Tips for Staying Sane While Working from Home | Hacker News Reader

Tips for Staying Sane While Working from Home

jeffgeerling.com

52 pointsgeerlingguy15 comments

Good article. I've been working from home for nearly a decade now.

One thing that I think the presentation needs to stress is the overall Feng Shui of your working space. Working from home means that you have almost complete control over the layout of your workspace.

For example, in the slides, the OP shows us his neat little custom workspace he built (in his basement?). I like the fact that he has his desk so that he faced the entrance door square on while working. For the first couple of years in my home office, I say with my back to the glass door entrance to my space, and never really felt comfortable for some inexplicable reason. Then I moved my desk around so that I (sort of) faced the door, and immediately felt much more comfortable and productive.

Tiny little things like that can make a big performance difference. Same with lighting and cooling etc., which he mentions.

One difference though is that while I don't allow 'toys' like gaming consoles in my 'office', I have sectioned off a space for my guitars and amps in there because it fuels my creativity when I am feeling burned out. Nothing like cranking the amp while waiting for a long compile or download...

My workspace: https://flic.kr/p/HpBN4Q

He emphasizes video in several places, e.g., "Add a conference call/video meeting to every meeting, no exceptions" and "Use video if at all possible". However, a very significant drawback to video (over written chat) is that it is much, much harder for other people to see or refer back to later.

> However, a very significant drawback to video (over written chat) is that it is much, much harder for other people to see or refer back to later.

And for some people (such as myself) there's something about the spoken word that just takes longer to process, especially if there's even a slight amount of background noise.

This is the status quo for meetings in general though, yes? In both cases unless you have someone scribing, you have no easy to refer to records.

A meeting without a scribe is mostly wasted.

That's why I -hate- non-written form meetings.

For brainstorming, where the meeting is shoving data up on to some board/display the open form of 'meeting' can be fine.

For any meeting where you'd bring a powerpoint, a well written set of steps and pictures is probably better.

For any meeting where decisions must be reached; the entire addenda of the meeting should have been published along with any resources to reach the decision beforehand; INCLUDING time for participants to ask follow-up questions and receive answers about the material.

Notes are always helpful; we usually hit 'record' for every meeting and save the recording link in our Wiki, plus take some notes (most of the time at least) and put those in our wiki, and often in a follow up email.

Worked 6 years+ from home, and all this is GREAT advice. Only one Item missing: Physical Activity. If you drop everything else (which you should not) at least exercise regularly.

"Only one Item missing: Physical Activity."

PT before work, PUxN entering the kitchen.

To me, this is more of 'how to work from your own personal office'... working from home should change the work/life balance and integrate the two more together.

Obviously, you need some separation - no kids watching tv in front of you whilst your working, etc. - but if you go too far, there's no real point to working from home unless you live too far to commute.

Maybe it depends heavily on 'why' you're working from home.

I have been working from home for the past several years, and found many of the tips to be very very good. I'm fortunate to have a separate office, quiet environment etc. I love not commuting! I wrote about it in 2013 here if anyone wants to have a look: http://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2013/08/experiences-and-reali...

And track your time. Don't work too little or too much, and it's good motivation to not take too many breaks. On linux I like https://projecthamster.wordpress.com/about/

Also outside of major metro areas renting a single office might make sense. Between office space and internet access it would cost about $250/mo in the Midwest.

Yeah; co-working spaces or even a small individual office is usually $200-500/month, depending on the level of other services and location (in the Midwest).

I didn't focus on many of the other benefits, but one of my favorites is being able to work wherever I want, with a bunch of other people who are doing the same and provide a good dose of geographical/cultural diversity!

I use Screenflow to record meetings and also whatever is on my screen at the same time, will continue to do this.

I'm moving and will be working from my new home, will try to do at least a few of these.

Don't want to get distracted, as that is what happens in the normal office, toypaj can you just...

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