One really positive thing I have found for myself in the WFH life is that I am taking MUCH better care of myself. So far I have lost weight, started a bodyweight workout routine, which I do in between meetings/calls/other work, and have gained back 2 hours of my day by not taking transit into the city. That's 2 more hours every day that I get to relax, work on a personal project, hang out with my SO, or even crush out some work-related interest if I am feeling motivated. It has also been a fantastic motivator and resource for cooking — I can start dinner before my workday is over, cook myself lunch, meal plan...
I also pay thousands of dollars to live in a cool place, and now I am finally getting to enjoy it, and enjoy it with my SO.
At the end of the day, maybe I am less "productive", by normal standards, but maybe I didn't need to be in an office for 8+ hours every day to get the parts of my job done that need getting done.
There surely are parts of this that I want to change or can't wait to change, but at the end of the day I am grateful for the forcing function to working from home full-time.
Actually it's the opposite for me, I've started taking so much junk snacks (which wasn't available at Office), Less Walks and No proper schedule. Sleeps off the time. Many a days just getting up and jumping into calls.
On the positive side, it's more quality time with family but I'm still wondering how to fix the health part.
> I've started taking so much junk snacks (which wasn't available at Office)
What I've found helps is to not buy snacks. I eat junk if it's available, but if nothing is nearby, then I can't be bothered to go out and purchase it, so I'll eat a grapefruit instead.
Another thing that I have found helps is to order a community supported agriculture (CSA) produce box. A lot of farmers that supply restaurants are losing a lot of business lately, and at least in the Bay Area, many are starting to sell directly to consumers. I'm on a weekly schedule now where every Wednesday I pick up a box of restaurant quality vegetables in SF, and it's pretty fun because a lot of these vegetables are ones I've never even heard of before. It has become a hobby to come up with new types of meals, and it also gives my wife and I a nice break from the monotony to go for our vegetable pickup excursion.
You don’t even have to go to the supermarket for food these days so can avoid the temptations completely.
With online shopping it’s easy to set up a weekly shopping list so easier to stay in track, no chocolate bars or soft drinks at the check outs. Likewise if you walk to a butchers or green grocers vs a supermarket it’s easier to avoid temptations.
Love that. I've learned two things about myself in the last 5 years or so:
- I have very little self control when impulses are right in front of me. This goes for most things: drinking (especially out), food/snacks, purchases, even exercise (eg. just keep hiking a little farther vs. stopping).
- I have enormous self control if I "distance" myself from impulse. This means not buying snacks in the first place, trying out alternative forms of exercise, not buying beer except on weekends, putting things from Amazon on a wishlist vs. clicking the Buy Now button.
I know my impulses well enough at this point, and maybe there is something to be said for these methods not actually controlling them (just avoiding them), but they are much healthier mentally for me since I can indulge when things are around that I want without feeling guilty for being constantly indulging.
On the other hand, if my house is very clean and uncluttered, I'm probably depressed/anxious and not spending time doing things I like. I personally despise cleaning house, and minimal cleaning for practical reasons works for me.
Make it difficult. Open chips, put chips into bowl, and take them somewhere else. (for example). You can make yourself bored while eating them, but I rarely do. The bowl/plate plus immediate cleanup helps stop the mindless eating.
In the meantime, work on getting some sort of hobby to help with the stress.
Not buying the bad stuff is key. Passing it in the store takes orders of magnitude less 'willpower' than moderating your consumption once it is in your cupboard.
And the main trick to doing that is to not go shopping while hungry. If you are hungry, eat something small before going for groceries, and the temptations will have a lot less power over you.
Before going to shop, write a shopping list at home. When you are at the shop, you can still put something extra in your cart, but generally be in the "I am following the list" mindset, instead of "I am looking around and see if something catches my attention" mindset.
Before writing the shopping list, decide what meals do you want to eat in the following days; then put the ingredients in the list. Otherwise you might end up with too much breakfast stuff, and not enough cooking-material stuff. (Or with cooking-material stuff that you don't know how to put together.)
Before even that... if you are not a skilled cook, you could make a list of all meals you can cook, and put it on your fridge. So when you are out of ideas, just look at the list and pick something you haven't cooked recently. You will get greater variety, and you will keep practicing all you have learned.
I was going to say the former comment but I will add. Treat junk snacks as actual junk. Limit yourself to one snack as comfort food a week that you can buy. It doesnt hurt to have some cookies around but dont go to town on them.
Bit late now (in the UK at least) if you want it all in season, but I like it in a pie with sweet potato and leek, and just a bechemel sauce, optionally thickened with egg or cheese.
Went from working out 3 days a week to none. Went from 2 meals only a day to stopped counting. Productivity has gone out the window.
Man, I used to love my job. I can't wait to run back to my office and have both externally imposed structures and a physical separation of work and fun.
It is both. I used to like being able to confine work to work and fun to home. I don't like them both mixing with WFH.
My leisure was climbing, soccer and hanging out with friends...all 3 of which have come to a complete halt.
My room itself is in a terrible location, in that the windows don't face sunlight and face someone else's house. The common spaces are busy, since I live in a group house and don't have a separate study to work in.
I might have been less affected by WFH if I had made the transition more willingly. But, it being imposed on me while I am incredibly underprepared makes it a worse.
I feel you on that. I was _just_ getting back into climbing after a multi-year hiatus, and I was _so_ excited. Found a climbing buddy, finally worked up the courage to get onto the walls again and "be bad" at it. I was also doing cardio classes multiple days a week. It's all gone now.
I told myself at the beginning of lockdown that if I wasn't going to be able to do that, I had to make another change to make up for it. I was already putting in all the effort, and I just needed to redirect it. For me that was doing intermittent fasting (I just don't buy breakfast foods these days), and investing in cooking, which I already loved but wasn't doing enough of.
Wish you the best buddy. I'm hoping as things open up outdoors (which is the steps we seem to be taking, at least in CA) you can get back outside for some activity.
Everything you've mentioned is entirely in your own hands i.e. it's entirely self-control. You don't need an office, or the boss watching, to get up with time to spare, to not eat crap or get out for some fresh air.
With the above being said, don't beat yourself up too much. We're in a situation whereby we're all experiencing a sense of loss of control and total uncertainty about the future, combined with many other factors to worry about, so it's not surprising that it may propagate itself to affect the control you exercise over your own life.
If you're comfortable with it, just look at it as accumulating debt much like tech debt. Not tackling these things now might be fine but eventually you'll have to pay some of it down in the near future, and that may be a conscious trade-off yourself, and indeed many others, are happy to make right now.
You'll get over it over time. You're still adjusting, but eventually you'll get tired of wasting your day sleeping off or eating junk food that makes you feel bad. Then you'll be able to make your own schedule. I believe in you, but it's even more crucial that you believe in yourself.
Yeah, I'm exactly the same. I'm definitely a creature of schedule, and in "normal" times I go to the gym regularly, am more efficient at work, etc. Now everything just kind of "melds together" for me and even with more time without the commute I find my energy levels are consistently way, way lower.
I'm way in on junk food and no exercise since the pandemic started. I've decided I'm okay with it. I try not to be too unhealthy but this lockdown is difficult and junk food is comforting. At some point I will put a stop to it but for now I'm just enjoying an increased diet of junk food.
Opposite. I got lonely, so I went to Houston to visit family. I typically eat super healthy, exercise daily and do strenuous 16+ hour outdoors adventures on weekend days. Now, I just eat a lot, drink beer and watch TV. I lost all my fun outdoor activities, inspiration and what I do for stress relief.
This so much. If you were active outdoorsy person with pretty cool active life, WFH and all related can be a bit of a disaster. We can still go out, but doing anything with real risks is supremely selfish now. As in Europe, we can't travel in other countries. Being in place surrounded with beautiful France and having Italy within 1 hour drive, this severely restricts where we can go.
Also, I've been previously hitting gym 4-5 times a week on top of that, WFH can only go down in such scenario - I still try to motivate myself with some basic weights I have found at home, but it ain't the same as using ie squat rack with proper weights for example. At least running is +-same.
Human interaction is a topic on its own, I feel sorry for many single folks or those in relationships that aren't living together. In many cases it must be stressful.
I got into climbing because it was the only way I could get myself excited to go to the gym and keep a routine. It is just prep so I can climb cool stuff outside. Working out at home just isn't the same. It is also less social. I'm not a big social person, but I need something besides my roommates and getting outside. I know some people can just go to the gym every day and lift weights, but I've tried so many times.
> One really positive thing I have found for myself in the WFH life is that I am taking MUCH better care of myself.
I think people are going to come out of this one of two ways - half will come out fitter, mentally and physically, more positive, with new interests and skills and stronger relationships, and the other half are going to come out a mess (understandably.)
I'm coming out of the this less fit, mostly because my workouts depended on being out of the house. gyms being open. Or freedom to travel to somewhere.
Im also not eating as fresh as I normally do. I can usually get fish and vegetables and cook the day of. Now I gotta stock up on groceries for the week to reduce shopping frequency.
My food has been pretty much perfect. I’ve reduced calories to match reduced activity but what I eat is still proportioned correctly, lean meats, vegetables, rice/potatoes.
What I have noticed though is due to isolation only going out when necessary, not lifting weights four days a week, no general daily walking about and no cardio is that now walking up the four flights of stairs to my apartment I’m getting slightly out of breath when I shouldn’t. I’m getting cardiovascular unfit when at the start of the year I was the fittest I’ve ever been.
I’ve also noticed body composition changes. I’ve lost 1-2 kilo, looking a lot less muscular / smaller. As food has been good I don’t think there’s an increase in body fat I just have less mass overall. When you’ve been training hard it’s demotivating.
Things are starting to relax as where I am the numbers are very good so am going to start going for runs to get my cardio back even though I’m not a runner. That’ll again make body composition less muscular as burn off more calories.
For the gym to do my weight training, unfortunately they will be the last to open and it’s a huge mental down knowing I’ll essentially need to start from the very beginning again.
Is there nothing around that you can use as makeshift weights? When I was at high school and couldn’t afford a gym membership I used a bunch of old telephone directories as makeshift weights.
It wasn’t ideal but it worked for a few months until I got my first job.
Pull ups are one of the easier problems to solve at home. You can get bars for your doorway that extend out like stair gates. Or if you have a fat enough door frame and strong enough fingers you could pull up directly from the frame (I used to do this too).
Obviously you know your situation better than I do so I’m not meaning any of the above to sound preachy. I also get that proper equipment makes a world of difference and using improper equipment can add an element of risk.
I don't have telephone directories anymore, and I certainly don't have 200 lbs of them in easily graspable form... hand weights are fine but kettlebells are better than those, and neither is at all the same as a barbell.
It’s hard to lift without equipment - nothing around the house concentrates that amount of weight into something liftable.
Pull up bars mostly work the back muscles but don’t provide enough isolation to work the biceps.
I have however seen a video recommending bicep curls where your arms pull against a towel folded across your foot, which pushes in the other direction. By locking the elbows, isolation is achieved and your leg which has larger muscles than your arms provides the counterweight. It’s not ideal but it’s better than nothing.
What workouts are they that cannot be done without access to a gym?
For me it’s the variety of city food I miss the most. I live quite a way out from where I work and while there are still a few open takeaways, they’re pretty average in quality and lacking in variety. However there are larger and mostly well stocked supermarkets so buying fresh food to last the week hasn’t been a problem (most veg will last a week albeit some items will need to be refrigerated). However I definitely feel your pain about fish.
To be honest very little has changed with regards to shopping for me because i have two young kids and my wife works full time as well, so we are used to doing big weekly shops since that’s the most practical way for us to shop even pre-COVID19. I guess the biggest change is where we used to order it online and have it delivered, now we are driving to the store and picking the items ourselves.
Jiu-jitsu classes need a gym. It's hard to replace those workouts. Idk if it would even be safe for me to run for 2-3 hours I'd need to spend time working up to that and not ruin my legs or knees. That's a whole 2-3 hour work out few times a week. Plus board sports is my other workout. Ski resorts shut down and cities are restricting travel make it hard to drive for surf.
I'm doing what I can but working out intentionally like that sucks when it used to just be fun. Heh
I’m not familiar with Jiu-Jitsu specifically but I have trained in a few martial arts, Japanese and western, and they usually have routines you can practice on your own. Is the same not true for Jiu-jitsu?
With the bored sports, while you obviously couldn’t train your board skills, you could still keep working on those muscles and stamina at home through different training exercises.
I agree none of this is the same as going to your gym et al, but my point wasn’t that you could do identical training at home. It was that you could do something similar to at least keep yourself reasonably sharp.
Yeah there's probably some, the problem is motivation. I can go to a class and workout hard for hours, and not really notice. After a few minutes of running I'm ready to call it a day.
Same for surfing, keeping busy with a skateboard though. Paddle endurance is taking a hit.
If he's talking about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, then there's very little you can do on your own unfortunately. It all depends on having access to a training partner.
I just had a quick Google and found a bunch of training videos on YouTube for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, so it does seem possible. Having done a number of martial arts myself I do understand that having a partner does make a massive difference but I've never come across a martial art that doesn't have solo training exercises to enable individuals to practice when alone. Even the martial arts that you wouldn't expect could work solo (like fencing) still have solo training exercises.
> What workouts are they that cannot be done without access to a gym?
Anything needing special equipment or terrain, for example. If you want to do a climbing workout you're going out of luck without a rockface in your back garden or your own climbing wall, aren't you.
> I guess the biggest change is where we used to order it online and have it delivered, now we are driving to the store and picking the items ourselves.
This seems like the opposite of what you'd want to do - why are you doing this?
> Anything needing special equipment or terrain, for example. If you want to do a climbing workout you're going out of luck without a rockface in your back garden or your own climbing wall, aren't you.
In theory you’d be right but I the reason I asked is because there’s usually workouts you can still do at home to keep at least some of those muscles in shape even if you can’t do your usual training routines without using any specialist equipment. Granted sometimes you have to get a little creative but it’s certainly doable for most gym exercises that immediately sprint to mind.
Take the rock climbing example: I used to train at home doing pull ups on door frames on the weeks I couldn’t make it to an indoor climbing wall (though that was quite a few years ago now).
> This seems like the opposite of what you'd want to do - why are you doing this?
I agree and it’s not through choice I do it. The problem is everyone else agrees too and thus it has become impossible to book delivery slots due to the volume of demand.
> In theory you’d be right but I the reason I asked is because there’s usually workouts you can still do at home to keep at least some of those muscles in shape
Right, but you asked 'what workouts are they that cannot be done without access to a gym' and you're suggesting other workouts to keep the same muscles working. Yeah fine, but that's not the same workout, which is what you asked.
To be honest I didn’t put a much thought into the original comment because it’s now 4am U.K. time and I was just trying to idle my brain into sleep. Unfortunately the insomnia is winning tonight. :(
As a climber who currently does finger pull ups on my door frame, there is so much I can't do. A lot of climbing is body position and control of your center of mass. You can't practice proper technique for climbing without a wall. There's just also things you can't do without the height. As an avid sport climber, I would usually end my days climbing doing lead laps. This helps make clipping second nature because you're doing it till you can't do it anymore. I can't even think of a way to remotely simulate that at home and it has been such a critical component of my workout. It is the thing that allows me to do multi-pitch no problem and it is the thing that helps me sleep at night.
I’d not worry about it too much, I’ve gone maybe 9 months without climbing or doing anything but snowboarding and 2nd day out of the season done a 17 pitch 700m trad 5.9 multi. it comes back real fast, and the technique sticks long after the strength is gone.
Can’t wait to get back on rock Thursday out official “opening” date. planning on doing a 5.8 5 pitch multi right off the bat after 8 months off
It isn't me being worried about doing projects, it is the lack of a workout schedule. Many people choose sports, like climbing, because it is easier to convince themselves to workout. Having a good workout routine is a big part to mental and physical health.
Most aquatic sports, in addition to weightlifting, climbing, court sports (tennis, handball, racquetball, etc.), some dance, etc.
Cardio's easier to transition elsewhere, strength ... possible though the "big lifts" (squats, deads) are least easily converted, especially in shared / limited space. Having your upstairs apartment neighbour doing sets of deads could get annoying.
Anything with equipment or dedicated structures will be less convenient.
>half will come out fitter, mentally and physically, more positive, with new interests and skills and stronger relationships
With you until the last part. This is an inward period. People are getting to know themselves, improving themselves, learning to be more independent, etc. because the space previously occupied by other people has been freed.
Unless you're talking about cohabitants? Seems to me that excessive contact would ruin the strongest relationships even faster than no contact would.
Unless you're talking about cohabitants? Seems to me
that excessive contact would ruin the strongest
relationships even faster than no contact would.
Yeah. Depends on living situation, really, right?
Folks cohabitating in cramped living conditions 24/7, particularly in the city where they can't just easily go outside and enjoy some fresh air and open space? Yikes. I mean, even in prison they give ya outdoor time and you get to mingle in the yard.
At the opposite end of the spectrum you have people living out in the country or the suburbs in houses with multiple rooms. My partner and I fall into this category. We each have our own work spaces and outside of work hours we can spend time together or we have plenty of space in which to avoid each other. Plus we can go for walks and get fresh air and some minimal social interaction with neighbors and fellow dog walkers from a safe distance. I call this "social distancing on easy mode." Our relationship is doing okay.
> Seems to me that excessive contact would ruin the strongest relationships even faster than no contact would.
Fair assumption, but my fiancé and I are doing just fine. If anything this proved for sure that we can go ahead and get married.
What COVID-19 lockdown has revealed, imo: relationships that were on shaky ground accelerate their demise [0]. Those that were "meant to be" come out more intimate.
[0] Breaking up after realizing you can't survive 24/7 together is not necessarily a bad thing.
I think it's context dependent. I did two months of quarantine isolated in a 500sqft apartment and experienced slowly deteriorating mental health culminating in a mental breakdown. Now, I'm in a 1200sqft apartment with two close friends, a patio, and a dog. I am happy as ever and crushing work from home now that I was able to find a sustaining environment.
I was the same until about 5 weeks in, then the isolation got to me and I reverted to food and sleep to manage my emotions and I wiped out all my progress in two weeks.
It's important to remember that this is not a normal state of affairs, this doesn't accurately reflect WFH. I'm personally curious ot try WFH more once we return to 'normal'.
I think the name "social distancing" isn't a good choice. It should be called physical distancing.
Because socially, you can be as close as ever, just use video chat. Whereby, Zoom, Skype, etc. to hang out with groups of people (be it friends, colleagues, etc.)
Video chat isn't the same. I've been using it a lot and it's isolating. There are plenty of studies showing that biologically it's inferior. Also my main hobby is musical theatre, most of which only works in person, so the things that bring me joy in life are all postponed.
Opposite for me. I gained weight because I no longer walk to work (walk to station, take subway, walk from office). And, I'm only a few feet from my kitchen so can eat.
I have no S.O. so much lonelier not having co-workers to talk to, eat lunch with, etc...
Same. I feel the positive effects are actually making me more productive, not less. I do end up writing code at midnight some days, but having a floating schedule fits me so much better. Meeting face to face for some things is nice, but it's not worth all the downsides. I honestly dread when I'll be forced back in the office - even though this has shown we can work from home for extended periods, I don't see my company allowing us to do so after they don't have to.
You would be atypical if you were less productive by normal standards. Most studies I have seen on the topic usually show a marked increase in worker productivity in working from home. There is a bit of a confounding variable, however... Homes are not open floor plan for the most part. And we know from over 1,000 studies that open floor plan offices massacre productivity to a huge degree. So it might just be the benefit of not having all of the kneecapping and hamstringing taken away that is usually inflicted by business on their workers through open floor plans.
They would not be atypical, because they are working during a pandemic, which is in itself a massive confounding variable. Even people who normally work from home are writing about being less productive than usual right now. This is not a good way to assess "working from home" vs "working in the office", any more than it would be to measure productivity of someone who was suddenly housebound with a broken leg.
Let me caveat the following by saying that I'm one who believes the future of tech work is fully remote and personally hope to stay fully remote post-COVID.
I do not believe now is the time to be drawing comparisons or conclusions between the office norm and the fully remote situation most of us have been thrust into.
Sure, some people procrastinate more than others. Some people need more management than others to keep going. Some people are better self-driven and self-organized than others.
The effects of the externalities many are now faced with
- worry over savings / the state of the market
- job security as we watch others get laid off
- how the kids are holding up, how will this impact their education and future
- sick family members
- etc. etc.
renders it impossible to draw conclusions meaningfully e.g. "Susan was super productive when we were working in the office, but she seems to have really dropped off now that she's remote. Looks like remote isn't for her!"
or
"I was so effective in the office but now that I'm at home I can't seem to get anything done, or focus, therefore I must not be cut out for remote work".
Whilst in the background you, or Susan, are facing a big drop in your 401k, or you're worried your kids are watching too much tv at home all day, or Mom is headed out to get groceries again when she really shouldn't be and there's nothing I can do about it.
I believe the sweet period when some sense of normality resumes but we're still mandated to WFH because it'll be impossible to institute social distancing effectively in cost-optimized open office spaces will be when we can more effectively starting measuring and drawing conclusions over fully remote work and its impact on people and the office.
Yes, it's hard to separate the effects of remote work from the effects of... everything else.
Also the fact that it was a dramatic change overnight, so people can no longer follow their old habits, but didn't have enough time to develop new habits. For example, it is possible to exercise in a gym, and it is also possible to exercise at home, but people who used to exercise regularly in a gym are probably exercising less now, because their habits have been broken.
Not just habits. For example, I have a standing desk at my job, but I didn't have one at home. It took me some time to reorganize my desk, so that I can use the computer comfortably while standing. Then my kids complained, because it was too high for them. It took some time to adapt to the new situation.
Thats true. The point of the comment is that the set of people who just aren't cut our to work from home happily and productively is a lot smaller than the set of people who can't work happily and productively right now, no matter where they work.
If you have a baby and two young children around who you also have to homeschool for 8 hours a day then you're not going to be "productive" working at home.
People who slack at work by hide it by having lots of meetings / playing politics are useless whilst working-from home because they don't know how operate when their productivity is more visible.
I first experienced this roughly a year ago when I was having a discussion with a colleague in China, and she happened to be at home because of the time zone difference. All of a sudden, a baby started screaming and all hell broke loose. She was so embarrassed, but we all just laughed it off and she realized that we weren't annoyed at all.
When we all went on lockdown recently, I noticed that at first people were careful to create a "proper" workspace that was not only silent but also photogenic for their camera. Naturally, a kid sees a closed door with the most interesting new thing in the house happening on the other side. The only proper recourse is to bang on the door.
Even within just a few weeks, things have relaxed considerably. Now, I rarely attend a meeting, even when there are higher-ups in attendance, where there are not kid noises in the background, folks going on "mute" to deal with a meltdown, even just letting the kids play in the same room. Going shopping during the work day, when the stores are less crowded, is completely normal now.
When all of this started, some folks said: "Finally this will normalize working from home." Maybe it will go even further, and normalize folks having a real life.
> Maybe it will go even further, and normalize folks having a real life.
I absolutely love this. I love seeing my colleagues contextualized in their private spaces, that reflects their personal choices, humanity, wholeness. In the office this is reduced to a 2x5' desk.
Office as a space also has a sense of self-importance to it. It is not unlike a church or a stadium where the purpose of the gathering is super-salient and the participants' rich humanity is backgrounded. Working from home, it is harder to be reduced to one's function as a worker, it is impossible to forget that you are a human with a life when constantly surrounded by the cues that remind you of that life, in the space that you live that life.
Totally agreed. At the same time, I also feel that someone should be able to separate work and life if they want to. I have one colleague who never turns her camera on, which is perfectly OK too.
Our solution is that I go to bed at 8pm and get up at 4am and work like mad until breakfast which is around 9am. Thats 5h of uninterrupted coding time, which is about the max my old brain can handle anyway. The hard part is doing 'working hours' business, but hey, I just email everyone from the potty.
This is a fantasy. I work at large B2B SaaS, middle management politickers have doubled down and are just having even more meetings, which are no longer impeded by pesky things like conference room availability, business travel or personal time.
We have video meetings, though. WFH hasn't really changed the amount of written communication in my work.
My closest collaborator falls pretty squarely under "terrible at written communication", but we still have sufficiently frequent face-to-face time to be about as productive as before.
I'm in agreement with the general sentiment elsewhere in this thread, though. I've found nothing about people's WFH productivity that's surprising. People with kids are handicapped, but are often determined enough to find a way to make it work. For everybody else, it seems like the inequality in productivity just goes up, and it's harder to mask non-productivity by socializing well.
As of this writing, a lot of comments are sharing their varied personal experiences in WFH.
Which is good, because they are all more interesting and valuable than the article, which skips the "varied" part and basically lumps everything in to "if you have troubles working from home, you need more willpower" (paraphrase).
I found it insulting and was a bit surprised to see what I assumed to be American work-fetish from a BBC article.
There are LOTS of reasons because people are very different and our environments are very different. I don't have kids, I am easily distracted by visuals or sounds in my periphery, I have a separate room for my home office, I don't have neighbors that share a wall or live above my ceiling, I have good internet service, I'm an introvert...so yeah, I have an easier time working from home. But those that don't, they obviously just lack dedication to work. Garbage.
I think willpower is an important factor, but not the only one. The bigger issue is viewing lack of willpower as a personal moral failing rather than something that can be fixed with practice and attention. I really buy into the fact that willpower is like a muscle that you can exercise and that there are real practical ways to improve it. I've seen huge increases in my own focus and working ability in the last five years - part of that due to a maturing prefrontal cortex but in large part also because I've taken concrete steps to improving it (and reducing procrastination).
That is not to say that all distractions are easily fixed or that everybody should have great focus and attention.
Not really books, but stuff I've picked up via osmosis, mostly from the internet:
First, the biggest way to make improvements quickly is to make sure you are getting good sleep, exercising regularly, and eating well. This does huge benefits for mood, alertness, and energy. Also if you drink, smoke weed, or take some other non-stimulant drug regularly that you don't need to be taking - stop. Not only do these impede focus while under the influence and for a day or two after, they also prevent you from getting high quality sleep (which is why you get very vivid dreams after ceasing regular use for a few weeks - you are catching up on REM sleep).
Second, set small bite sized goals. Instead of thinking about the long path ahead, it's better to think about what is the first thing you need to do. That really helps me prevent procrastinating. You can also do what I think of as "reverse procrastinating" where you tell yourself you'll take a 30m break from procrastinating right now to get something done - usually I end up getting in the zone and working for longer than 30m.
Taking breaks is also helpful. The frequency/length depends on the person and for me changes from day to day. If you catch yourself slacking or losing focus, or stuck on something, get up and walk around. When I'm at work I basically drink 5+ diet sodas a day, partially for the caffeine, but weirdly enough also because it makes me pee a lot so it forces me to get up and walk around every 1-2 hours.
The goal setting, and seeing them to completion or at least making good, sustained effort, is the part that improves over time with practice. Eventually you start setting larger goals and can start planning more (if you are like me, paralysis by analysis is really easy to fall into, so you have to take it easy here). I'm by no means some kind of self-actualized ubermensch, but these have really worked for me, to the point where I've transitioned from a serial procastinator in college - doing almost everything day before, day of, or late if the penalty was low - to someone who actually does stuff in advance and spends almost the entire workday working.
If I've got any sort of work to do, where I could just as easily load up a game, I say to myself "I'm going to work on this for ten minutes until 3:30pm. Then if I'm sick of working on it, I'll just play the game instead."
It's exceptionally practical, since 95% of the time I end up working on that thing for longer than that ten minutes. For me, it alleviates the pressure of thinking I'll need to push through a task for hours by giving myself an escape hatch.
It's a "motivation follows action" technique/trick/hack.
I've been working from home for the past 10 years and I don't think I could go back to a regular office.
- I can work at my own natural pace whenever I want. Some days I work 4 hours. Some days I work 12 hours until 1-2 am.
- If I need to buy something I just do it. I can go to the supermarket at the best times.
- I can eat home made food and follow any schedule I wish. My SO also works at home and we're doing intermittent fasting 4/20. We start eating at 2pm and stop at 6pm.
- I loooove espresso. To give you an idea my espresso setup costs more than my work setup and I roast my own beans. No office could provide me with this.
- We have 2 large dogs and we just couldn't abandon them for 8-10 hours every day. I don't know how people do that.
- We can live wherever we want and we don't have to pay extra to live in a nice house. Gone are the days of living in apartments without garden.
The question was asking why some people are better at working at home than others. You seemed to answer the question "how awesome is working at home?". ;-)
My job title is Managing Director. I am learning quite quickly about working from home.
Espresso - I don't roll my own but I love 85% Aribica with 15% Rombusta. I gather that is the Italian default brew and I concur. We do bean to cup rather than tree to cup.
We used to look after other people's dogs. Wifey now walks me! We live next to a park and see many of our customers daily from afar. I could not give a shit about the money but we miss our friends. Even now I smile thinking about Cwtch (not a typo) and co. running madly around the meadow down hill from my house.
Anyway, I am now seriously thinking about how we properly integrate home working in the future. There is a massive win-win if we all do it.
> Some days I work 4 hours. Some days I work 12 hours until 1-2 am.
Do you track those hours to make sure you don't think you worked enough but in fact consistently work too little or too much? Wondering because I had that problem (working slightly too much every week).
I've never measured it but I've learned to work as much as I can without getting into burnout territory. On average I think I now work 50-60 hours per week.
Most of these 10 years I've been working as a freelancer or now building my thing. Even when I was working for a company for a couple of years I was completely independent as far as time management goes.
Wait, why would you "work as much as [you] can without getting into burnout territory"? That sounds like you consistently and deliberately work more than you get paid for. Do you enjoy the job that much or is there some other reason, if I may ask?
Or do I misunderstand that 'working for yourself' means that you have your own company and you work for customers? If you really just work for "yourself" and nobody pays you (I don't think that's what you mean, but I'm not a native speaker so perhaps I'm missing something) then I understand that you just work as much as you like. But if someone pays you, why would you work more time than you get paid for rather than spending that time on a hobby or with family and friends? Even if you're not paid/bill by the hour, I assume you can't ask a rate much higher than competitors even if you get projects done faster because customers would just go elsewhere; they'd expect you work normal hours and get it done in a normal amount of time. Or at least, that's what it seems like from my perspective but since you work more there has to be a flaw in the logic somewhere.
"working for myself" means I don't have a contract with a company to exchange a fixed amount of daily hours for money. I do have freelancing clients which I budget per hour but they don't care how and when I work, they just see the results. I'm also building a SaaS so it's up to me how I want to work.
> But if someone pays you, why would you work more time than you get paid for rather than spending that time on a hobby or with family and friends?
If for example I'm working on a 200 hour freelance project I don't spend more time that I got paid. I just do the work at my own pace.
I do spend time doing other activities than working. What do you think I do on those days I only work 4 hours :)
When I was mostly freelancing (now I'm mostly working on my SaaS) I took a couple of days off after finishing each project, sometimes even a 2-3 weeks after big projects.
When I was working as an employee they didn't pay me to work X hours per day. They paid me for results and didn't care how or when I worked either. I admit there were situations where I did give more than what I got paid for, doing things outside my responsibilities, and that was a mistake. I did that because it was an education company I joined with great ideals, not because of the money.
I learned from those years as an employee that I simply don't have an employee mentality. For example I treated my bosses as I treated my clients. As a freelancer or running your own company you're measured by the quality and efficiency of your work so you learn to care about that. Employees around me were trying to work as little as possible and only cared about their paycheck. They didn't care about solving problems or being efficient. For example, there was this programmer (who didn't work for me) that preferred to spend a couple of hours every day doing a manual report instead of automating it and be given more work. Of course he was friends with the IT manager, another person with employee mentality.
> Some days I work 4 hours. Some days I work 12 hours until 1-2 am.
This sounds great, but is really only attainable if you're a freelancer. Unfortunately, this is not an option for many people, especially those just starting out in their careers.
I actually thought i'm the type of person who needs the office.
Apparently i'm not. That gives me great hope for my future plan to do home office when buying a farm.
Just yesterday i did nothing in the morning and worked highly concentrated and efficient until 10pm (that was a one time thing normally i'm quite punctual as i had an private appointment).
When working at the office, i have to hurry to be on time and at the evening i'm stressing on going home because i wanna see my wife and a wanna eat something. Now my wife is here anyway and i'm much more flexible now.
I like the flexibility, but you have to be conscious to still set boundaries. Having to leave the office to catch my train on time is a great motivator to make sure everything is wrapped up and I don't linger at the office. When work is at home, what's another 15 minutes, or 30, or 2 hours.. I'm hearing from my coworkers that they are having a hard time with separating at the end of the day, when "going home" is just going into the other room (or disconnecting from the VPN).
> I'm hearing from my coworkers that they are having a hard time with separating at the end of the day
Yup, the thing I always try to remember is tomorrow's another day and that whatever I'm working on likely isn't as important as I'm making it out to be.
I’m an introvert and a teacher. In class I successfully turn myself into a charismatic extrovert.
I have 80+ teenage pupils to
manage remotely, with me on camera for a significant amount of that time. I find it very easy.
All pupils have an iPad. We all have full accounts in Microsoft Outlook and in Google Classroom, Forms, Docs and Meet.
Being remote has made me tighten up my document formatting game. I just set up a nice asciidoctor template to make classroom materials have a bit more wow factor for the assignments and ideas I post online.
The tools hold pupils to deadlines. It’s a boundary they respect and it gets a lot more out of them. They find remote work a lot harder than I do of course. It makes school feel a lot more tiring.
(Periods have about 30% face time and the rest they are left to work under their own steam — with parents no doubt pushing them on my behalf.)
We will go back to school eventually and we had all these tools before but I don’t feel we used them to anything like the full extent we do right now. Remote teaching has really changed the game for me, for the better. It’s not something I’d choose to do — for their sake — but I’m enjoying what it’s helped me learn and look forward to carrying a ton of techniques over into the new school year.
Everyone is different and the whole thing depends on so many things, that there is no one solution fits all. I started my career or a good part of it as a freelancer and then with my own company that was fully remote in a time where home office wasn’t even a thing. I loved it, I was working for myself, I could work whenever I wanted, could take time off, but also had big projects where I was working 7 days a week for a month. I didn’t care because in the end I was young and single and life was simple.
Now, working in a company, I miss the office so much. I don’t like this lack of border between work and personal life. I didn’t sign up for this, my home is my own space and I don’t want calls, I don’t want anything related to work in there. I don’t like having my work laptop and equipment in my personal space and office, I don’t like switching laptops just so that I can do something else that I like. The thing is, I like the office where I work, I like my colleagues, I like our lunches, I like the social interactions, it was always a nice change of space where I could fully focus on my work, knowing that when I leave the building, work is done and I’m switching to my other environment.
While working in an office, I considered myself one of the more productive members of my team, and one colleague called me the most productive team member. Now, working from home, I am often standing up, walking around and dreaming for hours. I am glad I was allowed to return to an office alone this Monday. I am not 100% sure it is all due to WFH because my assigned project changed at about the same time but I can only hope I'll recover when I'm in an office again, even if nobody else is there to watch over me.
How much of that walk around time is just time saving from other things?
I'm also called productive by my team and I do the same as I save so much time by not having to deal with interruptions, leaving meetings on in the background, and and being able to work through lunch.
None of the walkaround time is saved from other things I'd say. I don't work through lunch, my lunch break has gotten longer because I make food instead of eating in the canteen, and lunch is one of the enjoyable times when I do not feel guilty for not working. The 'enjoyable because I do not feel guilty for not working' is somewhat true for the meetings now as well.
I've always been a night owl and WFH seems to fix my mental health after years of trying to force myself to work during "normal office hours" (let's just agree to call them bricklaying and farming hours) in noisy office environments (I'm doing a mixture between natural science and AI which requires plenty of focus).
I'm slowly regaining trust in my ability to focus, getting into flow, and feel "normal" again. I'm starting my day with food-related stuff, sports and work communication, then going for an open-end session only towards late afternoon when communication slows down, working into the night.
I don’t get how some people work different hours at home. Generally, I have to have Slack availability and then the meetings all get scheduled around the standard 9-5 times. So I have to work the same times anyway, or else I will just look like I don’t work.
Work from office seems like a lose-lose situation however. I have to commute, and at work, I just waste more time because showing up counts as work. I sort of wish I felt more at ease at home. I mostly work harder. So the one-size-fits-all-butts-in-seats, in some cases, falls into that stupidity where one party (the employer) causes a loss for both parties without benefits, because they’ll make no effort to figure out what works best for who and just have a dumb blanket policy.
> I don’t get how some people work different hours at home..
Not every company will have a stack of meetings or require you to be on Slack. For 10 years I did WFH for a company where everything happened via email, and it was designed to be asynchronous. That meant I could choose any hours to work, and I often worked at night & slept in through the morning. As long as the work got done and milestones were finished on time, it didn't matter.
My personal opinion, but if a company is requiring you to work synchronously from home, something has gone a bit wrong and their processes are fragile. It's like multi-threaded code but the threads are always blocked waiting on each other. (In that case, the company is probably just doing WFH to save on rental costs and to get the employees to buy the office equipment instead.)
At least in those cases you still get the benefit of designing the work environment you want with the gear you want, but you miss out on the time flexibility.
> I have to work the same times anyway, or else I will just look like I don’t work.
Especially when working from home, doesn't one have to judge performance by the work output rather than physical presence? I understand that this ideal is not the reality everywhere, especially in the office if people don't know you started at 7am that they they'll look weird if you leave at 15h instead of 17h, but from home you can slack off anyway so you really have to look at the output and not presence. If not done already, you might want to look at tracking work time to make everyone feel confident that the others are doing their part, and bosses should notice when time worked does not match output.
I’m finding myself to be terrible working from home, but (a) I have kids, one of whom needs a lot of supervision, (b) the only real focused workspace I have is in my unfinished basement, and it’s as dank and awful as most such basements are. I’ve ended several workdays wheezing and coughing.
I haven't found the results of WFH to be surprising.
The self-motivated people are getting just as much if not more work done.
The people who are chatty in the office are more unproductive at home simply because the main reason they stopped chatting was because the boss walked by. I don't think they are more productive as shirking work in the office is equally easy. Just claim to be doing "background research."
Work from home just removes the outside influences, causing people to become more like who they would otherwise be.
In my case, I ignore meetings and just have them on in the background. I am barely in attendance. I can't do that in the office as my managers/team are watching. That is my one behavioral change.
The discussion so far is largely unproductive, because it is conflating "WFH life" and "we're in the midst of a global pandemic and we can't do our favourite activities." Personally I'm hating my current situation, but if I could go to a concert or plan a vacation, WFH might be awesome. I really have no idea.
I am of the opinion that autonomy plays a major role in whether you enjoy working from home or not. If you have the autonomy to execute on a clear purpose that you have planned for yourself, there is seemingly no difference in whether that work is carried out in an office or at home. In my experience, all the need for constant feedback and 'catching up' is mostly a side effect of poor project management caused by kicking off work on unbaked requirements or where the estimations haven't been done well or where the dependencies were assumed to be in some state while they're not really there.
That said, you could still catch up from home, if not more, simply because you don't have to scurry around looking for a quiet place or finding the colleague.
A lot of people don't really do anything but churn and make sound and fury, signifying nothing.
There's much less cause for engaging in that behavior when everyone is working from home, so it becomes more apparent that they don't actually do anything productive.
For the same reason some people are better at working from the office than others - they just do the work and are diligent about putting in the time required. Someone who is motivated to do the work will do the work from anywhere. I'm one of those people. If I didn't want to be doing the work, I'd be shirking my duties at the office too. And tech is still good enough for us workers that I'd go down the street for a new job before I ever got to the point where I didn't want to do the work anymore.
Just like some people are more intelligent than others, or more athletic than others... some are more self-motivated and can work through their own initiative rather than relying on external input (such as managers).
That's not a bad thing, either! We should encourage those self-motivated people to work however makes them the most productive members of our economy. That is incredibly crucial for the times that we live in.
When I was a manager I'd always just say to the people under me that they where driven, until they actually started to be motivated. It's a great little trick that made everyone happier, works on teaching programming too.
I don't think it's that easy as self-motivation as a scale, it's all about the environment and task that makes people the most productive.
I always want there to be someone with insane amounts of grit and ask how they do it. Insane amounts of grit would be:
- Six pack and can run a marathon when old.
- Recognised in their field.
- Earned enough through work (not through the insane rise in housing prices)
to be able to stay in their home for a decade without working.
Checking all these boxes, would be the master of grit.
It's a little bit too early to judge whether WFH works for everyone and i think that some companies are doing a wrong move deciding to go fully remote forever at these circumstances. The main point is that we were forced to work from home due to a global emergency, but it is way different to do it by choice and in companies formed with a remote work culture. Also i think there is some excuse for employees' current lack of productivity (due to the health concerns or summer break approaching) which will probably change in the next few months. People are probably seeing WFH as a chance to do their work from a beach house, an island, next to a pool and it's perfect because it's summer but most of them will hate it in the winter.
Hence i foresee a lot of people currently loving it will change views after a few months or so and also a lot of companies getting frustrated with their employees and will request the majority of them to return to their premises.
I'm definitely in the group that works better in the office:
1) My productivity seems to be polarizing. In some day I feel I have accomplished a lot more, but in other days not great. Generally, many things seem to take longer to attain.
2) My working environment simply sucks. I only have cluttered desk with my personal equipment. I improvised the TV to use as my secondary monitor, but is definitely not optimal from ergonomic standpoint, so mostly ended up working on the tiny laptop screen. I upgrade to better chair, and that at least helped me a lot.
3) I don't have air conditioning, and if the WFH prolongs, this will be problematic.
4) My workout level certainly has dropped for a while after the lockdown WFH started. I have gradually improved this, by establishing daily walking, and remote work out sessions.
If I were not prone to procrastination, I wouldn't be reading articles from bbc.com that I found on HN.
But procrastination isn't the problem, I can do that at the office too. The office even has many avenues of approved procrastination. No, the problem is I am not working at home by myself, in blissful isolation, but with a number of other people who demand my time and attention.
I have read a number of "The self-motivated people are getting just as much if not more work done" posts, and to be frank, that is codwobble. Even self-motivated people experience pandemic anxiety and financial pressure, and have partners and children who they need to spend time with.
I find myself being more relaxed and because of that I indulge in breaks and brcause of that I end having to put in some work here and there at night after my kid fell sleep. So it feels like my whole day is work, lighter but permanent work.. At least its on my mind. The moment i was leaving the office work was out of mind. In an ideal world I’d do wfh 2-3 days a week and the rest in the office. I even miss my routine and buss ride to work. Some of it is I suspect simply isolation nonsense, im now saving 1.5 hours of commute which can’t possibly be worse
I'm finding WFH incredibly distracting for an odd reason: my home office is where I work on my side hustle.
Having to share my innovation space with work work is jarring, and I'm having a lot of difficulty disentangling the two. I now spent a lot of my work day thinking about my startup since I'm in the place where I used to do that in isolation. Ultimately I'm now a lot less productive at both. It's driving my focus and energy down.
I've had so man bad experiences with ppl that I just came to hate them in general. I feel bothered by noises from outside, I hate my neighbour who just wants the house clean and asks me to clean outside of my room. She just wants a friend, but she akss for a thing back to just talk about how bad her back is and blabla...
I liked the first few weeks of quietness when social distancing started,no I'm bothered by every noise that comes into my space.
Some people have ideal conditions to work in at home.
Some people will struggle with increased costs and induced domestic stresses.
Some people can communicate and socialise remotely.
Some people will struggle to find reason to leave the house.
Some people will repurpose commute times and flexibility to their advantage.
Some people will stop looking after themselves.
The article has some official-sounding theories about WFH, which may be a little more high-minded than necessary?
Success working from home boils down to two things:
1. Desire to work from home and
2. Space free from distraction.
I am the only long-term WFH guy working with an office of 40 “In office” folks who have found themselves at home. Some of them complain, others don’t. Some of them have toddlers (!!), others don’t.
As a programmer, apparently for me the best will be WFH with coming to office in between, let's say 1 or 2 days a week, based on ongoing tasks.
While wfh and online conference brings so much benefits, it cannot replace the value of face to face meeting. There are some problems that can be easily tackled with physical discussion, that can be complicated with online meeting / conference.
I started WFH when the company I worked for had moved to a place where commuting meant 3 hours stuck in traffic each day.
I never 'missed the office'. I found most people that do are confusing work with having an actual social life, which they lack because they spend the time it would take to build one listening to podcasts while stuck in traffic.
I've been a remote worker since before the lockdowns started.
My life is more of a mess now because work has become more intense since everyone started working remotely.
It would be easy to ignore a single person asking for favor at 8PM but sometimes it's a whole team discussing stuff at night.
>> “All of this said, chronic procrastinators will procrastinate just about anywhere,” Pychyl adds. “That’s just something that’s inherent. It’s just your disposition, and it’s not going to change overnight.”
Some of us don't have the space for a separate home office.
That being said, I WFHed part time before the pandemic, so the new part for me is being home 100 percent of the time. My workspace is a table in my (multipurpose) living room. I've made a small tweak or two since the pandemic but it is basically the same as before.
My work and personal habits are better since the pandemic started. Several reasons. Part is that it is springtime, and I am much less of a couch potato naturally then. And the other part is that I have been taking the risks of getting sick and the associated issues like the economic problems seriously and making conscious efforts to take care of my health, reorganize my home, take steps towards bolstering my economic security, etc.
I think that small distractions are OK (it's actually unhealthy to stay in your chair for too long) as long as they are kept under control.
CGP Grey did a video about the importance of having different spaces for different activities¹, and in one of the comments for the video², one Vallejo B. said that they have handled the lack of physical space by using tricks to fool the mind into thinking it is a different space, using different lighting, sounds, tastes for different modes. Like stage set design, a simple difference goes a long way, and as long your own brain is fooled, it works.
While I agree that a home office is very good, saying that it's as simple as just having a home office isn't always enough. It's downplaying the issue.
For instance having a set schedule, regular breaks, getting fresh air and filling the social need is not something that comes naturally to everyone or that a home office magically solve.
Some people need to go to a gym to do their exercise, some people are okay with a home gym. It's little to do with diligence or anything, people have different styles of motivation or drive.
I’ve found the WFH experiment very unsurprising. Diligent and reliable coworkers are just as diligent and reliable. People who were iffy in person are basically non-existent WFH.
I also pay thousands of dollars to live in a cool place, and now I am finally getting to enjoy it, and enjoy it with my SO.
At the end of the day, maybe I am less "productive", by normal standards, but maybe I didn't need to be in an office for 8+ hours every day to get the parts of my job done that need getting done.
There surely are parts of this that I want to change or can't wait to change, but at the end of the day I am grateful for the forcing function to working from home full-time.