Working from home / remotely

InVision, as a company, is a fully distributed company — no offices — since before there was a pandemic around. The company has put solid practices in place to make this work, even at its scale of hundreds of employees.

I’ve been successfully working remotely as a software engineer for InVision from multiple locations and time-zones in the past year and a half. The following are some reflections of what I found worked for me during this time. Some of these are subtle and one can easily consider them “not a big deal”; I’ve experimented with them and found that with consistency they become useful in the work from home/remote environment.

Structure and boundaries

Going to the office has the sometimes unnoticed side effect of putting structure in your day:

• You have to get up by a certain time, to get to the office at a certain time
• Lunch is served or “herd” movement to eat lunch happens at roughly the same time
• You have to leave work to leave enough time for your after work activities

The structure is enforced by necessities around it: commute time, dressing up for work, physically having to get to that first meeting.

When working from home/remotely, this all dissipates. You have the “freedom” (burden?) to structure your own day.

Pre-work morning routine

Note: this doesn’t have to mean the whole morning. It means some buffer time before I start work.

This is especially important. It is a buffer to prep mentally for work.

I do a short workout and brew coffee with a V60 (it’s slower and more involved that an espresso), then read Morning Brew, a newsletter I enjoy. I could make it more efficient (e.g. automate the coffee making), but that’s not the point. This is my “commute”. Workout is refreshing, the coffee is a mental trigger to get things done and both the coffee and newsletter are something I enjoy and look forward to waking up to. I’ve found that this works for me really well.

Setting a goal to start work at some time is also helpful. Setting up a meeting or something you need to do at that time should help.

Change into something I’d wear at work

Another mental hack. Also means I’m comfortable doing an ad-hoc video call with a coworker anytime during work time and I can always walk out the door for a stroll if I need a break.

Lunch time is blocked on the calendar

This one has been a big one for me. There is no “lunchtime” or the social aspect of people heading to lunch like in the office. Blocking time on the calendar for lunch has kept me from forgetting to eat lunch and has kept this time meeting free — especially since my team is on several time-zones.

I keep 12pm regardless of timezone and try and cook something easy to do 50% of the time, or add to some leftovers from the other day. It’s a break activity that helps me disconnect and recharge… both with calories and energy… for an hour. This is also when I brew the 2nd batch of coffee for the day. I like my coffee.

Designated work space

Mental trigger to switch from the “homey” mood to a getting things done mood. Right now I actually have a desk and a room I work from. That has not always been the case. In the past I’ve had a “spot” in the house where I’d work from: a spot at the kitchen counter, a spot at the dining table which I quickly began to associate with work during the day.

This is also where I take video calls. Over here my background on video is a shelf of books and board games behind me. When I lived in Truckee, CA, the background was a picturesque pine tree forest, lots of snow and occasional snowstorm out my window. I like this because it (1) brings some of my personality to the meeting and (2) sparks casual conversation/small talk too, contributing to the relationship and the relaxed demeanor of the call I’m in.

Call it a day

I’ve struggled with this part. Since there’s no “time to go home”, it can be hard to find a good stopping point. My mental hack here has been to consistently write down my goals for the day and learn how much I can do within a reasonable time.

(Almost) Every morning I check my calendar to see how much time I will be in meetings. Based on that and the “leftovers” from the previous day, I write down some goals (or todo? whatever works) that I think are achievable in less than a day (this doesn’t work if the list is 1 item). If something bigger, I force myself to break it down into multiple incremental steps.

It’s mentally rewarding to cross these items off the list and the feeling of “it’s 4pm and I haven’t done nothing” goes away, leaving room for some peace of mind that I can call it a day.

Communication

This part is one of the hardest to get right when working from home. I’ve found the following points to improve the experience.

Move conversations from chat to zoom

This especially applies to 1 on 1 conversations that I’d have over the desk, but I’m having now on private chat threads. The good part about remote is you don’t need to find a meeting room, so meetings can happen in an instant and it’s a big boost in morale if people get comfortable with spinning up a video conference call in an instant to talk to someone. I do that with team-mates all the time; if people are comfortable and ready to jump on a zoom anytime (within reason) it helps a lot. May not be the same as in person communication, but definitely brings it closer.

Background noise during meetings

I’ve had situations where the environment I was in was noisy, or my spouse was also having a meeting. https://krisp.ai/ has been working very well for me to keep my voice clear of background disturbances.

Avoiding team member isolation

Working from home can cause silo-ed team members. It’s important to keep the team talking.

My team does short daily meetings (15min — this part is important). We go through each member’s progress update, but mostly blockers, and we mark down conversations that need to happen post standup, instead of digging deep while others are waiting their turn. Then we make it clear that people can leave if they are not needed, can stay if they want, can start their own discussion in a separate Zoom call if they need to follow up.

Hope this helps with your work from home situation in these interesting times!

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with either Krisp.ai or Morning Brew. The links are referral links and have the following benefits attached: Morning Brew — I might get a mug if my referrals increase. Krisp.ai — I am a paying customer with full access; there’s nothing extra they can offer me It does, however, give you a free month of their premium plan. Enjoy!