No Pants Required

Tips for transitioning to working from home

A year ago, my husband and I were living in the Nashville, Tenn., area when he got an amazing job offer… across the state in Chattanooga. His area of expertise is fairly niche (he’s a biostatistician), and he was being offered a position in his specific field at a great company. After much discussion and pros/cons list-making, we decided it was the opportunity of a lifetime and he should take it.

Even more amazing was that my company—Raven Tools, an Internet marketing management and reporting suite—allowed me to keep my job as a software tester and begin working from our new home in Chattanooga. Because we’re an Internet company (and because this is the 21st century), we already did most of our communicating online and the transition was pretty smooth. There was an expected adjustment period—for me as well as my co-workers—but I feel like I’ve learned a lot.

So, to mark my one-year anniversary of being a remote worker, here is my advice for anyone transitioning to working from home:

Designate a space in your house as your office and don’t let anyone else use it.

When we first moved to Chattanooga we lived in a one-bedroom apartment, but I turned the dining room into my office. I set up my desk and file cabinet against a wall next to a bookshelf and it became my little alcove, complete with a wrought iron chandelier hanging above me for extra light. Even though I was sandwiched between the kitchen and the living room, having that one space dedicated only to my work really made me feel “at work” while I was sitting there and helped me focus.

Develop beginning- and end-of-day routines.

It’s really easy to just roll out of bed and start working when your office is only a few square feet away from your bed. I won’t lie—for the first month of working from home I’d sleep until the last possible minute, start working while still in my pajamas and then shower at lunch. (I have a deal with myself that I will shower every single day, even if I don’t plan on leaving the house.) But eventually I started to feel disjointed, and showering at lunch meant I didn’t have much time to eat. I found that showering and dressing first thing, as though I were going to an actual office, made me feel more focused on my day ahead. I was also more likely to leave the house for some fresh air (or a good meal) at lunch time.

Developing an end-of-day routine is important, too. I hear from many other telecommuters that if they don’t have something in place to signal their day’s end, they find themselves working way into the night. Obviously there are times when working extra hours is necessary, but if you spend 12-15 hours a day at your computer every day just because it’s easy to do, you’re going to burn out. For me, developing an end-of-day routine was easy because my husband usually comes home right around the time that I am ready to finish working for the day. If I am at a good stopping point, I’ll wrap up what I was working on, shut the computer down and grab a beer. On the days when I need to put in some extra time, it’s no big deal because I don’t have to worry about an hour commute home afterward. (But I still make sure to grab that beer when I’m done. It seems to be the biggest thing that signals “Your day is over” for me.)

Over-communicate with your team, at least at first.

When you’re working in the same physical location as the rest of your team, communication seems to happen naturally. That’s not always the case with remote working, though, as you miss out on the random water-cooler (or in Raven’s case, Starbucks coffee maker) conversations that often lead to project ideas or discussions. When I first started working remotely I made it a point to go overboard with my communication. Every day I would email my boss what I would be working on, email or IM the developer whose project I was testing that day to give a run-down of where I was, and then post my daily updates to our group forum like everyone else did. The effect was twofold: It helped me get my thoughts in order each day, and it ensured that just because I was out-of-sight for my teammates I wasn’t out-of-mind. Over the past year, though, my communication has evolved to be more natural. I still check in daily with the developers I’m working with each day, I still provide my daily updates to our group forum and I’m still in continual contact with my boss regarding the state of my projects. But I’ve figured out what form of communication works best for each person (hint: it’s not likely to be email) and ramp it up only when necessary.

Meet up with your team.

As great as online communication is—even with FaceTime and Skype—there’s something about face-to-face communication that can’t be beat. How often you visit your team will vary depending on your needs and your distance from your office—especially if you’re an all-remote team. Since I’m only two hours away from Nashville and have lovely in-laws and friends who let me crash at their houses, I visit once a month for a couple days. Last month I spent a week there. As much as I love controlling the Kubi (the robot we use so I can video-conference into staff meetings), it’s nice to be at the office in person for meetings, lunches and shuffleboard tournaments.

Get out of the house!

One of the reasons I think I settled into working remotely so easily is that I have innate hermit-like tendencies. I’m an introvert, and I am completely comfortable being alone for long periods of time. But even I have my limits, and after several weeks of only talking out loud to my cats for eight hours a day, I decided to investigate public places from which I could work. I decided pretty quickly that I’m only good for a couple hours at coffee shops—I don’t trust strangers enough to leave my laptop out unguarded while I visit the restroom, and packing everything up every hour or so became arduous. (I also tend to over-order while working from coffee shops because I feel guilty for taking up space that “real” customers could be using.)

I decided to check out some of the co-working offices in town—places where freelancers, remote workers or start-ups rent a desk or office on a monthly basis—and now I work from Society of Work one to two days a week. It’s a chic/industrial-looking office with fancy ergonomic chairs, a killer view of downtown Chattanooga and a beer keg, and it satisfies my (very) small need for human interaction throughout the workday. Changing up my work environment has proven to be productive, too: I’ve found that if I’m stuck on a certain project, going into the co-working space can help jog my brain into looking at it differently, and before I know it I’m done and onto my next task.

This week marks a year that I’ve been working remotely, and the most important thing I’ve learned is to pay better attention to how I’m feeling—mentally and physically—and when to tweak my routines or processes based on this. It’s a work style that suits me, and I’m grateful for the opportunity. And not just because I don’t have to wear pants anymore.