In 2012, I teleworked for roughly 9 months after moving to Charlotte. Then here in March, for the coronavirus, we have been requested to telework again. I created this list of things for my team to help them through the weeks of working from home.
- Fight for Productivity – Working from home is a constant battle to stay productive. This can be done by preventing work and home lives from blending.
- Set up a separate desk and work area to better keep your mind on the work that needs to be done.
- Create a daily schedule of work times to help segregate work from non-work times.
- Stock up on work-only food and drink. If you enjoy soda while relaxing at night, don’t drink it during the day.
- Fight against Distractions – To be productive you need to reduce distractions.
- Keep yourself from feeling bored.
- Play background music, tv, YouTube, or movies as white noise. You could also join a Discord channel of a favorite topic.
- HOWEVER, keep those background items in the background. Do not play anything that needs to be focused on (i.e. a movie you hadn’t seen 100 times before).
- Take a 5 minute break each hour or 15 minute break every 2 hours to stay active. Walk around, do some light exercise, step outside, or anything to take your mind away for a minute. This includes lunch.
- Fight for Communication – So much of our work involves other people, this is the hardest thing to keep up with while teleworking.
- Spend more time checking in on Slack, Skype, Rocket Chat, emails, and other communication methods. Teleworking means it is harder to chat with people so we need to be extra vigilant with people reaching out to us.
- Pay closer attention to ticket processes (more documentation & commenting on tickets). Management is under heightened pressure to know what everyone is doing all of the time, and that is harder to do with everyone teleworking.
- An open Skype room has been made for anyone who needs an ad-hoc meeting space. Use if you feel the need to hash things out verbally.
- Don’t let yourself get stuck on a ticket. Speak up sooner and more often.
- People shouldn’t expect an immediate response, but do need acknowledgement if they ask a question. That may be as simple as “Let me check” or “don’t know”.
- Help Management – Telework teams are harder to manage. Help us not go crazy.
- I’ll be spending a greater portion of my day “checking in” on people and reviewing tickets. I’ll take this time to clear out some of our older tickets and fix lacked processes.
- If you are going to be away from your desk let someone know, so that if anyone has a direct question for you that other person can speak up on your behalf.
- Let me (or preferably the team) know if something changes in your schedule.
- Common Pitfalls – From the themes above here are things to look out for.
- Working too much causes your work & personal time to blend together. That causes boredom and burnout.
- Snacking too much. I put on 20 pounds while working from home and found that I needed more Ritalin after drinking a 2 liter of Mountain Dew each day to stay focused. Don’t do that.
- Being unresponsive. It pisses people off.
- Not having human interaction. You can go stir crazy.