Working from home before it all blew up [1029 days of WFH]

Tips, tools, the experience of working from home & how it changed my life

Source: Freepik

It was the 30th of May, 2017.

It’s since then that I’m working from home. It’s been 1029 days.

1029 days of experience of work from home. Maybe there are people who’ve been doing working from home longer than I’m doing it.

But as far as my work is concerned, there’s no place like home.

I’ve ‘starved’ to stay at home, with my family. I’ve been living with my family (working from home) for as long as I’ve starved to stay with them.

There’s a difference between starving & feeling hungry. ‘Starving’ is superlative.

This post is for those who’re forced to work from home & not liking it. In this post, you will find tips, tools & some super ripe experience.

In this post, I have churned out my experience of 1029 days to help you understand how work from home can change the global economy, increase employment & most importantly, your lifestyle.

I want you to show how having a laptop as an office will help get rid of a lot of troubles altogether.

Let’s begin with some tips:

Remote working tips for everyone

1. Workout regularly

I’ve grown 20 kilos heavier. I’m finding it difficult to focus, I’ve trained my brain to do things the way I want. However, the body isn’t supportive.

As the saying goes,

“A healthy brain cannot live inside an unhealthy body”

I’ve put out the time to workout 30 minutes, every single day. This is, to begin with, I’m gonna put in more hours for my health until it’s the way I want.

Working out is the need of the hour. Especially, amidst the Corona crisis, one thing that I’ve learned is, a healthy body is priceless.

2. Communicate

Working remotely often invites miscommunication. That’s exactly what you wanna avoid it.

If you are a lone ranger, that shouldn’t be a problem. But if you’re a team player, communication should be rock solid.

You cannot afford miscommunication in this critical time.

Be clear and loud about the following:

1. Your time zone
2. Your available hours
3. Away time or available status
4. Detailed documents on what you’re working on. Point blank, No BS!
5. Updates on your work on regular intervals

Furthermore, here are some things you can do to avoid miscommunication(s)

1. 1 on 1 meeting with the concerned team member. Have a common ground.
2. Have regular calls or video chats to be (or have everyone) on the same page
3. List down your tasks beforehand for the week so that allot time accordingly
4. Track your work so that has a ready to share report while on calls
5. Don’t forget to report your work by EOD. It’s important to begin your day the next day.

3. Think about emergencies

Yesterday, for about 2 hours. I had to use my mobile as a hotspot since my Wi-Fi gave up working.

I didn’t want it, neither the internet company wanted it. But it still happened.

Thanks to the mobile data, I didn’t waste 2 hours waiting for the Wi-Fi to get back on track.

I usually prefer connecting my laptop to ethernet, but I can’t. Thanks to MacBook’s sleek design that got rid of such important ports.

Also, have some cash ready & in reserve. Work isn’t the only thing that gets emergencies.

4. Have a minimal workspace

I had a PC before. It was very durable & a beast. But it was a PC, it can’t move. And I cannot work sitting in one place for hours.

When I didn’t have a laptop, I would take a break for 5–10 minutes and just walk with my brain turned off.

Now that I have a laptop, I can work from any corner of my home. Furthermore, a laptop is way less clumsy than a desktop PC is.

A laptop, my earphones, a notepad & a mouse.

That’s it.

That’s all I need to work peacefully.

I highly recommend having only highly required things at the work table. More things invite more distractions.

Also, I have this special place where I’m highest productive, irrespective of the time of the day. It’s my balcony.

Put a chair, stretch my legs, put the laptop on my lap, & dive in.

For hours, undisturbed.

5. Derail for a while

I know, ambiance plays a major role in having a productive workspace.

Home is sweet, but it’s chaos. I don’t know about you, but mine sure is.

There something or the other going on. The kitchen’s noisy, there are calls coming.

Focusing to work in this kind of ambiance takes a lot from you, and the last thing you wanna do is, get your energy drained out too early.

So how about a derailing yourself from work for a while, take a quick walk down the street, come back with a fresh mind & start your work.

I simply stare at birds chirping, right outside of my kitchen. It’s very soothing.

The best part, I can see both, sunrise & sunset from the balcony.

6. Have more time for family

If you live with a family or have roommates (they’re a family too) spend more time with them.

The time you’ve been promising for weeks but couldn’t find. This crisis has gives the chance to cope up with the gaps that have developed.

Now that you don’t have to travel or spend extra hours at work, you have a lot of time for your family & friends.

Let’s repair the cracks or gaps the relationships has.

7. Wake up early

I know you may not be an early bird, neither was I. But I’ve been doing it for the past couple of weeks, and trust me when I say that it’s magical.

Waking up early may or may not fill you with energy. But one thing it does for sure, which is it gives you an upper hand — a head start.

By the time the world would wake up, I’d be having my breakfast & get ready to work. If I can get 2 more hours out of my life, I’m not gonna second guess & let it slip off my hands.

Make sure, you don’t stick to social media soon after you wake up. The first thing I do is schedule social media posts for the day. I cannot sit for hours & write a blog post, but I can surely write a cool caption for the posts for social media.

Easy!

8. Break your day

I’ve tried the Pomodoro technique. Doesn’t work for me.

Instead, I use 60-minute chunks of time. I set a timer on Google, and begin to work for 60 solid minutes.

My brain focuses more since I have a timer running behind me.

I pick the 3 most important tasks for the day and allot time to it. Then break an individual task into 60-minute chunks & get rid of it by EOD.

I work for at least 12 hours a day, 3 blocks of 4 hours each. Each block divided into 60-minute chunks.

The success rate is still very poor, but I’m improving exponentially.

This works for me. Use this as a template & design your own day.

Don’t forget to log-off for the day after informing the teammates about your unavailability & the report of the tasks.

9. Limit usage of the smartphone

No Netflix, No Amazon Prime & No Hotstar.

No Games too.

I don’t have any of this on my smartphone. I have digital wellbeing set up that blocks the app after I exceed using for a set amount of time.

I also have Microsoft Launcher that has a built-in widget for tracing on-screen time.

It may not be very accurate, but it does the job I need.

My current average usage (calculated weekly) is drastically down to 3 hours per day compared to 6–7 hours a day.

Yesterday, I used my smartphone for 37 minutes only. I’m proud of this.

10. Read books

I know this is irrelevant, but since you’re working from home, you do have some spare time left, why would wanna not utilize it?

Off late, I’ve developed a crazy love for books.

Though I don’t read books daily, but I do read daily.

I read blog posts, answers on Quora, beautiful writeups on Medium

What actually happens when I read daily?

My mind explodes with new ideas for upcoming blog posts, I get direction to find pain points of my target audience. Just by reading a couple of blog posts, I find at least 10 ideas for new blog posts that probably no one has covered.

If not ‘no one’, the blog that I’m reading doesn’t cover for sure.

Above all this, reading is a meditation for me.

Meditation is a practice of focusing on one thing at a time, and I won’t understand what I read if I don’t focus on one thing at a time, i.e. reading.

If nothing, books will help you meditate.

Hence, the meditation.

Tools for remote working

“A bad worker always blames his tools”

So, don't be a bad worker & have great tools.

That reminds me of,

“A worker is as good as his tools”

Let’s take a look at some tools that will help you have the same workflow even while working from home.

1. Slack

Slack is communication tools that felicitate video & audio calls along with messaging.

You can create channels, or in easy language, groups. You can add members to the channels and you can create as many channels as you want.

Each channel is for a specific team or purpose which confines the conversation.

This is like any other messaging app, but a lot more cooler.

You can integrate calendars, Google Drive, Trello, Twitter, Github and more.

You can create as many workspaces as you want. Each workspace has channels & those channels have people with specific roles.

But my favorite part is talking to yourself. I can keep things like links, documents and other important messages handy. I miss this feature on WhatsApp and other messaging apps I use.

2. Zoom

Video meetings are an essential part of the workplace. It keeps a human touch alive, and everyone on the team can contribute to the meeting.

Just like one would do in a conference room.

Other alternatives are Skype, & Google Hangouts.

3. Trello

Manage your project & the task for it on virtual board software, Trello.

You can create boards for individual projects, create various lists for those projects, & create cards that are the individual tasks for those projects.

Imagine a physical board, where you stick notes to help keep the track of the tasks.

It’s exactly that, but online.

4. File sharing tools

File sharing is essential for remotely working players like you. Documents, reports, images, videos you name it.

There’s a two-way lane for file sharing and you need the right tools for that.

While there are many tools out there, the ones I use frequently is are as follows:

1. Emails: Unless its a business email, the attachments get lost in the conversation. However, if following the chain is what benefits your team, email is the medium you should choose.
2. GSuite: Gsuite is handcrafted for business personals. All the business tools that you’d require are there already. Plus, there are addons to do things that don’t come out of the box. To share large files, you can use GSuite, Dropbox & WeTransfer & Slack.
3. Cloud app: In case you need help with your work, you can create GIFs, annotate screenshots, record your screen. The best part is, you can share these documents via a link.
4. Idonethis: Work in collaboration? No worries, your work progress can now be tracked with this tool without having to report individually at the end of the day.

5. Designing & Editing tools

No matter what’s your role, there’s some sort of graphics involved. If for nothing, reporting won’t spare you.

Graphic design is getting a lot cooler. Here are some tools that will help you design great graphics for your reports, documents, social campaigns & more.

1. Canva: Create beautiful graphics, infographics, animation & more. Although the tool is for free, but paid upgrade comes with a lot of templates, designs & graphic elements that will make your work way better.
2. Adobe Spark: Comes with a creative cloud subscription, Adobe Spark is a great tool to create graphics for social media, presentation, explainer video, flyers, blog graphics, logos, campaign videos, and the list goes on. I prefer Spark over canva considering the professional touch and a vast library of templates available.
3. Grammarly: Grammarly is a great tool that I have been using for a very long time. I can fearlessly type at my pace and the tool check for grammatical mistakes on the go. There’s an addon for browsers, outlook and native apps for both iOS & Android.

Final thoughts

As mentioned above, I’ve been working for 1029 days today. What I’ve found it, I can offer my services for a way more affordable price than the fancy agencies. I can work more as I don’t have to travel for hours.

I can spend more time learning new skills, practicing it & mastering it. I can spend time with my family, spend time for myself, relax & actually enjoy my life.

I don't contribute to the pollution that is caused otherwise. I don’t get involved in office politics, I don’t get stressed, I can contribute to more important things other than work.

Since I have more time, I can develop skills that others would take 2x more time than I would. I can teach people how I work from home & help build their business (which is exactly what I do), I can teach the underprivileged, I cook, I read, I do gardening, watch kids play, birds chirp, watch sunsets & sunrise.

All by staying at home. That’s one less person out on the street.

How am I contributing to the global economy?

I’m creating people who build online businesses without leaving their homes.

That’s my contribution.

If I alone can impact the people around me to this level, imagine what we can do collectively?

If you want help with your business, schedule a call with me, chat with me or check out the free resources on my blog to help yourself to build your business online.