What I’ve learned working from home for 5+ years

I’ve been a “remote worker” at a high tech Silicon Valley company for the past five years and love it. I’ve gotten great feedback on performance and have delivered some amazing work. Given the fact that a large portion of the world is now learning to “work from home” I’ve had several people reach out for tips so I figured I’m sum up what I consider key points to successfully working from home for a period of time…

My Portland office “nook” complete with whiteboard and Landrover memorabilia.

My Maupin office “nook” complete with whiteboard and Unimog memorabilia.

My top 3 tips for successfully working from home are straight forward but require investment and practice.

1. Space — You need an office space in your home.
2. Ritual — You need to stick to a ritual starting and stopping work.
3. Communication — You need to work on communication twice as hard.

Space

Having a dedicated space is hard to do when your world is turned upside down by a pandemic. However with time and planning you can carve out an area pretty much anywhere. The further away from your main “living area” the better. Pay attention to ergonomics, form and layout are important. I have standing desks that are properly calibrated and use a foam mat to stand on.

There are a few things I really love having: a) Reliable high speed internet/wifi b) Glass whiteboard in view of web camera (make sure you have an apporpriate back drop) c) inspiring art/objects d) View from office window

The window view and fun art/objects really help inspire me.

Having a professional backdrop means you are camera able to transition to meetings with colleagues, your boss and with clients. It’s funny, many of my colleagues actually thought I simply joined meetings from another area of the office.

Ritual

Having a rhythm/routine to your day that optimizes for virtuous behaviors helps you be on top of your game. Sleep, diet and physical activity are critical as well as establishing a ritual for how to go to can come back from work.

I start my day out with a physical work out and nutritious high protein breakfast. I then get fully dressed for work and “go to work” at 9am. Things may or may not stop till the evening around 5 or 6. At which point I lock my workstation and leave. I do admit during certain times I check in during the evenings but in general I try to avoid that practice.

It’s important to draw a line between work and home. When you are at work dedicate yourself 100% to work and crush it. When you are at home do not think about work. So much easier said then done.

Failure can swing both ways. You may find yourself never leaving work and feeling like you have no life, ultimately this leads to burnout or worse. Alternatively you may find yourself never leaving home and not investing the time and effort required to to deliver on your responsibilities.

Communication

When you work remote you need to work twice as hard on your communication skills. Body language makes up 80 percent of how we communicate. When you’re remote, you miss some of those unseen nuances so you have to dig deeper when talking screen to screen to make sure they understand your message and you understand your audience. Also you don’t get to have the same inner personal camaraderie of the water cooler chats, recanting the weekend, sports events and what happened last week on Tiger King. To help develop those relationships, set up 1:1 meetings. Just this week I joined friends with a virtual happy hour! Share pictures with colleagues and interests, you may find you have more in common than work. Like fun-truck-trekkin!