Creating a Working Environment: Part II

Art by Erin Rhodes

I first wrote about creating a working environment to make a point about malleable plans to help approach work. Despite coming from a development perspective, those strategies can be applied broadly. I wrote about creating spaces that work for you — adding to and refining those tools and techniques as you discover which ones are useful.

I centered that post around spaces — physical spaces, virtual spaces and mental spaces — with the primary idea that these all interact and build upon each other. The main idea was to create a foundation; to keep simple things simple, so that you have the space, energy and focus to tackle harder challenges. Harder challenges are where you want to spend most of your time, and they are way more fun.

We all have foundations of knowledge and memory that take different shapes as they are formed by our individual experiences. Whenever I revisit core assumptions that rely on incomplete mental models or lack information, I discover not cracks in my own foundations but new areas to explore and improve. That introspection allows me to move forward with a better understanding and also strengthens my ability to articulate alternatives and trade-offs. I improve my technical skill, communication and ability to collaborate with others by incorporating other ideas and approaches.

Routine is important, but not the same for everyone

Foundations that build on each other and allow continued growth are important, but with the previous post I had left out a crucial element: all of our co-workers.

Working from home is new to a lot of people. Even for those with experience working remotely, the current pandemic is something altogether different. Remote work used to be more of a solitary experience. Now, it is an “alone together” kind of situation. The future of work is unknown, but it is becoming obvious that it will change faster than anyone anticipated.

If it is a struggle to adapt, changing up your mental model will likely be the first step. What was thought of as temporary is becoming more… if not permanent, then certainly indicative of a lasting impact. It is likely that you have developed habits and routines and figured out a way to make it all work. Are some of those habits helpful and others less so? Maybe you’ve used Slack to stay connected to your team on the one hand, but on the other you realize you sit for hours and hours most days without a break and can’t feel your legs. Did your routine happen with intent, or did you sort of just fall into it? There are no right answers here, but plenty of good suggestions (that’s called foreshadowing).

Blending routines

It is one thing to figure out how to organize working spaces, schedules, and routines for yourself. It is another to figure out how to blend everything with everyone you are working with, both for your immediate team and the organization as a whole.

Communication is key, and while this is always true, there is less wiggle room when everyone is remote. Rather than a bug, this can be a feature. It is easy to make assumptions about what information has been communicated when everyone is in an office; it is necessary to be more explicit when there are remote offices and workers.

The trick is to find what is working well for you and those you work with. Double-down on the things that help, and don’t get stuck in the mire with the things you are “supposed” to do that aren’t actually effective.

In that spirit (and payoff of the prior foreshadowing), I asked other Guilders to share suggestions that have worked for them as we’ve all learned to work together apart:

Physical Space

If you have the space for it, it helped me 10x to have my work space in a completely different room from the chill spaces in my home. Makes it more like you’re actually “commuting” and switching mindsets when you sit down to work.
— Kate Rose

Having a dedicated space where I do nothing but work really helps keep me focused.
— Ryan Shanley

Low amount of audio or visual distraction. Regularity in location is useful for me. — Josh Mattila

Per sleep hygiene recommendations, never work in the room you sleep in.

Noise isolation. Office space or home, sometimes the ability to block out noise is critical for focus.
— Derek Koloditch

I have a hard rule of never working on the couch. Mainly because it’s a slippery slope from ‘sitting on the couch working’ to ‘reclining on couch with blanket and snuggly pillow with tv on in background “working”’
— Jalena Taylor

Mental Space

I have been taking lunch-time walks which I have really been enjoying
— Andy Lushman

Going outside or somewhere other than your home desk to eat lunch
— Erin Rhodes

I’ve been going for a bicycle ride to get outside. Great way to get exercise and detach the brain from work for a bit.
— Nick Shirley

Having a standard morning routine (that does not include falling out of bed/into desk chair to start work) worked wonders for my mental happiness. I didn’t realize how much the ceremony of commuting to the office prepared me for the day until I didn’t have that anymore.
— Jalena Taylor

Take a lunch break!! +100 to that. It’s easy to get into the habit of just being always on when you’re WFH so I always physically step away and take a lunch out on my patio.

I would also recommend the Pomodoro method or similar to give yourself mental breaks throughout the day.
— Kate Rose

Give yourself a break. This is not about making shakes, but now I kind of want a shake… vanilla ice cream, splash of whiskey, splash of the cherry syrup that you have left over after using all the maraschino cherries to make manhattans…
— Sean O’Keefe

Time Management

I’ve found using a calendar management app like Clockwise to be really helpful with proactively blocking out focus time on my calendar
— Travis Haby

I added a daily alarm on my phone at 5:15pm — to stand in for the “end of day” signal that you receive from seeing colleagues get up and leave the office…
— Kerry Sheldon

I still stick to a pretty strict schedule as if I were working in an office. 8ish-4:30ish
— Andy Lushman

Keeping a routine! Especially for later in the day to end the work day and be “home”
— Erin Rhodes

Keep your “old” routine as much as possible. Avoid the temptation to sleep in until the second you have your first meeting and use the extra morning time to get organized for the day
— Kate Rose

Set working hours to define everyone’s availability. This addresses the variety of scheduling needs, work and life boundaries and the unexpected that can come up at any time but particularly with the backdrop of pandemic. As boring and adulting as it can be to put a structure around your time, it creates more flexibility.
— Sean O’Keefe

Use your calendar to block off time. Don’t attend meetings that don’t have an agenda or obvious goal.
— Josh Mattila

Communication

Our team set up a private channel with just our immediate teammates. Even when we’re pinging just one other teammate, we sometimes do it in that channel to mimic the interactions that we used to have in the office when turning to a teammate to ask a question. This gives other members the opportunity to “overhear” a conversation so they can chime in where they see fit, or simply stay in-the-know on random conversations happening within the team. Having this private channel in addition to our public team channel also makes it easier to freely share thoughts casually without worrying about spamming the wider audience of the public team channel.
— Alli Leong

Our team has adapted to using the “/zoom” command [in Slack] at a moment’s notice to jump on a quick call to sort something out. Every once in a while we also hang out in a Zoom room while working on our own stuff, just to replicate the feel of being in the office together.
— April Dagonese

Standups are useful for starting the coordination of work every day. Consider Stand-down meetings at the end of the day if the team can’t have a consistent start time.
— Josh Mattila

Every sprint, our squad has a standing meeting to review what technical decisions we need to make to address our current work. At this meeting, we also review what may be coming in the next few sprints, or larger architectural changes. It becomes a catch-all meeting for issues that crop up that don’t quite fit in with what we are currently doing, but that will help us in the future if we give them time and attention. Setting aside that space allows us to keep focus on current priorities. We are able to see both forests and trees and give the right level of attention when needed.
— Sean O’Keefe