Trailblazers Share Work From Home Tips
We asked our amazing AppExchange Community to share their favorite work-from-home advice, workspace photos, and a few technical tips you can apply. Some of these Trailblazers are seasoned remote employees, while others are brand-new to the working style — so there’s something for everyone. If you have additional tips or photos to share, tweet us @appexchange.
“As a newbie to working remotely, we are going with what we have in the house. We had a desk but were using it as an entertainment center. After moving a couple of things around, we found some space for a monitor and laptop. Luckily, this is in the basement, away from where the kids do most of their play during the day.”
Shannon Zdanowicz, AppExchange All Star
“I have a standing desk, and I try to stand for all meetings. Have a good desk light — proper lighting for video calls is important.
Also, enjoy your space. I work from home full time. My house is very minimalistic but I try to make my home office cheery. My dogs spend a lot of time with me while I work so including comfortable spaces for them was equally important.
Set alarms to make sure you move throughout the day.
If you don’t have a dedicated office space, have a ‘busy’ light — this light will let people will know not to disturb you when it is on.”
Adrienne Cutcliffe, Salesforce MVP
“My [WFH setup] feels incredibly overdramatic — it’s also my personal office when I’m not working (hence the big PC in the corner) so it was something that needed to feel comfortable to me all the time. Something that has helped me during this time, I recently found a backup file of my old iTunes library (think 2007 to 2015) so I have my Mac playing my old library on shuffle all day, forgetting I’d ever heard some of these songs!”
“I’ve worked from home for many years. My favorite tips are:
- Set expectations and rules with spouse and kids — when can you be interrupted, or what times are off-limits? I have a sign I hang on my office door if I’m on a call where I can’t be interrupted.
- Don’t feel like you need to sit at your desk all day! If it’s nice, go take the dog for a walk, or join the family for lunch!
- Multiple monitors are life-changing. :)”
Zuzanna Jarczynska, Salesforce MVP
“This is my wardrobe-turned-office. It is very hard to focus when you share space with your family and pets. It’s also good to have a room that you can walk out of and close the door after you finish work.”
“Find a room that is The Office, with no other distractions, no passing traffic, no domestic white goods, a place where you can leave the rest of your house to actually ‘go to work’. You want a place where you don’t need to pack up at the end of the day, or when guests come to stay (or when someone in the household needs some escape time).”
Zarina Varley Scott, Golden Hoodie Recipient
“I know it’s tempting to stay in your PJs all day, but getting changed will help you get into the right frame of mind. And no, I don’t mean go full professional wardrobe, but a fresh T-shirt before “heading to work” will do wonders where home life and work life lines are blurring like never before. Bonus points if you can add some Appyness to your day!”
“I used to work in the kitchen on a small desk, and I could never really shut off. We converted our living room (which we never used) to my ‘she shed,’ and I feel so much more zen. I can walk away and not look back.”
“Sometimes, you have what you have at hand — so move the table you use toward the window for natural light. You may want to check if you can use your TV as an extra screen with a simple HDMI cable. I’ve been working remotely for years, and I think the most important thing is to be fair to yourself and others. Distributed does not mean dispersed. Look after yourselves.”
Daniel Ballinger, Salesforce MVP
“Just before the work from home requirement started here, I rushed out and brought a desk to set up in a spare room that I was otherwise planning to renovate. I brought home most of the peripherals from my work PC.
I have a dock for my Surface Pro that everything plugs into. Then it’s just a remote desktop connection into work and off I go. All the cables need to be up on desk as the dog has discovered I’m home and gets tangled in them if they are on the floor.
There are some tricks with Windows 10 to make working across all screens on remote desktop easier.
Win + Tab allows you to have multiple desktop configurations. Plus you can pin apps to appear on all desktops. E,g, have a local app appear over the remote desktop connection.
I’ve also found Spotify will allow you to control the playback on another device. So I can have it running on my remote work machine but controlling the playback on a local machine here.
Another tip, although a bit difficult if you don’t already have the materials on hand, is to run a dedicated ethernet cable from your switch rather than relying on Wifi for a full day’s work. It’s hard to beat the speed and reliability of a physical cable.”
“Forgive the mess — and the Amazon box computer stand — but my office is actually an extra ‘nook’ in our guest room all the way at the end of the hallway. Full stand-up desktop, natural light facing south (so some added warmth), and full whiteboard wall.
For your office, use a room that you can easily walk away from during off-hours — and leave your laptop in it, too! It’ll make it easier to detach and not keep working around the clock.”
