Working From Home Pro-Tips

Brought to you by people who work from home every day.

With so many people working from home for the first time recently, I thought I’d share some advice on how to make the best of it. My experience includes working from home, almost exclusively, for nearly a decade. In that time, I have used almost every kind of hardware and software available.

I’m also an incessant researcher and can’t stop until I’ve exhausted every article, review, and video I can find. My closet is stocked with keyboards, mice, monitors, old laptops, tablets, notebooks, journals, and more iPhones than I care to admit.

Operating ATTCK for the past five years gives me insight into which tools are beneficial for individuals and for teams.

Without further adieu, I’m glad to present my comprehensive field-guide to living your best WFH life.

1. Focus

Train your mind against distractions.

Practice mindfulness meditation. 10 mins every morning can be transformational. Mindfulness is a great brain hack. Think of it as exercising your ability to prevent your mind from wandering. Permanent change won’t happen overnight but the effect is immediately noticeable. Soon enough you will associate the feeling of productivity with cognitive control and it will become a habit you look forward to.

Here are my favorite apps for guided and self-guided meditation:

• Calm (calm.com) ← my personal preference.
• Headspace (headspace.com) ← comparable to Calm.
• Waking Up (wakingup.com) ← Sam Harris’ app also includes his premium podcast material.
• Brain.fm (brain.fm) ← music scientifically proven to improve focus.

Utilize to-do lists. Lists help free up short-term memory in your brain by reducing the need to worry about which responsibilities you might have forgotten.

Here are my favorite tools for task-management:

• Paper & pen ← physically writing in a daily journal (and post-it notes) has been my habit for over ten years. I practice a simple system using checkboxes: 1.) write your top goals down at the beginning of the day in order of importance. 2.) Try to work in order and check them off when complete. 3.) Draw a forward arrow (instead of a check) on incomplete items at the end of the day and make them the first items on your list tomorrow.
• Asana (asana.com) ← excellent for teams. We use it for multiple projects with dozens of projects every day.
• Trello (trello.com) ← a simple Kanban-style approach to managing workflow.

2. Be available

Your response time is negatively correlated with the presumption of laziness.

Humans naturally tend to project their assumptions, e.g., the longer it takes to receive a message response, the more likely the message sender is to assume the recipient has more important things to do than reply immediately. It may not be fair, but it happens, and it’s something you need to manage.

Fortunately, here are some ways to improve communication:

Set expectations. Answering every e-mail, Slack, text, calendar invite, etc. in real-time is both unreasonable and ineffective. Make sure you communicate to clients and colleagues 1.) when you’re available, and 2.) how you can be reached. A tactful way to enforce these expectations is to say that in order to be productive, you need to dedicate distraction-free periods of the day.

Respond quickly. More precisely, what I mean is respond quickly according to the expectations you set. This means resisting the temptation to reply to everything in real-time. It also means don’t leave people hanging when they’re expecting to hear from you.

3. Supercharge your communication

Performing rote tasks is an unnecessary waste of time.

Reaching inbox-zero is nearly impossible for many people but it doesn’t have to be. Utilizing reminders is effective enough at achieving inbox-zero multiple-times per day. Managing calendar invites is another area many people spend an inordinate amount of time. This can be remedied easily by using a scheduling tool, like Hubspot, and getting into the habit of asking people to book their own time with you using that tool.

Here are the tools I recommend for speeding up your workflow:

• Email (Superhuman, $30/mo) ← This tool has changed my life. I cannot express how important this has been for my productivity and mental health. The company itself represents the best that a startup can aspire to be. They respond quickly, release often, and truly listen to user feedback.
• Calendar automation (Hubspot, free) ← I recommend setting up a short URL (e.g., ours is http://attck.com/calendar) that you can quickly type. Make sure to customize your working hours, and link to your calendar to avoid double-booking.

4. Use the right tools

Professionals need professional tools.

These are the primary areas where using the right hardware can provide dramatic improvements.

Ergonomics — Sitting in front of a computer screen can wreak havoc on your neck, back, shoulders, wrists, eyes, etc.

Here are a few key areas you should consider taking seriously:

• Monitor height & distance ← Sorry, coffee-shop warriors, this news isn’t for you. Hunching over a laptop and looking down at your screen is brutally bad for you. Follow these instructions and remember to practicing tucking your chin to avoid herniating a disc in your neck (like I did). Pro-tip: if you work at coffee shops because you like the atmosphere, consider instead just playing a coffee shop soundtrack on Noisli.com (free).
• Keyboard & mouse ← For nearly a decade I’ve used the Logitech Comfort Cordless Keyboard, but unfortunately, they stopped production years ago. Fortunately, there is a new model (I just discovered) the ERGO K860, which looks beautiful and I will be checking out soon. Another good and more affordable option we use at the office is Microsoft Sculpt.
• Chair ← Personal preference has a slight role here but there are only a handful of options that give you the ability to customize your experience sufficiently. A good chair should allow you to control height, arm height, and recline. A great chair can also provide customizable lumbar support, head-rest, cushion tension, and tilt. The king of chairs is unquestionably the Aeron chair by Herman Miller. It’s expensive, but it’s a tank and will last forever, and will save you years of back pain. Well worth the investment in my opinion.

Headphones—Whether you work near other people will have a strong impact on your choice here. The most important points to consider when choosing the right headphones are 1.) personal style preference, 2.) price, and 3.) technical needs.

Here are my suggestions for each priority:

• Best price: Sony MDR-7506 ($87.99) ← Classic, highly-rated, great sound quality, and nearly every individual part is replaceable so they can literally last a lifetime. The only downside is there is no inline mic.
• Mobility: Airpods Pro ($249) ← This latest iteration by Apple seems to have solved most of the issues I had with previous versions: silicon buds keep them in, active noise-canceling provides better sound quality, improved external noise reduction improves call quality.
• Noise-canceling: Bose QuietComfort 35 ($349.95) ← These are by far the most effective at reducing external noise and the ear pads are incredibly plush and comfortable. The active canceling is astonishingly noticeable on airplanes. They also have an optional inline mic ($29.95).

Microphones—Unless your headphones come with built-in microphones (or even if they do) you may want to consider adding a studio mic to your setup especially if your home office is prone to street noise, echos, or other distractions which will make your fellow conference call participants hate you.

Here are some recommendations for podcast-quality audio:

• Audio-Technica AT-2020 ($159.95) ← This is my personal preference which I use at home and at the office. It works seamlessly on my laptop with Zoom, Uberconference, Google Hangouts, Skype, etc. and makes me sound like a radio god on conference calls :)
• Blue Yeti ($129.99) ← This mic has a built-in mute button which I find to be useful as well as a physical directional control dial.

If you really want to go crazy and set up a full podcast-quality studio, consider a matching desktop stand, pop-screen, a shock-mount, and some sound dampening pads. (I have these all at home and in the office).

Video & Audio Conferencing—Many tools exist in this area but we use these two for very specific reasons:

• Zoom (zoom.us) ← Great for small or large group meetings and supports, screen sharing, chat, remote screen control, screen annotation, face-enhancement feature (love this), cloud and local video and audio recording.
• Uberconference (uberconference.com) ← Requires no access code and allows easy dial-in by phone. Scheduled appointments are automatically added to every calendar event booked through our integration with Hubspot (see above). Uberconference has great screen share support, is web-based, automatically records audio, and recently added video conferencing.

Please let me know if you have any other tips or products to recommend as I’m always on the lookout for ways to inject another ounce of productivity into my day.

— Dennis Plucinik, President & Founder, ATTCK

About ATTCK: We’re an NYC-based digital agency that specializes in web and native app design and development. We work with companies of all sizes. If you’re looking for an agency to work with, give us a call at (917) 725–0044, or email us at hello@attck.com.