The working from home thread: tips and advice

Yes, soon drops into a routine I found, but then I am fortunate to have a dedicated area

I'm currently set up at the dining room table - we do have a spare room that may well become an office in time, but at the moment I'm quite liking the fact me and the Mrs are both able to chat across the table as we work.

Chat is a good thing! As long as it is comfortable, and you can leave the room and close the door to separate work from home life then it sounds good to me.

And this arrrgghhhhhh

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I'm freelance so I WFH and set my own hours. My experience and tips are slightly different. Having to deal with kids at home significantly changes things.

1. I work around the home. Some time at my small desk, some at the kitchen table, some work on the settee.
   
2. I can't have music when I'm working, even instrumental. That's just me.
   
3. Agree on the getting dressed thing.
   
4. At the start of a day, I'll split my day up by hours and give myself tasks to complete/work on in that hour. That might be a piece of work or could be a home chore or errand out of the house.
   
5. One of the reasons I went freelance is it gives me time to work on other things that are not work.
   
6. Because my in-laws look after my son at home Mon/Tues, I have found a shared workspace to go to on those days. The commute focuses me and contact with others helps. Working in cafes becomes very expensive very quickly, and concentrating is hard.
   
7. I have had to set myself limits on social media. I get distracted too easily.
   
8. I could never imagine going back to full time now either.
   
9. I don't bother with video on calls ever. I think one person has queried it and I just said my wifi's not up to it.
   

Thanks for the advice @fizzy.bleach

Also - do you guys leave heating on all day? Not sure whether I should just heat the house all the time as I'm at home.

Nah, just wear more clothes. If I sit in one place for too long just typing I find I get cold hands even if it's not particularly cold in the house, it's just a sign I need to take a short brake and move around.

We have our heating on 5-8 twice a day. Only on the very coldest winter days will I give the heating an extra blast, but I'm from the 'put a jumper on' school of thought. Can't be doing with people whinging about the cold.

Another point about working hours, be strict on when you finish. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, usually people want to clock off as early as possible, but if you're in the midst of something or in the work flow it can be tempting to just carry on for a bit. Don't. Write yourself a note of what you were doing and leave. I've definitely been guilty of working an hour extra just because I wanted to get the thing finished but it'll still be there in the morning.

That is unless you're working on a covid-19 vaccine, in which case don't stop.

do you guys leave heating on all day?

I am, but at a lower temperature than most would consider. Thermostat set to 17'c just to make sure it doesn't get actually cold in the house and this is fairly economical.

Otherwise, put a jumper on... you likely feel cold through lack of activity rather than because it is cold.

First ever day of work from home for me. Got a plan in place for how I'll maintain some form of routine and sanity so hope to keep it up. Similar to some of the above tips so happy to see that. Woke up at the usual time and went for a ride around Victoria Park in place of my usual commute and was actually a longer ride so that was nice. Got back, showered, dressed, brushed teeth. Sat in a part of my flat that I never use for anything else so got a nice little work space to use. Made sure to bring everything that I'd need for the day out of my bedroom as would quite like to not go in there through 'work hours' for the first few days at least. Will probably put some washing on at lunch though. Got my music on out loud which is nice not needing headphones. And still sitting checking on the Forum every 30 minutes or something, so no change to being in the office really.

You can disable video. I don't allow webcams in my home or office anyway so I don't know why people use this shit to see grainy videos of people's cats during meetings.

Why? Teams worked far better for us than SfB and it's being shutdown next year anyway so you're likely to run out of time with it.

Well it is unprecedented levels of home working.

If they used AWS I'm sure they'd have been fine... :P

Get dressed.

Still in my PJs. That's how I roll. I want get changed until it's "lunch break turbo 2hrs". :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbJAJEtNUX0

Oldy but a goody. I literally had calls like this when I used to work for a big corporate.

Depends on your heating system. Our underfloor is thermostat controlled and is designed to stay on. It's set to 19C so now it's getting a bit warmer doesn't come on.

Might go for a ride for lunch. Me and the missus are working from home and she’s in the study, on big monitors whilst I’m on the dining table in the front room. Pretty sure my posture will be fucked from working on it once all this is over..

Why? Unless it's interfering with your life, work however you want.

If I get into a flow I'm not just going to stop and come back to it.

Not sure, we have Teams but no one uses it, it's all Skype. I'm just grateful we're not using WeChat Work or Dingtalk.

Ironically? I'm on a call now so I can't listen to this but I'll look in a second :)

Because when you're in the office there's more of a definite finish point where people start leaving and you don't get that when you're by yourself in your house. I mean, feel free to work extra hours for fun but before long it can start to feel like it's wake up-work-eat-sleep-repeat.

Yeah, I guess your internet might pose some interesting problems. We used to use Google Hangouts which was fine but BigCorp™ moved us all to O365 w/ Teams which is now fine.