Am I alone to feel work-from-home made things worse?
I managed pretty well. I'm a naturally introverted person, which is perhaps a good trait to have in this situation. I'm already used to spending a lot of time by myself and I have things I like to do. This is key, I think. I spent long hours making DJ mixes in Ableton and playing records on my hi-fi. That's a creative place for me and it was very satisfying to have the time to bury myself in it.
I wrote code, not heaps, but I played around with a few things.
I dug up some old/remake computer games (Half Life Black Mesa was by far the best)! I watched a bunch of old films I haven't seen in years, and a few bits and pieces on Netflix. I read books. I went for a 1hr walk every day and enjoyed the sight of trees and the sound of birds. I said a sincere thanks and smiled with my eyes at the people who staff the stores I shopped at once/twice a week. They have a hard job and I think it's important to convey gratitude to them.
I'd be lying if I said it was all fine, there were definitely days when I was bored stiff, depressed or otherwise not in a great place, but it was helpful to remember that everyone was in the same boat, and my sacrifice, along with everyone else's, are what is going to pull us through.
Keep your chins up. Especially you guys in the USA. What a mess you have to fix over there. I hope this year is productive.
It bothered me how compliant everyone was with the draconian lockdown. While I was happy to go along with the initial response, when the government started the 2nd wave through incompetence I outright refused to follow any of their directions.
There was no enforcement on the 5km rule or the "ring of steel" btw. Consequently I'm one of the few people in my company not burnt out.
So far the only state that seems to know how to competently handle covid without stripping freedoms is NSW. They take the bulk of international flights and manage outbreaks very well.
All every other state in Australia seems to know how to do is knee jerk to closing borders and stripping freedom of movement at the first sign of a new case.
Also, when not complying with what was requested you don't appear to consider personal responsibility and just object. Is that a fair interpretation?
It's kind of a moot point now though because the last Christmas outbreak in NSW was controlled with a lockdown of a huge chunk of Sydney along with the contact tracing. Meanwhile the cases that leaked over the border into Victoria were stamped out with effective contact tracing and (probably) our mask mandate.
It's very situational, but lockdowns have been used as both a first and last line of defense. In the early stages they help the contact tracing and testing get on top of things and in later stages they're the only thing that can bring numbers down (before vaccines).
The main factors that made a difference in Australia are lockdowns, contact tracing, testing, masks and limiting travel, both internally and externally.
That said, I probably agree with you that Victoria's lockdown was a bit too harsh. I live in Melbourne and had to sit through it too, and I broke the curfew, 5km radius and 1 hour exercise rules frequently.
I do wish that the response was consistent across all states. I also am pretty grateful that we've come out of the whole thing as well as we did.
Protesting by not wearing a mask, or breaking the distancing rules, isn't doing you or anyone else any good. The science on how not to spread a respiratory virus is grade school level.
I am in a country where over half the population now opposes lockdown and is more concerned about its side-effects. Some are outright breaking the rules to send a message, but most people fear fines, and so the only means they feel they have to communicate to elected officials and candidates for office is observing the restrictions in a half-hearted way. This en masse failure to respect the rules properly is apparently working -- sources in the party in power claim that the party is dreading being trounced at the polls for this lockdown and trying to back away from it.
Blue collars I know are all against it.
Parroting that hard lockdown was the only way to manage it while the state next door found smarter ways to manage things without stripping freedom was where I drew the line.
There's only so much incompetence one can take before you just start ignoring direction.
The lockdown was extremely hard. My vices tripled and I am still trying to reign them back in. I've had a low key depression since June last year and still trying to shake it.
As the parent comment said, they were an introvert, there are lots of people who aren't. (me)
In my little suburb, it looks like 10 small businesses had to shutdown while all the mega stores were allowed to continue operation.
I feel sorry for anyone who had a less than average housemate, stuck in a place with people for that long causes tension regardless if you like the person.
I don't see any problem with people who broke the rules. The government told us from the start that we were just flattening the curve but then without telling us extended the lock-downs in some attempt for an elimination strategy.
I personally don't think anyone in the world will ever know or feel what happened here in Melbourne so I expect to be down-voted also.
----
Just going to add what our stage 4 lockdown looked like which kinda lasted for 2 months at it's worst.
- 8pm-5am curfew (you have to be at home)
- no visitors
- 5km radius (this lasted for what felt like 6 months)
- you had to wear your mask as soon as you left your house (this went for months, we still have to wear masks in shops (even though we have zero cases))
- you could only go to the super market once per day, and you had to go by yourself
- you were only allowed outside for exercise for 1 hour (with 1 person)
- lots of shops forced you to give your details over and some demanded that you sanitize your hands (these are two things I didn't want to do for my own reasons)
- no gyms, hospo, group events, activities etc
- increase of police powers, fines around $1600
-----
We also locked a bunch of social housing people in their apartments for two weeks. They didn't even have balconies, just small ugly windows. I hope someone eventually gets sued for that decision. -> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-25/coronavirus-melbourne...
- 8pm-5am curfew (you have to be at home)
- no visitors - 5km radius (this lasted for what felt like 6 months)
- you had to wear your mask as soon as you left your house (this went for months, we still have to wear masks in shops (even though we have zero cases))
- you could only go to the super market once per day, and you had to go by yourself
- you were only allowed outside for exercise for 1 hour (with 1 person)
- no gyms, hospo, group events, activities etc
These all seem reasonable in a pandemic to me. Considering yalls success, I would say extremely reasonable. What is the alternative? A half assed version of those (my state imposed a weak curfew, bans to arbitrary activity, but nothing really targeted at preventing COVID). I think there is a particular horror in the current US (and elsewhere) experience where it quite literally feels like a lottery of who among your contacts will get it next. Is two months of an admitted harsh lockdown not worth avoiding that?
- lots of shops forced you to give your details over and some demanded that you sanitize your hands (these are two things I didn't want to do for my own reasons)
- increase of police powers, fines around $1600
That I find more concerning, and agree with you
It could of just been;
- seasonality
- Victorians already had antibodies from other strains from years prior
- our population may have not be as old as other places
- we could just be a healthier society in general
- we don't have subways
etc
But that is a rabbit hole discussion I won't have the time to go into;
I think any information about Covid is just noise at this point, everyone (including me) just comes up with some shallow statements about what is going on with just a few data points.
Every region of the world reports numbers on everything differently;
- What test kits do you use, and what are their +/- rates
- How do you report somebody died? (assumed covid, had covid, died from covid)
- When does an active case become inactive?
- How long do you think it incubates for?
etc
There is probably another 100+ important questions to ask.
And then ask all those questions to different states/countries and all the answers are different.
Yet we compare countries all the time.
HIV/AIDS had a similar problem, you could have AID's in America, fly to Australia and we would of reported you as maybe not having AID's.
"Even AIDS itself has a different definition depending on where you’re standing. In the U.S., AIDS is someone whose little virus-fighters, their CD4 cells, are below 200 per cubic mm of blood (normal is 500-1,500) or who is already showing symptoms. The WHO definition is anyone with a CD4 count below 350. In most European countries, you need to have an AIDS-related infection to be diagnosed with AIDS."
https://newrepublic.com/article/117789/aids-data-country-why...
Pretty good article, more or less my stance on Covid at the moment.
So when we say the US had 400k deaths and Australia had 3k, I am extremely sceptical that we are reporting things in the same way at all.
Edit: Co-authored paper by Donald Henderson who was credited with ridding the world of smallpox talking about the effectiveness of lock downs -> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.552...
Victorians already had antibodies - absolutely no evidence of this and plenty of evidence to the contrary, if we had antibodies the second wave wouldn't have happened.
we could just be a healthier - Healthy people still get covid.
we don't have subways - Plenty of packed commuter trains and trams, having them underground makes no difference.
Aside from all that, the case numbers correlate extremely well with when the lockdowns started and when their severity increased (https://chrisbillington.net/COVID_VIC.html), there are zero other rational explanations.
Here is an interesting paper too -> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.552... (Co-authored by Donald Henderson who was credited with ridding the world of smallpox) (talks about the pros and mostly cons of lockdowns)
Edit: Just adding a link to a paper that suggests T-Cell immunity from previous beta corona viruses might be helping -> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z
Given that the reduction in cases fitted closely with expected modelling, and only began after stage 4 lockdown was enacted, it's a logical conclusion that at least some measures of the lockdown were effective at containing the spread.
That's not to say that none of your suggested reasons weren't a factor, or that every single one of the lockdown measures were effective. But on balance, the lockdown and other governmental measures were effective.
Montreal is a city of similar size, wealth, and demographics to Melbourne, and has 88k confirmed cases, compared to Melbourne's 20k. That kind of difference is more than discrepancies in testing methodology and case definitions. Incidentally, ten days ago the city went into lockdown (although less strict that Melbourne), so if in a few weeks there's a subsequent drop in cases, I think that it will be pretty safe to make the conclusion that lockdowns work.
Lockdowns may work. They may not. Nobody has a clue, despite all the studies, due to so many confounding factors and ways and means of measurement.
Why are you so certain of your viewpoint? Other people can't have different opinions to you?
because the lockdown in Victoria worked.
> Other people can't have different opinions to you?
Are those opinions shared by the scientific community?
Co-authored by Donald Henderson who was credited with ridding the world of smallpox talking about the effectiveness of lock downs -> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.552...
It is immaterial that D. A. co-authored that back in 2006. It was a different time, and the measures that he is professing against have _demonstrably_ proven to be effective.
The paper gives suggestions based on many assumptions that don't hold considering the implemented rules. But they're just suggestions. Offering this paper in the face of demonstrable evidence that these measures do in fact work seems a little irrational in my perspective.
So his solution is to not screen people and let everyone in?
> Quarantine. As experience shows, there is no basis for recommending quarantine either of groups or individuals
So his recommendation is to let people with virus loose in the community. You really believe that?
Maybe you need to listen to people who have experience with the flu and other corona viruses instead someone with small pox experience.
Two days later, the city shut down most public gatherings and quarantined victims in their homes. The cases slowed.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/how-citie...
Look at NSW for how its done. Reasonable sensible decisions taken over months with contact tracing that actually works.
yes and Victoria's contract tracing was not good at that time and the virus was spreading in the community so the right solution after that was to have a lockdown.
Could this be addressed? Sure. Should it in future? Probably. But we don't get a whole lot of tries when there's a pandemic going around. It didn't work at first, how many attempts do you have to give it before you say "we need to solve that next time, right now we need a different solution"?
And I'm not concerned with other people's opinions. I'm concerned with their actions. If somebody follows public health guidelines, they can have whatever opinion they want. If they're out helping transmit a disease killing millions and wrecking the economy, I still don't care what their opinions are.
But once the human tragedy became apparent, once the people in charge visited one or two hospitals, once it became clear that many people, while surviving, are left disabled - well - opinions changed.
You are free to have your opinion, of course.
Given that this is a highly infectious virus, a reasonable person will understand that aside from those in this at risk group, every external point of contact is an additional risk. Should they also do the same?
The point I try to make is that with how connected our societies are, the interconnected nature enables the spread to the point where a single group quarantining is ineffective.
Think of it in terms of a spreading fire. The more a fire burns nearby, the higher the chances it will spread even to an isolated area or overcome fire resistance measures.
I find the self certainty in the phrasing there so shocking. Why can't you do this consistently with all communicable viruses that call? How do you know you're not being completely arbitrary deciding "just this one"
Basically, I would never make such absolute statements because saving lives is always an opportunity cost. Human life is only so long, if I stay in lockdown a year to save a stranger, I might miss the last Thanksgiving with a parent or grandparent in their last year on the planet and never know until it is too late. That's not a trivial cost when you lock down a million to save one, while all one million lose a piece of their finite lives forever.
One example analogy would be increased airline safety regulation. More regulation increases ticket prices. Supply and demand means a high price will ultimately cause a family to decide to make a road trip over flying for economic reasons. The chance of dying in a multi hour car drive is far higher than in one hour on a commercial aircraft. You can at least use numbers in this case to say if new regulation is justified based on the expected lives saved.
And my moral condemnation for people is absolutely not cavalier. I actively and vigorously condemn the legion of assholes who think mild personal inconvenience is worse than mass death plus a much greater swathe of serious illness. I also condemn the societal moral failures that have impeded a sensible coordinated response, especially the politicians who, having created and sustained an underclass, now insist for ideological reasons that their suffering should be deepened while at the same time making the pandemic worse for everyone. It's both moral idiocy and moral obscenity. At best, it's obliviousness or IGMFU. But more often, as Serwer wrote, "The cruelty is the point."
The fact that we started doing this in 2020 is the problem, we should have done this every flu season.
It works, it reduces transmission. Asian countries have been doing this for years, it’s an expected norm.
The rest of the measures are debatable, but wearing a mask when you’re sick should not be.
I am biased though. I've always had a huge admiration of Japan and resentment that I couldn't wear a mask when sick, because it is illegal in many jurisdictions in the US for anyone over 18 to wear a mask as well as those under when it's not halloween.
I highly doubt after the pandemic masks are going to suddenly be legalized. Cops appear to just be ignoring the law right now, which is absurd.
And as best I know, I do "do this" with all potentially fatal communicable diseases. I get the flu shot every year. I even do it with non-fatal diseases as best I can. When I'm sick, I stay the hell home. I exercise good hygiene and good food safety.
And I have no idea why people don't do otherwise. All it takes is valuing others' health and survival.
My point isn't that "oh this is so easy". Instead, my point is in a heartbeat I would trade 2 months of extreme lockdown to avoid what we see in the United States. I know that isn't/wasn't possible for reasons you describe but it hurts to see someone who lives in a region where they crushed COVID complain about what was done
> - you were only allowed outside for exercise for 1 hour (with 1 person)
> These all seem reasonable in a pandemic to me.
Not really; no evidence has ever suggested that outdoor spread is enough of an issue that either of these policies make much of a difference.
I'm happy with the measures taken, even if they were a bit draconian, because now I can, without needing to worry too much, do normal things like going to visit friends/family and going out to restaurants/cafes. It sucked to have a curfew and only be able to get out of the house for 1 hour per day, sure, but it would suck much more if we were in a perpetual limbo state with only the promise of a vaccine to hope for.
US here - I'm still not 100% convinced enough people will take it. Even this week I'm hearing and reading and talking to people who are telling me they'll refuse a vaccine. Yet... also complaining about a coming "2 tier" system where people who aren't vaccinated will be locked out of some parts of society... but then also refusing a vaccine because... (no direct clear answer beyond "rights").
So... we have the vaccine to hope for, but if not enough people get it, I'd think new strains might continue to develop and infect more folks. :/
> - 8pm-5am curfew (you have to be at home)
Check.
> - no visitors
Other than my girlfriend, who broke up with me 3 months ago, check.
> - 5km radius (this lasted for what felt like 6 months)
Not really all that practical, but I certainly haven't been travelling about to strange places. I'd say my radius has been about 90% within the 5km, except for things I couldn't do within that radius, such as buying things that literally aren't available within 5km. In any case, I take my own car, by myself, and always wear a mask, so it's no more dangerous than going to the grocery store 1 mile away from me.
> - you had to wear your mask as soon as you left your house (this went for months, we still have to wear masks in shops (even though we have zero cases))
Check, mostly. I don't wear it when I take my dog for a walk, but I also never run into anyone else when doing so.
> - you could only go to the super market once per day, and you had to go by yourself
Check.
> - you were only allowed outside for exercise for 1 hour (with 1 person)
Check, mostly. See above dog walks.
> - no gyms, hospo, group events, activities etc
100% been avoiding all of these things since March, except for a trip to Tahoe in June with my then girlfriend, where we met up with her best friend. Other than said best friend, I was never within 6 feet of anyone else, although I was really nervous about how few people were wearing masks. We probably should not have made that trip, even though none of the three of us got sick.
I wish they had just done these things for 2-3 months:
> - lots of shops forced you to give your details over and some demanded that you sanitize your hands (these are two things I didn't want to do for my own reasons)
> - increase of police powers, fines around $1600
The police bit is the part that really pisses me off. Technically, it's a misdemeanor to have a social gathering right now, but local police won't do shit about it. There have been 2 gatherings in my 6 unit apartment building during the time it's been banned. I don't want to get COVID because other people in my building are idiots.
Proper use of lockdowns would have been to reduce cases to the point where contact tracing and testing could take over. Unfortunately, we haven't implemented those measures, either. To quote Death to 2020, "I'd say it was a train wreck and a shit show, but that would be unfair to trains and shit."
The UK government has been saying one thing, and enacting another in law, which leads to this one of confusion, but what you’ve stated there has never even been said as far as I know.
The regulations: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/1374/contents
Amendments for 2021: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/8/contents/made
Streets were fairly busy with people.
The local town square was packed, every bench spot was taken. Seems people have decided lockdown 3 is for hanging out at the local square. Pancakes were on sale.
At the same time, hospital ICUs are fuller than they have ever been, some hospitals are having to reduce oxygen supply per patient due to overload, and the death rate is higher than it's ever been.
And people are outside those hospitals protesting without masks that the pandemic is a hoax and hospitals are "empty". What a thing for doctors and nurses coming off shift to walk into.
You are also bothered by the fact there is no community transmission in Victoria anymore or you prefer the US version where you just let the virus loose?
Herd immunity by August, with or without vaccines.
I'm not sure what your situation is, but I'd highly recommend going to therapy or finding some other form of support. Signing up for therapy during lockdown was possibly the best decision I've ever made. It was something that I should have done years ago, and finally managed to do it last year, but having that extra support during lockdown was a huge help too.
I don't want to go into more detail publicly, but I can send you an email with some links/resources/advice if you want?
My own parents have only visited twice, and we only visited outside my front yard. I haven't seen any friends in person except for two brief times when they dropped something off at the house, and we talked outside with masks on.
But then again, I live in the US, and we just officially crossed 400,000 deaths due to the virus, compared to less than 1,000 in Australia, it looks like. I can understand it would be more difficult to adhere to when the virus is so under control where you're at, but those lockdowns might be a big reason why.
I've lost track of what "lockdown" we're in now and the people are getting really tired of the perceived incompetence of the government. We also royally screwed-up the vaccine management and it will take at least until end of summer to vaccinate enough of the population.
The Victorian 2nd wave was undeniably a management screw up, and when restrictions were announced I was dubious that it’d even work (thought the cat was out of the bag) but the fact that their modelling forecasts were accurate (to the day!) months out shows they knew what they were doing and for me it seemed worthwhile.
(btw in case it isn't clear, I categorically disagree on both fronts)
I say this as a queenslander, where the overwhelming majority of the state backs what Labor has done, and thinks NSW can go jump, regarding who determines what happens at the borders.
I doubt any Westralian, or Tasmanian, or any of the aboriginal communities (who self isolated day #1) would agree with you over lockdown btw.
Our hard border policy certainly helped ease the stress fairly early in the piece however, and we all had a (comparatively) easy time after that.
Personally I had some additional stress while working at home - we had a kid at the start of March so it was an interesting time - but luckily for the most part our state was quite insulated from the social impacts of the covid period.
I am happy you are doing well with the situation but do wish you guys luck in sorting the lockdown mess ;)
I was assuming the enforcement/lockdowns are like that because they wouldn't stand in court, but then did a little bit of research and found out general-purpose freedom of movement in public spaces does not actually appear to be a well-codified (or often argued in court?) right in the USA, so I guess it's just the culture of liberty, and the politicians being afraid of the reaction if there was enforcement. It made me very proud and happy to be an American by choice ;)
I forgot to mention another good thing about 2020, I really feel good when I do something that annoys holier-than-thou busybodies; living in a liberal city it is typically hard to do, but 2020 was a great year for that activity :D
[1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#global-counts-rate... [2] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality [3] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#compare-trends_new... [4] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
Well, I've been looking at the case curves and they only seem to go up, even with lockdowns, masks, curfews and whatever comes next. So if you're implying it's a worthy sacrifice, I can't say I share that view.
To void burn out, I did a few things which I feel are extremely helpful.
1. Have a room that is a dedicated office. When I leave this room, I leave the "office".
2. Establish communication throughout the day. This means having slack conversations (typed and video) that are casual. It's okay to vent on these calls.
3. Have a defined schedule - Awake at 6am, washed/dressed by 6:30am, Red Bull (or if you like food) and at my desk by 7am. I do work long hours, but I enjoy it because I'm accomplishing something.
4. Work on something that excites you or find joy in your work somehow.
5. Lastly, realize most of the mental stress can be managed with a little mindfulness, learning to accept that you still can grow and find joy even when at home and cut back on social media; or if you're like me, I cut out 99% of social media.
I hope everyone remains positive. Do something today, that makes you better tomorrow.
I used to drink it daily and it destroyed my body. Also, Red Bull is quite expensive!
I was working around this once by drinking red bull, which I found lifted my emotions temporarily, but after it wore off in 4 hours I crashed way harder into despair. This effect built up over time and fortunately I noticed it and stopped using it routinely.
YMMV - just a friendly warning of how it affected me.
And the worst case scenarios happened when my body was tired and wanted to stop, but my brain was high on Red Bull and didn't let me fall sleep.
This can apply to pretty much any substance or routine. Right now for me it's video games :(
Partly because we have "real coffee" here in Portugal (expresso, a cultural import from the Italians via the Cimbalino series of coffee shop hardware, IIRC), partly because a long mug is better suited to winter, and partly because I am back working 90% with British folk, to the extent where we can compare blends...
But, overall, it suits me better. Takes longer to drink, does not mess with my stomach in the mornings, and smells great.
(Mind you, we do not consider American-style coffee to be "coffee" in the strictest sense of the word, because it's too processed/diluted/mixed).
Out of curiosity, what exactly do you mean by "American-style coffee"? Are you referring to something you would get at Starbucks, or are you referring to the quality of the coffee beans used to make it?
If you add an equal quantity of hot water to an espresso that is the European cafe attempt at emulating an American coffee, but it still has different taste because of the pressure.
I don't think Europe is as obsessed with aribica beans, robusta is common and actually quite good. In drip coffee, arabica is really the only thing drinkable or the closest to drinkable depending on your perspective.
Europeans prefer to chew on a few green coffee beans throughout the day as a long-lasting source of clean, non-jittery, all-natural energy.
I’m currently experimenting with different blends of black tea and decreasing the amount of milk (as is tradition in Ireland) so that I can taste the tea better. I find that I can develop a taste for any decent tea leaf (or coffee bean).
I can't compare the De'Longhi with any other burr grinder but the results are similar to those of the shop that I get my coffee from. Its one downside is that the minimum grind quantity is too much coffee for one person so I try to time it for when my wife will share the coffee with me. The whole point of grinding your own is that you can then brew the coffee at its freshest.
So far, I've been enjoying the results of having freshly ground coffee. Best of luck with your own grinding.
[1] https://www.delonghi.com/en-us/products/coffee-and-espresso/...
Once I finish this case, I think it's time to go back to water and coffee for 6 months. :)
I'll emphasize on 3. Manage your expectations with your direct reports. Let them know in order to stay sane you are going to have set schedule to manage stress while wfh. I do this with everyone I meet at work to set those expectations onset. It has helped tremendously.
If this is important (and I agree it is) then we're setting up the vast majority of people for burnout. Most people don't have the luxury of a room they can convert into an office.
Feel free to write code after work if you like, but to consider it anywhere close to a requirement, even to just help with burnout, is perpetuating a rather toxic view of this particular industry's workers.
"Find a hobby" would be a better phrasing.
That is so not true. When are doctors supposed to perform research or their required continuing education? When seeing clients? No. It’s on their own time.
They may be on-call sometimes but generally if they're off they are not working or training.
They read UpToDate on work time.
Additionally, if you're smart that time can wind up being compensated later. I wrote JavaScript on my own for 3.5 years before I started doing it professionally, and while I didn't get paid, it allowed me to eventually double my income, so I consider it a great investment.
> We don't expect this of other careers,
Sure we do. Doctors may be expected to read medical journals or keep up on the latest research, for example.
Great if you are young and have no commitments. Not so great if you are old and have many commitments.
Or are we expecting programmers to program after work even during their later years?
Look, OP suggested a strategy for not getting burnt out that works for them, and I'm just saying what works for me. You are the one who is turning this into some sort of "expectation".
If you don't want to code outside of work, and don't see value in it, don't do it. Nobody gives a rats ass.
One should never consider it a requirement, but it's not a recipe for certain burn-out either. (But yeah, if you are doing it because it's a requirement, then it's work and it will lead to burn-out.)
For those who don't understand, here's my annecdote:
After the divorce the only thing I could afford in my son's school district is a 2 bedroom^ apartment. I have to pack up "my office" just to serve dinner. We now have lunch from the couch. I'm not complaining, but the idea of a dedicated room is up there with personal island for me.
^ the master is his to give him playspace lacking a playroom
Alternatives I've heard from others are things like dressing up for work. I had a colleague that wore a suit to work every day (at a tech startup) so that when he got home he could change into something else. That helped him define a boundary.
Find what works for you, it doesn't have to be physical space.
That's actually a great point - the days that I put on a button-up and nice jeans as if I was going into an office are days that I'm way more productive, as opposed to wearing pajamas all day.
Also my kids whom are stuck at home at the moment recognise the difference and "somewhat" tries to disturb me less if I got a work shirt on.
Make sure you've got everything ready to go when you 'arrive'. Don't do chores during the day -- but if you have a partner, discuss your reasoning for this with them beforehand.
I grew up sleeping on the floor for 15 years because I couldn't afford a bed. I get it.
It's not as good as having a separate system for office work but you can conceptually separate what you are doing at least.
I try to keep work/personal data completely separated. No logging in to private email from work account, no hobby code and work code accessible for same user account. No Hacker News or other unrelated sites on work browser. Private matters during work hours done on my private phone.
I find this good for work/free time separation, and helps a lot with concentration too.
When booted off the work drive, do not mount your internal drive.
I’ve gone the entire pandemic in a 450sq ft studio with my wife and our pets. My trick was to put my desk between a window and a wall and get an $80 room divider. Anytime the room divider was closed it meant one of two things: “Please don’t distract me, I’m busy”. Or “I’m not sitting back at my desk to work until tomorrow”
I love working — prior to my wife moving in, all I wanted to do was code and tinker with different ideas. But I know that isn’t sustainable for many reasons. Having a blocked off space, as tiny as it may be, to “get in the zone” or literally separate me from work has worked wonders for my mental health during the pandemic.
* I used some past tense here because we finally just upgraded to a 1 bedroom after 2 years :)
You end up really not using the PC for anything else than working because in your free time last thing you wan't will be in the front of that PC.
I sold my gaming PC and bought a Xbox to spend my free (I used my laptop to work at the company so I'm just using that laptop to also work).
If that's you, absolutely, definitely, try having different user accounts for work and personal.
Having that separation is very important, and having different accounts is an cheap and easy way that almost everyone's OS already supports.
Now I just go to the living room and play in my Xbox. Dunno, I need to change environments to separate things.
When I'm working I use a dock/monitor/mechanical keyboard and sit in an office chair, but after work I switch to just the laptop and sit on the couch. Every little bit helps.
One bad thing is I keep trying to use my Discord push-to-mute keybind in zoom and it never works :(
- https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2020/10/29/2200
My recommendations (which are very much like yours):
- https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2020/03/05/2230
Some venting on remote challenges:
I'm convinced that a large part of the stress people have been feeling this past year is due to dehydration and lack of proper nutrition.
Lightheadedness is a big one for me.
I live in a city where an apartment costs 1500 a square foot, so a two bedroom apartment for a single person is barely affordable.
This pandemic has taught me that crowded cities suck.
When I relocated back east, I made it a point to a) not live in the city since it'll be overpriced and I won't be able to enjoy the surrounding area and b) Price per square footage wouldn't make sense if I'm at home 24/7. So I went across the river and pay less for _a lot more_.
I know a lot of people are moving to Austin TX. They get a LOT more for their money. I was lucky to be on a month by month lease when the pandemic hit.
I'm single so I'm wary of not living in a large, walkable city.
Homelessness is off the charts with the street camping and violence that comes along with it. If you're familiar with SF, it's nothing like the Tenderloin but more like SOMA-lite.
In addition, shootings are way up. For context, there were 39 total in 2019. In the summer of 2020, we had 40 consecutive days of shootings. Further, the local DA has also adopted the mindset of not prosecuting "low level" crimes of any theft under $750.
Sacrificing what makes Austin compelling is not the way to go.
I was taken back because I never thought Austin would have such a problem.
Austin isn't entirely alone with this: most of the sunbelt cities that are growing are doing so in the context of a complete lack of long term city planning. But Austin, IMO, is the worst right now. Even Phoenix, with an even more insane lack of water than Austin, has managed this side of things better.
I was fortunate enough that my lease expired back in July so I looked for somewhere a bit further out of the city with more room. I pay a smidge more each month, but I probably at least doubled the size of my place and I have a dedicated office now
But I've heavily considered it!
Point #4... not everyone has that choice.
Item #4 - I fully disagree. Some choices are scary to actually make, but are healthy. For instance, my mom stayed with her abusive husband for many years because she had Stockholm syndrome. If you had asked her why didn't she leave during that time, she would say "I didn't have a choice". Ask her now, and she will tell you "Fear - fear of not knowing how things would work out."
Sometimes the hardest choices to make are the impossible choices.
I messed up sadly on that one.
Sorry for the unqualified snark here, just couldn‘t resist. The realities couldn‘t be more different for different people at this time.
Someone recently asked me whether I enjoyed my Corona free time as well.
I didn’t know what to answer as could not even comprehend the concept.
I‘m missing everything. Time for myself. Silence. Holidays. Physical movement. Sanity.
Work and Noise, non-stop, around the clock. Still falling behind on all projects with limited understanding of single colleagues with more time to kill than Netflix has content.
I love those rascals, but I‘m crashing on the couch every night and barely make it out of bed the next day. Just functioning and surviving.
Never been more exhausted in my life before.
My wife and I are toast by kids'(2&4) bedtime, and can only sit on the couch watching something and reel from the day.
Like Ron Swanson said, I miss silence, and the absence of noise.
These people are also the most overrepresented on various internet fora.
They have the most time.
Hang on and things will get better!
I disagree. I've got more kids than you do (edit: I misread your post, I'm not clear how many children you have. My apology for the mistake), all at difficult ages including a 1 year old. They are one of the few things making COVID seclusion tolerable for me.
The near constant interaction can be exhausting, but it has also been very rewarding. I know my kids better than ever and have gotten to participate in a lot of moments I would've missed.
I find that the narrative I give myself around things like this is very important. If I told myself I was barely surviving my kids I would probably feel that way. Instead I focus on how lucky I am to be surrounded by my family, and that it's a wonderful thing to have unprecedented amounts of time with them. I've perhaps never been happier with my family than I have been during the pandemic.
None of that is a criticism of people who are struggling. Just looking to offer another point of view.
They never said how many kids they had, which makes it hard to take your comment seriously.
You don't know what their kids are like, how much spousal support they have, the floorplan or acoustics of their home, how hard their work is, or what their threshold for noise is.
> None of that is a criticism of people who are struggling. Just looking to offer another point of view.
No. It's easy to convince yourself that that sort of thing is helpful, but all you're really saying is that you can't understand because your particular circumstances are better.
Life is complex. A change can be beneficial in some ways and harmful to others. And you have many children and keeps wanting more, you are probably an extravert not an introvert.
I've really enjoyed the extra time with my six-year-old daughter rather than sending her off to school. Having her around the house and able to come into my office for random cuddles during the working day is a joy.
My daughters daycare told us point blank no staff wear masks unless answering the door and they “don’t want to close for a virus” (you can read between the lines). One of the teachers also shops for instacart half days. No thank you.
This past few weeks I've started work at 6am (it's 6:07 right now) so that I can create some more space during the day and give her time.
I give my son some focused attention / special time in the middle of the day and in the evening. It's important that he gets a good intense dose of me and I'm not distracted when with him. Without that he's feeling unwanted (why does papa work all the time?) and he acts out. He refuses to join us for dinner: "I'm working" he says.
I was burnt out. Right now I'm doing well.
He has two adorable little girls; 1.5 years old and 2 months.
His kids are pretty calm, by most standards.. but you can't let the older one out of sight for a few seconds.
I certainly feel your pain even though I don't have kids.
Question: Tell me how much you love going to the bathroom or getting washed now. It's the only time you have to yourself lol
Are you listening to the others venting too?
2. It's very hard to do casual check-in with another person.I feel like I'm bothering them too much. I can't get over it. Too stressful. Was way easier in person. Just feel the room and interrupt as needed.
3. I wake up early, take my pre-workout or red bull or 5h energy but just stare at the screen for 4 hours between 8 and noon and can't start.
4. I love the product but I can't start working wihtout others around me.
5. I hired multiple therapists. They put me on meds. I took medical leave. Nothing helped.
For me, work is for work and home is for home or for "work on autopilot"
Without this, I think I would be a lot worse off in this crisis, and I'm a pretty extreme introvert.
If I was in your situation and had to actually bug people to talk to them... Ugh. No way.
Have you asked others if they want to be on an 8 hr/day video call with you? Perhaps there are others that would prefer that, or would do it to help you.
I personally would not enjoy that, but if someone on my team needed it... I'd at least try to deal with it.
Alternatively, maybe you can find a few of them to do it for 2 hrs/day and take the edge off.
1. Realise you're lucky to be in this position to work from home, as opposed to medical staff and being depressed is a luxury.
2. You are not a code machine, amount of code written is not a good measure of how productive you are. Better think of how much you contributed overall or learnt something new that year.
3. Your work is not your life, so focus and even obsess over other things such as hobbies and spend more mental energy on that rather than worry about your job. Your job just pays the bills nothing more.
4. Find online ways to socialise such as playing online games. If you're introverted that should be enough to satisfy your social needs.
I know rationally that you're correct but it's damn hard to keep that in mind when you're depressed.
I ended up moving to Taiwan a few weeks ago. Zero COVID here, and was surprisingly easy to immigrate (coming from someone who was dealing with the US immigration system as a Canadian). Working at a fun startup back on the consumer product side instead. Went to a bar for the first time in a year last week and was able to just sit in a coffee shop with 10 other people this morning. I'm still teaching myself to read/speak Chinese but it's totally worth it.
Anyone with experience with TypeScript/React interested in tagging along to Taiwan, send me an email (my email is in my hacker news profile). I'm actively hiring engineers now. We're a distributed team across many different countries but a few of us hang out in Taipei together at a coworking space. It's the best of both worlds, I'm able to WFH when I feel like it but still go to a public space to be around people
All in all, living standards seem very high, I haven't seen much homelessness in my day to day (especially compared to USA), but I've only been here for a month so maybe I've been in a bubble.
FYI for anyone interested, if you make $67,000USD a year, you can go to work in Taiwan too: https://taiwangoldcard.com
If you're even KIND OF thinking about going I'd just apply today. You have nothing to lose and don't have to go if you don't want to. It gives a lot of flexibility.
I get the impression there are more black Africans than black Americans there. I recall some issues on mainland China with people violently scapegoating disease on them and anyone with dark skin. In most countries I've lived in nationality carried more weight than simply color.
I just want to go to music festivals lol, Ultra Fest are you kidding me!?
My impression is that Taiwan embraces multi-culture and multi-race better than China—though both are dominantly Han. As for Black experience in Taiwan, especially Taipei, you may be interested in [1].
I would expect much less of this from younger people, as Taiwan is probably the most socially progressive country in East Asia. That said, Taiwan is pretty homogeneous, so a foreigner of any color will be a rarity, and I suspect Africans are relatively uncommon among foreigners. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Taiwan#Foreign... for an actual demographic breakdown.
I am a US-born Taiwanese-American who lives in San Diego most of the time, but we spend most winters here in Taiwan to visit relatives and try and get mandarin language immersion for our kids.
Since we're all WFH and remote school anyway, we decided to spend an extended period of time this winter to ride out the pandemic.
If you're able to do so and are interested, I'd highly recommend it, since like the OP I have enjoyed being able to go out to eat dinner, hang out at coffee shops, etc.
To answer a few questions that have been raised so far:
* Unfortunately, Taiwan is now closed to non-residents. You are not able to come here on a visitor's visa anymore. However, as another poster mentioned -- it's relatively easy to apply to get a Gold Card (https://taiwangoldcard.com/). As long as you can document income above about $67k USD/year (the actual requirement is to be above $160k TWD / month), you should be able to get it. The process is normally supposed to take about 30 days... but since there has been so much interest in the program over the past year, I believe the process is now taking 45 ~ 60 days.
* If you have a spouse / children that you want to bring with you, the process will take even longer -- you can only apply for your spouse/kids resident visas after you get the Gold Card. This process usually takes an additional 2 or so weeks.
* Everyone who comes in is required to undergo a 21-day quarantine restriction. It's a 14-day strict quarantine (where they monitor you and call you at least once a day), and then a 7-day "self" quarantine after that. (Although there are rumors that they may increase the restrictions on the 7-day period)
* For the specific question about race -- if you are African / African-American, IMO you likely wouldn't see much in terms of direct, hostile racism. OTOH, I would imagine that you would likely encounter racialism -- https://www.huffpost.com/entry/racism-and-racialism-are-_b_6... is a good article distinguishing it.
There's a lot more I could post about the experience about coming out here and what life is like once you're here (especially as a software dev / digital nomad) -- but in the interest of brevity, I'll stop for now. But if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me.
It took about 4-5 hours of my time and 8 weeks of waiting for the government to approve it.
I got really lucky. I had a friend of a friend who I moved in with. He found his apartment through an agent who speaks English. Send me an email if you end up making the plunge and I'll connect you with our agent.
If you're considering a similar move: just do it. For real. It's not going to get any better any time soon internationally. It's easily the best decision I could have made. If you're worried about money either get a remote dev job or even just teach English here, there's a million schools around. It's incredibly cheap to live here compared to metro USA ($3000 USD/month gets you an upper class life, all in, including dining out, gym, drinks etc. You'll probably spend less than that if you even remotely budget). You can live a great life as a single person on even less than that.
I have only been around family for the entirety of the last year, and as much as being close and connected with them is, not being able to go out to eat or do anything else does take it's toll.
I have been staying connected with friends and strangers online through things such as discord, etc. and I would have to say it has helped tremendously. Getting regular interaction with others even if it's just over audio or video goes a long way through all of this.
The idea is to stand in for the breakroom and the happy hour.
(We're all ex-Kongregate - I was CEO).
Maybe you can find a way to break into this kind of mindset / market. Kongregate had a lot of great content, this implies you have a good team. I really wish you luck, we need things like this.
This. I've been trying to make people understand this part. It's not the working from home on it's own.
I'm burned out from the lack of social contact, though. I don't mean coworkers; I'm glad I don't have to interact with coworkers beyond Zoom. I mean the lack of family-and-friends get-togethers; the inability to pop down to the pub for a quick beer with friends; the lack of new friendships made because of the distancing; having to treat everyone and everything as though they're radioactive; the constant doomscrolling. Everything non-work-related is stressful and hollow.
Work from home would have made my life better under other circumstances. I'd have gained all the commute time back; I'd be living near family, friends, and activities that I enjoy; I'd be far from cities that I dislike. I have some of those things, but in this perverse alternate reality, I feel like I'm being teased and can't have it.
One of the biggest downsides to the past year is the lack of vacations. I took a week off for a break, but spent it at home doing nothing. There's no way I'm getting on a plane before I'm vaccinated, nor going to a restaurant or bar, and I'm not keen on staying in a hotel.
I don’t want things to change. (Except all the deaths. Let’s do see to that.)
/s
I also hope for a life that has less requirements for my physical presence for pointless activities/niceties work-related or otherwise.
1. Planned a 1-hour prank on a coworker over Zoom
2. Left work early to play golf all afternoon
3. Had a beer at noon once or twice
4. Worked on a side projects for about 2-hours during "lunch" one day
5. Worked from a lake house I rented for 3 weeks
6. Worked from the beach one day
7. Finished all my assignments in a 4-day work week and spent the entire day Friday reading books
8. Ate extremely lavish takeout for breakfast or lunch
When you look back on this time, you'll be glad you did these things you would never otherwise do in an office.
Reminder that if you're in a lockdown or want to help prevent the spread of Covid, stay at home. Travelling to and using holiday homes still contributes to the spread even if you maintain social distancing.
No judgement on lesinski, I do not know the guidance or prevalence of Covid where they are, but this thread is explicitly about lockdown environments so I think it's important to re-iterate that these are sadly not suitable things to do for many of us.
I'm one hundred and ten percent on board with wearing masks and being cautious about what to do, but it's been a year of this already. It feels like renting a lakehouse for some much needed mental health recuperation is at the bottom of the barrel as far as risk factor goes. Considering California is seeing 30,000 a day Covid numbers, it feels like "stay home" when 50% of the country doesn't give a shit anymore is like throwing a cup of water on a house fire at this point.
Curious to hear at what point does your mental well being become more of a concern? 1 year? 2 years? 5 years of lockdown? while you have people in Florida going to nightclubs then flying elsewhere? I'm starting to feel like one of those people tying themselves to a tree with a "save the planet" t-shirt while other people walk by and laugh and continue to ignore the damage and live their lives. I'm not trying to sound defeatist, but I am seriously at a loss here.
Australia is a good example. Victoria had out of control community spread (~100 infections a day), so locked down for 3 months. This meant no visitors at home, no going to work unless one of a few specific reasons, no general retail, masks mandated at all times outside the house, no travelling more than 5k for any reason, no travelling for exercise.
They got rid of it. This is what lockdown means. This is what the science shows us is effective. Wearing a mask and office jobs being done from home is not a lockdown.
Saying badly implemented lockdowns don't work so why bother is the attitude that is killing thousands of people a day.
Australia is 7% of the population of the US. Barely a comparison
Lockdowns have never been done in human history. They've never been possible, really; if there were no internet, it wouldn't even have been considered as a possibility. It takes a lot of hubris to claim that lockdowns were/are guaranteed to work. It is totally uncharted territory.
There is no timeline where the American public buys into the lockdowns that would be necessary in February 2020, which is when they would have had to happen.
I don't buy that. Where do you live? I spent a couple of months over the summer in Texas (in a non liberal part) and there were like a grand total of 2 people who took any of it seriously. I think its evident based on what happened here that the majority didn't really care, but even if you happen to be right, we don't need a majority, we need 100%. Just go back to early February 2020 and remember that timeline. It only took 1-2 people, then there were 10, then 100, etc. It's exponential.
I think your only bet here with a majority (let's conservatively say 60% of people in agreeance with the severity of the virus) is to stop all international/domestic travel completely for a few months. Stop all flights, no interstate travel. Nothing at all, a complete military lockdown. That is the absolute only way to have stopped the spread, akin to what China did. And I simply don't buy that the USA in 2020 would do that without anything short of a revolt.
Lockdowns have been done repeatedly across the full time and space of human history. HN had a link just last week about one of the most well known, for bubonic plague, in Sardinia In 1582: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210107-the-432-year-old...
They've just been used incredibly successfully in AU and NZ.
If Trump had demanded a full lockdown in March like you're suggesting, it would have been opposed by everyone.
>Lockdowns were not unique to Alghero. "In Florence, for example, they imposed a total quarantine of the city in the spring of 1631," says John Henderson, a professor of Italian Renaissance history at Birkbeck, University of London. And just as today, rule-breaking was common.
>"Over the year from the summer of 1630 to the summer of 1631, I found something like about 550 different cases that people were prosecuted for, for various infringements of the public health regulations," says Henderson. For most of that time, the city wasn't in full lockdown, but people were expected to self-isolate for 40 days if a member of their household was suspected of having the plague, and taken to hospital. This is where the word "quarantine" comes from – "quaranta giorni" means "40 days" in Italian.
Lockdowns like this have continued to be a part in public health approaches to infectious disease around the world.
The fact that a majority of Americans, convinced of their exceptionalism in every way, would oppose such an approach doesn't mean that it is inherently impossible or nonfunctional.
You may disagree with those freedoms but they are a matter of law. They cannot be erased when they are inconvenient, it would render the judiciary irrelevant.
I do think that there's some non-trade-off potential here via the micro-targeting approach they started while I was there. I was living in Soho around the time that Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn were having outbreaks, and I really appreciated that neighborhoods super far from me with relatively little cross-travel (esp with the low subway ridership at the time) didn't unnecessarily fuck up my ability to go for dinner with a friend. By contrast, LA/CA tends to shut things down at a much higher level, so outbreaks in East LA affect policy in my parents' neighborhood on the Western border of LA County.
At the state level: https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=eur&areas=usa&are...
The outdoor dining in tents drives me up a wall. Like, there is no way that's better than eating indoors.
It's a virus and doesn't spread outside very easily, especially during even a little wind.
Telling people to stay indoors is damaging to their physical health, damaging to their mental health, and is more of a political action than a scientific one.
Get outside as much as you can, go for walks, mask up if you walk through crowds or indoors.
Seriously, it's easy to think that sitting in a rental house for 3 weeks is harmless, but then you go shopping, and even with a mask you still have a ~10% chance of spreading it, and then you're spreading it to a community likely a significant distance from your own.
Look at Norway, they have very low numbers, but are not anywhere near this paranoid.
Those are rookie numbers! It’s not mischief until you’re having that beer at 8AM with your corn flakes.
Honestly, it’s annoying but I don’t worry too much. Everyone is in the weird place now, and it’s not forever, so I don’t beat myself up if my productivity is slightly down or if I don’t feel super perky.
There was one particular instance that really stood out to me last weekend. I ran into a friend of mine for the first time in a while who asked "How have you been?" to which I replied "Well, it's hard to say -- the days kinda just blend together". He responded, "Yeah, same". And we sorta just left it at that. Sure we could've talked about specific work troubles or the media we've consumed lately or whatever, but it felt like we already had this understanding of what each others' lives have been like in isolation since they're largely identical, so why try to fake the "normal" conversation in abnormal times?
I should add I do have other friends I'm closer to with whom I have regular conversations about the minutia of quarantine life, but with this particular friend it was like "Well...we got nothing right now, let's agree to talk once life becomes interesting again".
It's just different right now. I'm worn out. I feel dull. It doesn't matter if I crank for 8 hours or drag a day out to 16. It all feels the same right now.
I wouldn't attribute it too strongly to WFH just that outside of work life is limited, cant travel, socialise (properly - not zoom).
Work tends to blend from day to evening, I definitely work later into the evening but I guess its my choice and partly because there's not much else to do (Netflixed out!)
Exercise helps. Reading. Eating well but allowing treats now and again (this is important).
I have booked some vacations for later in the year as something to look forward to (do this if you can, there will be a rush to the door when were in a better state and firms will not want everyone out at the same time).
My productivity is off the charts this past year. Between cutting out all forms of small talk, commuting, unplanned meetings, and constant bite size updates.. I'm now finally for the first time totally in control of how I spend my day.
I have more time for work and more time for play. I've realized just how much time we waste on things that doesn't matter.
People say the small interactions are important to build relationships, but I would like to challenge that.
Relationships aren't built on small talk. It's built on teamwork and common goals.
I actually think I'm now closer to the people I work with because we work together in a more streamlined way, update only on the most important things, and when we achieve fantastic results, everyone ends the day on an up note.
In my experience, it depends a lot on the specific situation. Most people need a certain amount of conversation to "calibrate" on how to interpret others' words and actions. Who's a skeptic? Who's a neophile? Who uses sarcasm a lot? Who doesn't get sarcasm? Who expresses disagreement openly and often? Who hides it behind subtler signals, or avoids it altogether? (This one's often cultural BTW; the more diverse the group, the more important this calibration becomes IMX.) "Teamwork and common goals" don't ensure that this calibration will happen.
If it's a group who have already calibrated, you're more likely to get away with avoiding small talk. If you regularly have to interact with members of a broader group who don't already know each other well, things can take a bad turn. Tiny misunderstandings can add friction, and even snowball until people are working at complete cross purposes or are even in open conflict. In 30+ years, 10+ of that working full-time remote, I saw this happen over and over again. Introverts, extroverts, whatever. Nine times out of ten, just a little bit of conversation outside of the by-then-contentious subject areas helped a lot.
I'm not going to say your own experience is less real or important, but I will say it's a bit presumptuous to issue a general challenge or say things like "relationships aren't built on small talk" as an absolute truth. Often, they are.
For me, it's been really challenging during weeks of BLM protests: the seeming insignificance of tasks at work as compared to the plight of people across our troubled nation. Similarly, during the elections, when it seemed like we could have end up with 4 more years of inaction during a time when every year matters in averting a global warming catastrophe.
It's a bit easier now that the government is better aligned with what I think is a good direction.
There is something to be said for better understanding and empathizing what daily life has been like for a lot of our neighbors and colleagues who never really felt that things were right in our society.
The thing that has set my anxiety on fire isn't that society has problems, it's just how far apart people's base perceptions are. Obviously we've always had crazies, but the capitol insurrection shows just how far removed from reality a huge swath of the population is. We can have debates on how to solve issues of policing, or taxation or health care, but in my mind there is just no justification for the 74M people who think a lying racist moron is the answer to anything. And I genuinely believe that "lying racist moron" is objectively true at this point. He led an insurrection based on absolute lies and people ate it up. They just don't exist on the same plane of reality as I do.
It’s no different than why hitler rose to power and scape goated the Jews.
When people are stretched thin the ugliest in them comes out and opportunistic “leaders” have exploited that for centuries.
You want to fix racism but you’re putting the cart before the horse. Fix the staggering wealth inequality first before you even think about having hope of addressing stereotyping and racism.
Downvote me all you want, but this is history. I’m not saying racism isn’t real, it’s very real and very ugly. It’s part of human nature to stereotype others, just as it’s human nature to fight and hoard resources. We have to combat these innate tendencies as a community by FIRST ensuring that all our people have the ability to live comfortably.
The unfortunate reality for most marginalized communities in the US is that they simply don’t have the time to sit and wait for the economic policies to shift back to favoring the middle class. They have to act now.
What is most disconcerning though, is US people seeming to vote against their own interests. Maybe a third party instead of co-opting those who clearly don't have your own interest at heart. But then we see the predicament since the system/culture/billionaires don't support more parties and hard compromises.
They are voting against their own economic interests, but clearly there are other non-economic interests that are more important to them in play here.
A political platform would be able to reason and explain projects using facts and figures.
I am in Europe though, which makes me feel the main reason for this is lockdown/WFH.
Personally, I feel a bit like I'm going crazy. I really miss getting dressed up for the office and the social outlet of chatting with coworkers. We were flexible re: wfh before COVID but most of us still went in a few days a week.
I love my spouse but miss having more people than just him to interact with!
After that, there were very rigid limitation about at what times we were allowed outside and at what times. At the beginning we were not allowed to be further than 1KM from our house, and only from 06:00 to 10:00 and from 20:00 to 23:00.
Trapped in a one bedroom, working all day, and walking outside sucks. There's nowhere to go except online, and that's full of stressful garbage.
My dream is nature and simplicity.
E.g. If you live in a cold, remote climate this time of year:
Do you have enough food for winter? water?
Will your plumbing freeze? Do you have enough firewood?
Will your access to the outside world disappear based on weather conditions?
... Definitely an extreme case that I describe above, but I certainly would take this set of challenges over what the cities are having to deal with.
I also found this video to be helpful https://youtu.be/snAhsXyO3Ck
[edit] Oh, and remote pairing over teamviewer turns a terrible isolated work day into a casual conversation with a friend about code. I find that 2 developers actually getting 1 job done is better than both being isolated and just scrolling reddit.
For anyone who hates clicking on YT links without knowing where they lead.
I would hate to do that. Idk how you can. I have this imagination of the partner either being a super need Hipster smartassing over everything or a real Dumbo. In both cases they would drive me blood pressure up.
Not like religiously... my pair for today wanted to break early to develop a deeper understanding of the code on his own, so we split up, but I do have to say I came into today pretty low, and left our session pretty high, and look forward to see what his results were and how he wants to go about refactoring tomorrow.
As your stereotypical autistic basement dwelling programmer type, who studied talking to humans like any other field of study, I have to say it really is just that, and it's also worth the effort. IMO.
It's working from home while my kids are also doing school at home. I feel like I never have any extended time to myself to think or work. There are constant interruptions and there's nowhere to escape to for focused work of any kind.
On top of that, I also have no escape from my family. I love my family, but not getting a break from them from time to time is frankly exhausting.
A friend's Dr told him he has never written so many anti-anxiety prescriptions in his career until covid started. People are experiencing the same enmasse.
The PhD on the other hand is more like a regular job. That's not to say it's a bad job but it's more about getting things done than just taking time to grow in your knowledge.
And if the group's not for you, you can just stop going and find a different one. That's a lot harder to do with something like graduate school (speaking from experience).
One of the main things I miss from college was constantly meeting new people.
COVID really amplifies how boring life can be post-graduation.
Here are a few things that have helped me:
1) I try to remember that I don't have control over (most) external events, but I do control how I react to them.
2) Having a daily routine is good, but change up that daily routine--introduce some randomness--so the days don't feel like they're flying by.
3) Find something to commit to, like a mindfulness practice or workout routine. Walking or running daily can be a great way to bookend your work day and decompress. I know some folks who use walks as a "virtual commute" at the beginning and end of the work day.
If you can, why not try one of the LCOL cities trying to attract remote workers with stipends or relocation assistance? Or, take the time to try out somewhere you've always dreamed of living?
Meeting people is tough, especially right now. You could keep an eye on local groups on sites like Facebook or Meetup. You can try to find people with similar interests that you can participate in safely, like playing outdoor sports or hiking. Some friends have found people to chat with on services like Bumble BFF, but YMMV. I'm trying to more consciously stay in touch with my existing friends--being more open to talking on the phone instead of a quick text, or setting up time to play games online.
Unfortunately, it's just a hard time to meet people.
That said, I'm in a fairly high-risk group so lack of focus is a whole lot better than death. As bad as lockdown is for my kid it's better than losing one or both parents to COVID.
The first few weeks of the lockdown were good: After work i have written on a story i wanted to publish for a few years now, learned Rust, build an analog computer and worked on some side projects... but now my wife (who is lucky to work full time) and i are moving slowly to the funny farm. Dark and rainy weather, a complete lack of normal social interaction with people outside of work and not many distractions are taking its toll...
1. Kids at home including a 2yo who needed regular attention.
2. Working late nights to get un-disrupted time for work (see 1).
3. Fear of getting a bad performance review (it ended up being not so great anyways).
4. Lack of interactions with co-worker and working odd hours led me to waste quite a bit of time on re-inventing the wheel at work.
5. Seattle freeze/weather didn't help either and a big stretch without vacation.
I took a 2 week break at end of December which coincided with end of our perf review period. Though I didn't get the (perf) rewards I wanted, having it be over gave me a lot of clarity.
I felt we were lucky with flexible and stable jobs and good friends close-by. However, I always had a feeling/pressure that I should be able to do it all (exercise/work/manage kids), and it was hard to balance all the expectations I had of myself leading to stress and an eventual burn-out.
I am personally taking a mental health day today. Yesterday I hit a brick wall where I am unable to produce.
Anxiety tendencies have been creeping up over the months because I’m in a sensory overloading environment, and I struggle to make the choice each day to kill 30 minutes for a fake commute to help keep my sanity. I gain energy collaborating with others, even if I’m the main or only person driving things.
I’m aware I need to monitor my own health more, and be ok to take breaks. Even take days off. It’s tough, the anxiety doesn’t seem to subside until I produce well. This creates a perverse incentive, a toxic spiral. Showing some vulnerability and asking for help or care is tough too. This whole quarantine thing is stretching in some ways, damaging in others.
And yet here we are.
edit: I want to clarify, because top comments seem to be talking about the USA in the news. I am not experiencing anxiety because of the news, or worry of safety for self or others because of the pandemic. For me it’s simply mental health issues because of isolation, loss of normal healthy coping patterns, and sensory exhaustion and sensory over sensitivity in my home converted to a home, school, and office all in one. Sucks.
I dread the day the world returns to normal from THIS perspective, but of course longing for the sake of business owners, everyone who feels bad in this environment and so on.
At least for a moment my way and preferences has become the norm, and perhaps people who prefer the other normal will somewhat appreciate the constant struggles people like me have in the normal world instead. How they feel now in isolation, I feel every day of my life in regular society that they long for and that is the norm.
We don't know what the road not taken would look like. It's enormously hard to get perspective on just how bad things would be if we had done something else. This is a perennial human problem. We are really terrible at counting the disasters that should have happened but didn't.
The other thing is 2020 was enormously stressful. People under stress tend to look for something to blame. In the face of an event (like a pandemic) where they can't control the actual source of the stress, they often look for a scapegoat in the form of something they feel they have some kind of control over.
Blaming it on working from home so you can be mad about this policy will tend to make people feel like "This is someone's fault and we could have done something different." and helps mitigate feelings of helplessness. Humans have a tendency to be more comfortable with righteous anger and looking for someone in authority to hold responsible than accepting that "This just really sucks and was probably going to suck no matter what we did."
Am I happy with how things were handled? No, I'm not.
But I have long worked from home due to my medical situation, so I am disinclined to treat that aspect of this situation as the scapegoat I want to hang my angst and ire upon.
But there is something about the mental exhaustion all this causes. I do still have some free time here and there. In the "normal times" I'd be twiddling around with a side project, but all I do now is watch TV or play video games. I dislike it: I feel like I'm wasting time. But my brain is also utterly fried and the idea of engaging too deeply just feels impossible.
I have an early teen w/ADHD and the two days he's in school are fine, but the three days he's learning from home are a challenge. Each home day is a struggle due to weak executive functioning and the plethora of channels and sources of information required to simply understand the day's work. None of the normal school resources are available, so it's up to mom and dad to help get through the day. I rarely get 30 minutes of flow time on Wednesday through Friday.
I don't particularly like being at home a lot. I constantly get distracted by things I need to do at home, or wanting to do hobbies, etc. and I don't have a good workspace like I did at work.
WFH and the ability now to work from anywhere is great in a way. At least half my team has no plan to return to office full time. I do think, though, that collaboration and the soft skills of our work area will suffer. There is a lot of collaboration, discussion, and coalition building done in person, in hallways and over lunch that doesn't happen nearly as well on Zoomslack.
Anyway, yeah, it sucks, and I miss the old world.
Online meetings have become very efficient as nobody tries to talk over each other. There are way fewer "immediate" deadlines as everybody accepts that e-mail replies will not be immediate.
I hope this becomes the norm for me for the rest of my career.
When it's safe, I plan to flee California and find out what my family's been up to for the last 14 years.
It's gotten better with some structural changes at the office as they've adapted to the situation.
In addition, Vitamins C/D and Caffeine can also make a huge difference.
Edit: also (and this is advice for myself), don't spend too much time following political news/COVID numbers/etc. I still follow these, but I have to remind myself that spending 1-2 hours a day vs. 6-8 hours doesn't really help me solve any of the things that are wrong in the world, and I end up losing time to spend with family, on side projects, etc. and suffer more from anxiety/depression.
Edit 2: if you can, get a sitting/standing desk. Spending too much time in either position is harmful in different ways, so it's best to alternate between them throughout the day. An under-the-desk elliptical (for when sitting) and a comfortable mat (for when standing) are also helpful.
Another vacation tip is to take your vacation across weeks (Wen to Tues). That way you have short work weeks (2 or 3 days) around the vacation.
Being indoors in a one bedroom apartment makes you crazy.
I admire people who took vacation alone and enjoyed themselves. I had many plans for which I completely lost motivation.
Because of this it has now become trivial to impose new lockdown measures. "We have a few cases there? ok, we just place this under strict lockdown". It's become so easy for them to cut through freedoms. Maybe some measures are needed, even strict ones, but the lack of serious discussion surrounding it is terrifying for me.
To give an example, where I live, they instated a nighttime curfew and mask wearing even outdoors. They did this when there were 10.000 cases a day. We now have around 2-3000 cases (majority of them in some areas only) and still have the same measures country-wide.
A right is easy to loose and hard to gain back I guess...
While there's no proper pain involved (maybe a bit of anxiety from time to time), my productivity has taken a huge dip and it's really frustrating.
I also work for a US based company and have friends and family who live there so the whole political situation there has been a stress. Then I'm British so I also have the whole Brexit fuck up adding it's own unsubtle kicking to my ribs.
As others have mentioned, having a dedicated office space really does help. A plant on the desk is nice. There's soem light at the end of the tunnel, thankfully.. I think I can whiteknuckle my way through the end.
The biggest downside to WFH for me has been the significant increase in synchronous meetings. While my client was _technically_ able to switch seamlessly to 100% remote, they haven't changed _how_ they work so I spend 80-90% of my time in meetings leaving very little time for actual work which results in overtime.
To avoid burn out, I'm being more disciplined with slowing down at the end of the day and exercises (even walking outside is good enough).
To slowdown, I'm trying to read at least 30 minutes at time. And try to go for a walk 2-3 times a week (not much, but makes a huge difference on my energy and humor).
Also, sleeping well everyday is a priority for me - I'm not willing to exchange sleep for work, reduces my productivity significantly and makes me unhappy.
I only got to work from home while I was quarantined because of the plague, so no, I don't think work-from-home is responsible for my burn out.
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
Then I took two weeks off over Christmas/New Years and drove across the country to a new location where I'm working for a couple months, and it's been markedly better since then. I don't know how much was the change of scenery and how much was the vacation, but it made me realize at least part of the problem was general burn-out rather than WFH specifically.
If you're like me and many people I know, you probably haven't taken much vacation because there's not many places to go. I'd encourage you to use some of those days and go into nature, drive somewhere far, whatever you can that feels Covid-safe and mixes things up!
1) no elastic hours - work from 8 to 16. Otherwise my private stuff mixed with work, I was working to late hours and was never satisfied with progress.
2) Talking with people. Even if I am 100% sure what to do, I call sometimes someone or write to talk about it prior to code review. I bond with team and it is just beneficial for everyone, not only project.
3) Finding the right flow. It means at work you have to work because there is not much anything else to do. At home you have plenty of better things to do. So it is about finding a right mental spot, thinking about what I will do next, what I will do tomorrow, build enthusiasm about it.
4) Finding the place. It means the proper chair, desk, standing desk, to the wall or against it. Little changes can make a great difference. However I don't believe it is about spending too much money on stuff. I have bought a standing desk made of paper for 10 dollars. And it is great, does not take space.
5) Taking breaks. Sometimes I just have to take a break and do anything else. I have learned it is better to recognize it early on, and just go for a walk or do anything else. Taking care of mental health is one of the greatest skills human can learn. I am still learning it.
6) Taking vacations. Even if there is nothing to do, or nowhere to go. Taking some time off is essential.
7) A hobby. There are some things possible to do at home. For me it was designing fantasy programming card games - Summon The JSON.
8) Excercising - yoga, stretching, and even running in a place with treadmill videos on my TV. It helps a lots.
9) Going out. Even to the forrest, also helps to keep the spirit high.
Most of all I always think about others, that everyone has the same or worse than me. So maybe I am a little bit less productive, but I wake up every day, and do what I can.
I love how I can enforce no distractions by putting on my ANCs. No obnoxious colleagues who pathologically crave attention. No forcing of smiles and laughter when somebody tells a joke that isn't funny but obviously a subtle attempt to gauge power dynamics. I just put a smily in the chat if I feel like it and that's it. Every now and then I do 10 minutes of breathing exercises. I can talk while thinking - which is an important tool I never could use since university.
After work I switch to my personal laptop and just ignore my work phone. Done.
I can say with certainty I have never feeled so productive and relaxed at work.
I work where I play. My work computer is my gaming laptop (separate partitions). I use the same desk/streaming station. Sometimes I work from bed. And I never feel the urge to "work just one more hour".
I've never had an issue flipping between work and play mode, and I've never struggled to compartmentalize the two fully and switch context when 5PM hits.
As for going out, sure, I miss it. But I'm also a bit of a homebody, so I'm not missing TOO much. My VR headset has helped me feel safe in being able to explore our world and other worlds. As for isolation, I typically have a Twitch stream open for background.
The way you worded it: "As for isolation..." Do you think a Twitch stream... makes you... un-isolated?
I'm focusing on food, sleep, and exercise to get me through this.
If you're feeling down, look into what kind of food you're eating. I've cut down sugar just to avoid the highs and the lows.
The kids need to go back to school as well.
Note, the above is not a unique case to me, if it was I wouldn't say anything as my grief is a private matter. The details are different, but stories like the above happen every day. COVID just made this case slightly worse because it isn't safe to make the final visits.
In 2019 I had completed a 100 Mile hike through the alps, regularly worked out, and enjoyed a modestly active social life with my spouse.
In 2020 I ended up buying a game console and playing a bunch of games, gained 20 pounds, and had a baby.
Overall I'd say 2020 felt like when I was in college in terms of my physical and emotional health (aka worse than 2019). However I would give credit to the pandemic for simplifying parts of having children. My wife and I are both able to dedicate many hours per day to our baby and avoided the headache of having to host extended family during a stressful period.
Best thing that ever happened in regards to work conditions. My only gripe is that so many people fail to understand that "working at home" is different to "working remotely". I wish people were more willing to jump into a meeting for a 15 minute brainstorming session rather than spend 5 hours working out a problem on Slack.
I am a person who wants to focus, and I've realized that I rely on work related background noise like conversations and other people's whiteboard sessions to pierce my cone of silence so I can come up for air and see which way the wind is blowing. Basically, I find myself working on the wrong thing more often now, and I'm quite sick of it!
Then i turned off my work station and went somewhere with really shitty cell phone service for two weeks with my family and a bicycle.
Then I wasn’t.
The sudden switch to WFH, combined with lockdowns etc, caused me to experience pretty severe stress/anxiety issues for the first time. I severely underestimated how vital seeing others every day was for my mental health (I live alone).
I didn't recognise what the symptoms were, because I've always been positive, optimistic and productive, and certainly never had any mental health challenges.
The last 5-6 months have been deeply unproductive as a result. However now I know what I'm dealing with it's getting easier/better, fingers crossed.
* small children without other childcare (daycare)
* never experienced a long drive to the office before working from home
* social people who have never had children
Why WFH is great:
* I save 10+ hours per week by not driving. I am also saving tons on money from: gas, lunches, road tolls.
* Not spending a business day on the road each week dodging maniacs means I am less tired and distracted at work time.
* I can spend more time with my kids.
* My house is quiet during the day. I can focus on doing work. If there is no work assigned then work on a personal project or complete maintenance on the house.
I'm writing a custom high performance capturing/compression software for a device connected to a tiny computer. The components that gets this barebones computer working have now been a permanent clutter that have displaced where I'm supposed to work on personal hobbies.
It is also a hassle every time we are required to sign paper documents as I don't have a printer (not that I can't afford it, but normally it would be a white elephant). What should take several minutes will now take at least 15 when doing stuff with PDFs and photographs of signs.
As I live alone and am quite picky on food, this also means I have to cook more often. So more kitchen tasks while making sure vegetables are consumed fresh. Not being able to do groceries "just-in-time" has also lead to some inefficiencies.
As work-personal boundaries are blurred, I also decided to pause my work inspired side project. Partly because of discipline (it helped me make work results, so it's very tempting to work on it during "work hours") and partly because it bothers me that my workplace can claim ownership on things they could not have come up by themselves and never knew they needed. Thankfully I was able to shift my mind on another interesting side project.
FWIW, I'm forced to work in the office and I'm also feeling incredibly burnt out and unproductive.
I am in my sixties. Been a programmer since the seventies (last century!). I do personal projects, freelance projects and job projects. I love programming.
And I would be perfectly happy for quarantine to last forever, at least as far as I am concerned.
The only thing I have done to adapt is that I bought an Oculus and play Beat Saber and Pistol Whip to pretend to get exercise. It does make me out of breath, so WIN!!
I will be sad when it ends.
Lockdown is just yet another reason why you may burn out. Personally, I have social anxiety, so I didn't care much in the first time, but in fact, not seeing people is just awful.
With revenues falling last year, my company decided to slash salaries and close several roles. This obviously led to a much greater workload for everyone else, and people getting increasingly burned out.
As the exodus continues, the senior management decided to pivot towards building and selling more features to increase revenues, instead of taking a look at how to stabilize the teams and stop the blood-letting, hence more pressure on the remaining engineers to deliver features, leading to much lower quality, more bugs and more pressure.
The situation can be salvaged, though, if we are able to get real about the situation with the engineering teams, scale back our commitments and hire for some key roles where people resigned last year.
No you're definitely not. You're just part of the 50% that needs an official office with other co-workers there. And there is nothing wrong with it. Personally I am on the other 50% but I do it for over 13 years now - started freelancing from home in Dec 2007 and never looked back.
What is typically now is the wrong response all companies always had. Before whole covid situation companies wanted all boots on the ground at the office, even when 50% of the people were more productive at home. Now it's the reverse situation where the "office" style people are less productive.
The right response would be to let people that want to work from home, and are productive that way to do it, and the other ones to come to office if that's what they want. That would maximize the productivity, but until a big company would actually make this case it will not be the norm in our industry.
We found out the hard way too that renting a single detached house is a much more involved affair than an apartment. It's a multiday process involving a bunch of parties and things can go in limbo for like a week as applications are brought in and reviewed by the property management and the homeowner before giving the green light. We wound up signing a lease in the first week of this month for a move-in date in mid February. The property management companies have been saying that since Coronavirus lockdowns spread the demand for renting houses have really gone up.
Oh and BTW I'm not from US, so the political situation in your country doesn't affect me (at least not directly). Although I do believe that the mess that US is in is small potatoes compared to the ecological disaster that is unfolding as we speak...
I think they all understood that the alternative was painting the walls of my apartment with my brains.
I'd gladly work longer hours if it meant permanent WFH. Employer gets more efficient worked hours from me, I don't have to waste 2-3 hours/day on a stupid bus/subway commute. My employer is traditional conservative enough (bank) that permanent or majority WFH is a nonstarter though.
Reducing the commute is not possible without paying significantly more for housing (and probably still resulting in a smaller and crappier place).
A 20 minute drive to work would be awesome. One of my best friends traded in a commute similar to mine (NYC) for a 15 minute drive (SV) and is immeasurable happier for it.
Work is going even better as a WFH person now that I don't go out or have to take my kids anywhere.
My mood, appetite, sleep schedule, relationships, general zeal are mostly flatlined. It's a total loss. Reconstruction will be interesting.
I wrote on it here this past October: https://caseysoftware.com/blog/the-uncounted-casualty-of-202...
My advice: Introduce some variety. Go outside for a walk. Talk (not text) with friends more often. Reconnect with people you haven't seen in a while. Read books and watch movies outside your normal preferences. Turn off the technology for 30 or 60 minutes and meditate. STOP watching the news.
For me I don’t think it’s necessarily that WFH was the primary factor. I’ve worked remote most of my career. But I do think everyone being remote had a big impact, as it made communication more challenging for team members and management who don’t usually prefer remote. This heightened stress for all involved, and drove increased pressure to overwork.
That said, a few months off has definitely helped. If you can afford to take some time off, I highly recommend it.
I've had two mental state crashes so far where I just end up completely cba getting out of bed levels of burned out for a week. It doesn't help I'm at a pretty small agency that feels it if I take surprise time off, so I feel guilty about that on top of it all haha -- incidentally I have had a chat with my doctor and we adjusted a few things. The citalopram has taken the edge off for now!
How're you doing mate? Sincerely hope you're able to get something from the comments as I'm about to try now! :)
e: just realised you're using a throwaway. Fuck it must be hard for you lot over in the US, at-will and medical bills etc. Best of luck all, truly.
I never thought I’d like remote work or could be productive that way, but now I’m convinced. But I definitely need the private space to do it. I could never do this from a 400 sqft apartment.
I’d probably have fallen apart if I still worked at an office. WFH has given me the ability to give up when I’m completely fried, or go and do other things to de stress rather than just break down at my desk. In an office I’d feel the pressure to stay at my desk and fake working, which would’ve probably been much too much for me.
EDIT> Kids are 7 and 12. If they were pre-schoolers ... shudder ... it's hell.
Also make sure there is clean separation between work and home. Different hardware, different location even if it's the other side of the same room.
Been saving tons of money as well. My game is coming along nicely.
The only downside is I sorta broke it off with a girl right before this all started. Being single now is a bummer, but tons of people are in not so great relationships that they can't get out of right now.
As far as I'm concerned I've been exceptionally lucky. Something like 1/4 households with children are food insecure.
We started not endlessly being in meetings as meetings were a pain over Zoom/Teams. Now that we are used to that, the meetings are back.
We started out overcommunicating as we were afraid things would be lost in WFH. We have stopped that so now there is lots of getting out of sync again as we are no longer conscious of making sure everyone gets the message.
Never been so happy, relaxed and being able do spend quality time with my significant other!
So tired of getting blocked for days waiting on someone to do something. Having to sit through endless calls and meetings to talk about stuff, not being able to show someone how to do something in person. I’m sure just plugging away at tickets is great for some people but it’s not for me.
The whole omg I'm so old and behind my peers with acquiring white picket fence type thing.
A while ago I coded https://quarantinenotes.com I would love to have your thoughts written down on the board.
but the last year was really good for me. Remote work became more accepted (I've been WFH for 20 years), which opened up stuff outside of SV to me. I got a new job with great people, better pay and cool tech. And I've had more time for hobbies.
I know I'm lucky, but I really can't complain...
I think for me WFH is not that different from normal since half of my team isn't in the same country anyway and our meetings were always in Skype. Actually I eat better, since I the canteen isn't my only option at home.
I had a super long commute... I now have no commute but no "contact" (face to face).
I'd personally love 3 days from home, 2 in the office.
I'd say I'm as productive... some times more, sometimes less. But the lack of face to face cooler chats, white board meetings, etc are sorely missed.
From what I hear of my colleagues, you're definitely not alone.
What I’m finding hard is the lack of social life due to lockdowns and social distancing and not being able to travel (most of my friends aren’t close enough to meet up with in the park or whatever)
Make a timeslot and schedule for things that used to be automatic, like going outside for a quick walk and exercising and starting and ending your day.
You will feel amazing from this.
I like working from home but I don't like living at the office.
Be that as it may, it's still much more productive than any time spent in an infernal open plan office.
We’ve also road-tripped to change locations and spice things up.
And all the excuses. Oh they took this freedom away. Well I don’t mind, because it doesn’t affect me. Or just do this for a little while. Just go without it for a few weeks. Months. Half a year. Rules with barely any effect, implemented on the flimsiest of pretexts that seem to have no end in sight. Statistical half truths to sell the rules.
And the solution, vaccination? Delay after delay and every day there’s a new dramatic story about how 1 guy got an allergic reaction, or how someone really isn’t all that sure it’ll help against the scary new mutations.
It is incredibly frustrating yet I want to keep track of the news at least for a bit so I can do whatever little I can to change it.
At least the finger pointing has gone away a bit. In this thread I only saw a few of the ‘if only other people had kept to the rules’ blame game comments.
What's helped me to stay in a positive space and productive during lockdown:
1. Daily exercise. I never worked out with weights before covid, but I bought a kettlebell and the book Simple & Sinister and started doing that routine along with cardio. Makes a huge difference.
2. Any kind of mindfulness. I've read a bunch of books on happiness during lockdown. Most all of them say the same things and suggest the same sorts of mindful practices, so I chose to do some practices based on stoicism and cognitive behavioral therapy. (Recommended reading: Why Buddhism is True, Everything is F*cked [starts good, gets bad], How to be a Stoic, A Handbook for New Stoics, Full Catastrophe Living. Choose any/all and see what you like.)
3. Not reading the news or doom scrolling. I get a covid newsletter each day (https://paulbart.substack.com) and don't read any other covid news. I also got off social media and don't read much about politics/the general shitshow. Basically, things that are beyond my control I pay limited attention to. When I violated this, obsessively seeking out streams & tweets from the storming of the capitol, I wound up having to take the next day off because I was so out of sorts.
4. Connecting directly with friends. I deleted my social media accts this year and started reaching out to old friends directly. First with a bulk email then zooms/phone calls with folks who wrote back. It's been great to reconnect and everyone is happy to chat!
5. Putting strict limits on work. I don't touch it outside of what I've determined to be "work hours". Period.
Good luck. Things can get better.
It’ll be helpful if we state our environment and expectations towards WFH.
I work from home since 2014.
The only work related change is that I got more customers since the pandemic hit. I'm a technical writer and developer relations advocate, so this isn't surprising.
Rewarding work, great team, but a break would be nice. Alas.
Now I gotta wait until actually have a new job lined up so I can really quit.
Already told my boss.
Not American.
There could be a personal factor, but the lockdown is not helping.
We did lockdown properly in NZ, and now, we're basically back to normal (with the exception of international travel).
And no, it isn't because we're a small island (though that helped). South Korea and Vietnam are also success stories.
Vote with your feet and move. Dakotas and Florida are open. I wore a mask while snorkeling and saw a shark!
I live by myself in an apartment in a city, and while I do have a good work from home setup, it doubles as my gaming PC setup. I agree that living in the suburbs or a rural area would help, but it's not the only significant factor for me.
One is being on an established team versus a new team. The first couple months I was on the same team I'd worked with in the office, a fairly small team with good intra-team social connections. My productivity was lower, but only 20-30% lower. Then I switched companies as my previous employer was having major problems (which were unrelated to covid; the writing on the wall started to become clear in January). I've never met my team in real life, and while they seem like a team I'd enjoy working with in the office, I derive very little social satisfaction from my interactions with them. For most of the latter half of last year, the only thing keeping my productivity at about the 50% mark of 2019's levels were fairly frequent pair programming with a couple colleagues, one of whom has since left. I'd estimate my 2021 productivity levels so far to be 20% or less of my 2019 levels.
The other is non-work-related social interaction. Throughout the summer and fall I'd regularly meet up with friends at parks (and occasionally elsewhere after several months once it became apparent the containment strategy had failed), but that fell by the wayside starting around November, in part due to cold and in part due to the caseload hitting record levels at that time and being more cautious. Other than one friend who caught and recovered from the virus in March, I didn't see any friends or family for about two months. That definitely increased burnout as well. I've found that working remotely, I need at least two lengthy social interactions per week to maintain mental health, and that hasn't happened in too long.
I've already let my managers know that I plan to take a leave of absence once travel is feasible again. I've considered resigning as well, but at this point I'm not convinced having more free time would be a good thing, with so few ways to spend it. Work itself isn't the main problem, so much as the lack of social interaction, so I may well stay and keep earning some money at least until it warms up and I can spend the time on outdoor activities again.
I am thankful that the new job I started is local, so assuming I stay, eventually I'll be working from an office. There's no way I would stay at a position that was permanently remote.
First, I used to travel quite a bit. Conferences, visiting friends in different countries, etc. Since I can mostly work from wherever I am, it was always easy to do five or six trips a year. That obviously hasn't been happening since lockdown started. I live in kind of a grungy, uninteresting neighborhood in South London. I don't particularly like it (we're here out of convenience for my partner's job) but frequent travel really helped me be OK with it. Now, I haven't been more than two miles from my flat in the last year (we don't have a car and going any further would require getting on a train or bus or plane and I don't consider that to be a reasonable thing to do if it's not for an "essential" purpose; the only times I've gone anywhere further than walking distance have been for legally required immigration appointments). I used to occasionally even go and work in a cafe or pub for a few hours, or just hang out for a change of scenery and of course I can't do that either. So I'm really unhappy with my location now and really tired of seeing the same thing every day.
Second, my partner is a university lecturer. Normally, I'd work from home and she'd go to her office on campus. When they moved her classes online and she started working from home, we were in each others' way all the time. She had to pretty much turn our living room and kitchen area into a TV studio with lights, multiple cameras and a green screen setup. If she's having a class, I have to avoid passing through that space, making any noise, or using too much internet bandwidth (no pushing big docker images...) Meanwhile, I'm used to having quiet space to myself to code and that's hard to do when someone is giving a loud lecture right to you. Plus, since it's a lot more work and stress for her and no additional pay, she's been unhappy and when she's not happy, neither am I.
To make things worse, the UK has also been dealing with Brexit and over the last year a significant number of our friends, who happened to be European, left the country. So we were already feeling more isolated and down than usual before lockdown even started since most of our social network disappeared on us.
Still, I try to focus on how good we have it. Both of us are still employed, both in jobs that we can do from home. Our neighborhood is crappy, but our flat is pretty nice even if it's not huge. We live on a loud, busy, polluted street, but we do have a small deck so we could at least sit outside sometimes when the weather was nice (this is the UK though, so that's like three days a year). I remember living in apartments in NYC that were basically big enough for a twin size bed and a desk and nothing else. I know that there are still a lot of people living in places like that with no outside place to go during lockdown. I had one friend and former coworker who died, but otherwise neither of us have lost any family members or very close friends. So all in all, we could be doing much worse.
I've been remote for 5 years, this last year alone was the hard one.
I'm holding out hope that things will turn around soon with fixes to the vaccine rollout, but literally everyone has been on survival mode for way too long.
You have to listen to yourself.
I came up with this way. Sometimes I work for 3 weeks even and especially weekends. I'm super productive there, then all of a sudden I lose interest. Then I start playing games. Anything that's fun. Until one day I'm bored of that and get back to work. In both cases I treat it like a game. The work game and the game game. However especially if income is low, I push myself to work. It's not a game then but a fight against my own will.
I had a bad relationship breakup. She cheated and I was very hurt. She made sure I lose all my friends. All those I cared about anyway. In that time coding was my way out of hurt and depression. Focusing every day on progress of one project and seeing it grow. That one project made me about 150k€ and gave me back the self-esteem she destroyed.
Compared to that COVID19 lockdowns are light fruit cakes.
I go outside and walk at least 45min a day. You can't sit at home all day. You need to go outside.
You at least are employed and in a safe situation earning your income and sure about that. I work and don't know if I'll ever see a single cent from the work I'm doing. The project I finish today may or may not take off in 3 years (earlier if I spend money on advertising)
I decided that if I continue in this path it's not going to be healthy for my body and my life
So I decided to change the way I live and I don't see any drop in productivity before and after. The only thing is I'm happy with the current state of my life
The bliss is in life is not getting too attached to things (work, deadlines, startup stress) but letting things go
This has been a massive improvement in my entire families quality of life. I can’t imagine going back to an office now.
I can't wait to go back into the office. I wonder how many people enjoy working from home now but won't in another year or two.