Learning how to work from home
Step by Step
The starting point — remote teams
Since the first day I joined OutSystems I had a geographically separated team. I was part of the Integration team that help land the first man in Braga. Later on, I was part of the Mobile team and we also expanded the team to Braga.
So, I was pretty much used to have remote team members. But I hated to work remote, from home.
We encourage remote at OutSystems
At OutSystems, we actually encourage this practice. Every Wednesday is a focus day at Engineering. That is, you’re not supposed to have meetings or distractions. But hey, that’s not easy at the office, so, why not remote? Do whatever it’s best so you can have focus time.
Not only that, but it’s very common to hear sentences like “today I’ll be remote because a store is delivering a Fridge” or “There’s a lot of traffic, I’m gonna lose too much time, I’ll stay remote”. This works because we trust people and we rely on common sense.
But I still hated working from home
I tried a couple of times, but my days would always end up with a feeling that I didn’t do that much work and get nauseous because I spent all day inhouse. I would end up getting even more distracted. What noise was that on the street? New phone message? I should buy a new couch… My mind would get quickly diverted with small, less important things. I would get up much more often to eat cookies. I wouldn’t respect lunch time because all of the sudden I actually got really focused and ended up forgetting to eat. What? 8pm already? Just a little more and I’ll finish this. I felt that I didn’t have a clear separation of my personal space from work space.
But I was always like this, even when graduating. I prefered staying in a library or labs until 11pm than to study at home.
Learning how to work from home
Eventually, I had to change. The benefits from working remote started to gain weight: the focus time and the time not spent in trips to the office got tickling my brain. So, I went on my journey to learn how to work from home. Here’s how it worked for me:
1 — Work on a different floor
OutSystems’s Lisbon Offices are quite big nowadays. We take 3 full floors of the Central Park and a part of the 4th floor. The building hosts around 500 OutSystemers. The area were people best know me is the 3rd floor where Engineering is and a little on the 2nd floor where IT, finance and people ops are. So, that’s a full 1st floor where I’m almost unknown.
And that was my first step. For 3 months, (almost) every Wednesday I would go to the Office, leave everything in my spot, grab the laptop and go to the first floor. People knew I was at the office, but couldn’t find me. I was on the first floor, rotating spot. Sometimes in a sofa. Sometimes sit next to a random unknown team. This allowed me to get the focus time I needed but without the disruption of “home”.
2 — Work on a library
Next step was to work out of the office. But I was still not ready to try it at home, so I went back to what worked for me when graduating: a public library. It’s the best place to focus. Really. The silence is gold, you take breaks for coffee and stretch the legs… just perfect! I still opt for this nowadays as it’s really good.
3— Work on a coffee shop
I like to work without music when I’m at the office because there’s lots of context around that you will lose if you have music. If there’s lots of noise disrupting your team, how can you detect and protect the team if you’re not listening? So, no music is good. But to focus, music is king. So, a coffee shop with my phones and good music worked pretty well for me.
4 — Home, but out
Fortunately, my house has a cool balcony. It was my first step into effectively working from home. Why this particular part of the house? Because it’s at home but still “out”. So, I had to keep almost all things I did when going out: get properly dressed, have things tiddy because the balcony is not that big, get up and stretch the legs to get the coffee… It was relaxing.
5 — And at home!
The final step was to work normally, inside the house, on a table. The key for this was to do everything like if I was going to the office except I wouldn’t take the trip. Lunch? Make sure to have an alarm, go out and have lunch just like if at the Office. Coffee? Get up, grab the coffee and the water like if you were at the office. Food? Same thing. So, work from home like if you were at the office.
No matter what you do, the 3 most important things
#1 Respect your time: If it’s lunch time, stop like if you were at the office. Stop to have a coffee, stop working at a proper hour.
#2 Mindset: You have to setup your mind (and your teams) to understand that you are remote.
#3 Security: Working in public places requires you to be careful with the network, surrounding eyes, etc. So, special caution.
