it also means being intentional about which communities you interact with. Digital communities like Discord servers have exploded, and there is a server for just about any interest you may have. Creating connections probably means joining quite a few and seeing which ones fit best for you personally.
Finally, as work places open back up, there may be an option of a hybrid schedule. This means spending 2-3 days in the office and spending the rest at home. This can create a balance between spending time with your teammates while still having space away from the office where you may be more productive. If you don’t have an office space, then you can look for coworking spaces or even your local coffee shop or library. You may not have “water cooler discussions” in those places, but it does give you a chance to share space with other people.
Another big complaint about working from home is that your work will start to bleed into your personal life. It is much easier to only work during normal hours when you are in an office than when you are always “in the office” aka your house. There are two traditional ways to deal with this- first is to seperate your work area and the second is to set a regular schedule and “commute” to your work area same as you would a regular office.
However, I personally believe on of the strenghts of remote work lies in the ability to adjust your work schedule to better fit in with the rest of your life. It is short-sighted to see working 9-5 Monday to Friday as the best way to achieve balance. Instead you can tweak your schedule while still maintaining those boundaries between your personal and professional life.
For example: I have tried for years, and in the end I’m just not going to be a productive software dev in the morning. It just takes a long time for me to get going in the morning. So, if I’m starting at 8 or 9 AM, I’ll lose hours of time that I could have been productive. Instead I start my day by checking my meeting schedule- something that a strict 9-5 schedule would discourage. However, it allows me to see what the earliest I need to be in front of my computer. If possible I’ll spend the first couple hours of my workday doing things like household chores. Something I could accomplish by getting up earlier, but if I do that I’ll be tired all day. Instead I’m available on Slack/Discord via my phone throughout the morning, but I don’t sit down and start coding till 11 or 12. That way I do have to work a bit into the evening, but I’m not fighting myself to do tasks at a time of day that is not ideal for me. I still have the same 24 hours in a day, they are just organized in a different order.
Creating a good work environment to work in can be difficult because it depends on your budget and your space. I’ve had a lot of coworkers who had to take meetings in their car sometimes because it was just too loud inside their house to join from there. I mentioned things like coworking spaces before, and they can help, but you don’t necessarilly want to do that every day.
Fortunately, this doesn’t necessarily mean having super expensive ergonomic furniture, but trying to find things that keep you comfortable through the day is a component. An ideal way to help you create boundaries around your job is to set aside some space in your home for working, even if it is just a specific chair at your dining room table. It might be a different chair than the one you usually use for mealtimes in order to help create that physical distance.
This can also mean ensuring that the space in the immediate vicinity is setup to help you with your work. This might just be keeping the area clutter-free, but you can also create a small space for things like notebooks and even a snack or two like you would keep in your office desk. Out of all my office furniture, my favorite is my tiny little minifidge. It’s just enough to keep some water and pre-cut veggies so I eat a little better during the workday when I don’t want to interupt what I’m doing to go to the kitchen for food.
This issue is not immediately apparent, but is still important if you are looking for things like promotions and raises. Because your boss and teammates cannot physically see you working, they might forget what you are workinig on sometimes. This is especially true in hybrid scenarios where some people are in the office and visible while others are remote.
This, just like with socialization in general requires concious effort to overcome. You don’t want to wait until your review to try to present your case. Instead, take steps on a weekly or monthly basis to ensure that you are staying visible to your collegues. This doesn’t have to come in the form of showing off what you have done directly, though this might be one component. It could come in the form of participating on the office Slack. Or, when youre boss emails to ask you to add something to your task list, instead of just saying yes and when it will be done, you can remind them of the high priority task you need to finish first, and that’s why you are giving them that specific date to complete the task.