Quarantine work is not remote work
hanselman.com
hanselman.com
There is a few things I would like to point out to people that are now working from home for the first time and think it is the best thing ever. (Though many may not have the possibility to do)
a) Stop working on your laptop that work sent you. Get a damn monitor and get your back straight
b) Stop working from your dinning room table or what not. Get a desk/comfortable chair
c) Take breaks from the screen. Walk to the kitchen, make coffee and talk with the dam wooden spoon if you have noone else.
Most of the problems with not doing this don't show up in the first few weeks of home working, but will be with your for much longer than that after a while.
(if you can exercise, even better, but I won't recommend you to go to the gym at a time like this)
Your advice is great, but only if you can arrange your home around being one or more offices in addition.
Whether you want to, is a different matter.
Because the best way to avoid losing your mind is to completely eliminate the only relaxation space in your home, yes?
If you got the funds: 1 high res monitor and the laptop folded or under the table or anything is also already better.
If you're a couple without kids living in a dense city like NYC or Chicago, you can rationally choose to live in a tiny apartment with 10-15 mins of commute for both of you, and with everything within easy reach from home. I lived like that. But if suddenly both of yo have to WFH, your optimizations backfire.
To be fair, we now live in a 2-br apartment and only have one school-age kid, and still getting three proper workplaces for all of us is not easy. Good thing I can oscillate with my laptop between my kid's desk and the kitchen table. I'd love a large monitor, and would even shell out unplanned $300-400 for it, but I have little idea where to install it.
You can hang monitors from above.
I've been working from home for almost the past 6 years. My home is not huge - we managed to have an extra room for the 3 years between moving in with my now-wife and having a kid, but I was in a small 1BR before that and the kid consumes all available space (like literally all available space) after that. I don't have an external monitor, and I usually work from couch/bed/floor. My posture is terrible.
What has so far saved me from serious occupational injury is that I don't stay in one place for long - usually no longer than 5 minutes or so. I might shift positions, or stick my laptop on my lap, or start lying down, or get up and have some water. You can get away with pretty contorted working positions if you're only in them for 2-5 minutes and go do your thinking while pacing around.
Humans weren't made to sit still. Don't.
I know the difficulty for a lot of people with small apartments with kids + partner + themselves now at home all the time! Was just trying to get people to think a bit about their long term back/body health (because even 1-2 months of this may bring you pain for a long time)
a) If you can and your company is willing, request a monitor. If your laptop allows for more than 1 monitor, ask for more than 1. Also I prefer to use a mouse and external keyboard, so why not request that as well. Your home is now your office so in an ideal world, your company should treat it as such and supply you with what you need.
b) Treat working from home as if you are at work. If you are new to this, then dress like you are going to work or something similar that gets you into the work mindset. Also make sure spouses, children, roommates, etc. understand you are work and not available.
Regarding b) I agree with you, but after 6-7 years, I'm so used to work in underwear (or sometimes drenched in water from a swim on the pool during summer) that I forgot that it takes sometime to be mentally able to get in/out of work mode:)
I spent 4 years remote in a position designed for it, and it was still a challenge even on the best days. You have to communicate twice as much as everyone who is on site.
It's hard to learn all the remote working lessons at the same time as everyone else in your family is also learning them. Crash course in boundaries.
My partner and I are now homeschooling both of our children while attempting to work full time remote. The results are mixed, with the kids mostly getting the short end of the stick so our lively hoods can remain intact.
That's because if your company is client based, many of said clients have likely stopped paying for work at the moment, and many organisations are struggling to find anything for their employees to do at all. They're also likely going to use this time to focus on internal projects and maintenance too, since that's the kind of work that's available right now.
So if you do remote work after the pandemic/lockdown ends, you'll likely have a lot more on your plate than you do at the moment. For better or worse.
But I can't complain much, since being able to work at all (not to mention staying housed and fed) is a pretty good thing! I've also caught up on sleep to some extent, which I highly recommend.