On working remotely
Last year, the global pandemic forced most of us to quickly adapt to working remotely. In 2021, it has not only become a very viable option, but for many, the preferred option as well. Regardless of whether you are doing it as a choice or because you don't have an option, working remotely in some capacity is the reality in 2021 and will continue to be so for the unforeseeable future. So instead of treating it as a temporary arrangement and letting it affect your work habits, you might as well accept it as part of a modern work culture and learn how to get the best out of working remotely. In this video, I will share some tips that I have learned from my own experiences, and hope that they will be useful for you as well.
Set a dedicated space for work
The first thing to do is set up a dedicated space. A room is ideal for meetings and all, but not everyone has the luxury to dedicate an entire room just for work, especially if you are living in an apartment with your significant other who may also work remotely. That being said, you should still aim to dedicate a space for work — this can be part of a room, or some other nook or corner in and around your home. Personalize this space with things that inspire you to work hard and stay motivated because if you are a social person like me, having to work alone all the time can get very depressing and demotivating. Don't hang out in this space after you are done with work because you don't hang out at your physical office watching movies and eating popcorn after work. Treat this space the same way, because it sets you up mentally to remain focused in this space.
Ergonomic furniture
Speaking of dedicated space, if you can afford it, set up an ergonomic work space. Most of the time, offices provide you ergonomic furniture. But at home, you generally don't have them. I know that some of these things can be expensive, but because remote work has become so common these days, there are a lot of good cost-effective alternatives available. At the very least, get an adjustable work chair with good cushioning and a sit-stand desk. Think of these as investments towards your health instead of expenses. And also, ask if your work can compensate for it partially or in full. Most companies will do that for you.
Set up the right tools
Just like setting up a dedicated space, it is equally important to set up the right tools. You are most likely already using communication and video conferencing tools like Teams, Slack, Zoom or some other internal software that your company has created. But outside of communicating with your teammates in a general context, there are a lot of technical conversations that happen between software engineering teams — things that get decided over a lot of white-boarding sessions, development specs with complicated diagrams, pair programming and debugging. All of this now needs to be done remotely. Decide as a team what you'd prefer to use for these activities so that the experience is consistent. To that end, doing all this remotely means a lot of data sent over the wire, which means you'd probably want to invest on faster, higher bandwidth internet connection, not just for downloads, but for uploads as well. Because the last thing you want is choppy internet when you are trying to debug a critical live-site issue with your teammates.
Pay extra special attention so communication
Dedicated space, tools and all - yes they are important and make your remote work-life much better. But nothing, and I will stress this one — nothing is more important than proper communication. You have all seen memes of the customer wanting something, PM writing some other requirements and the developers building something else altogether. Communication is hard as it is. You add remote work to that equation and it becomes incredibly difficult. So you will need to pay extra attention to communication. See, it's very common for people to keep their cameras off during meetings because not everyone has good internet and video eats up a lot of bandwidth. Also, not everyone has a dedicated work space and many people are just not comfortable on camera. Regardless of the reason, taking away facial expressions from communication, takes away from contextual information. You lose the "intent" that expressions implicitly express. Things that are meant to be to-the-point and concise can sound rude. This is amplified 10-fold when you take away even the verbal aspect and communicate over just email or chat all the time, you completely lose the tone, which you will need to add back somehow to communicate effectively. So be careful when you type away or make quick comments, think about how others could perceive what you are saying, especially if you are in a new team where your teammates have not met with you or seen you enough in person to know your personality.
Also, people have different personalities and different styles of communications. Some love to just chat, some love a quick call right away, others prefer emails. Try to learn your teammates' personalities. This is true especially if you are new in a team, or if you have new team members where you may not get to meet them in person. If you are a manager or a mentor, make sure all your new hires get a ramp-up buddy, a dedicated person that you are allowed to bug guilt-free with all your "newbie" questions. Or else, it can get overwhelming for them to have to ping random people they don't know and constantly ping them with silly questions. Pinging people on chat when you don't know what they are up to at that moment already feels like invading someone's privacy, it can be even harder as a new hire.
Finally set-up social events and happy hours when possible. It can get really lonely sitting behind the screen working with people only in the work context. Work is fun because you go through difficult and stressful times with your colleagues but you also celebrate working together, you socialize, you play games so you don't just see each other as people there to earn a paycheck, but fellow software engineers you enjoy sharing similar interests with.
If you could work on improving only one thing out of all the things I mention in this video, improve your communication. It will have the biggest impact on your remote work life. Ok, enough about communication. Let's move on.
Be deliberate about managing your time
The next tip is related to creating some boundaries between work and personal life. That boundary was implicit before in the physical separation between your work space and your home. With remote work, that separation does not exist, so you will have to create one. We have already talked about creating dedicated space for work and only using it for work. That's a great start. But because of the lack of a commute, it can be very easy to get caught up in the mixed state where you partially act like you are home and lounge out, and you partially act like you are at work doing your tasks. Essentially, you are neither fully chilled out, nor you are fully focused on work. Obviously this can be a major hit to your productivity and effectiveness. But not only that, because you never fully disconnect, your mind never gets to de stress or relax. So you will need to somehow make distinct separations between working and being home, even though you are technically home for both. Now, How you manage to separate these contexts, depends on you. Some people follow a strict start and end time for work where they wake up, take a shower and get ready as if they were driving to work. Others, like me, like to use my calendar to create events and follow them religiously where overtime you learn to very easily switch contexts between working and not working. This gives me more flexibility and allows me to utilize any downtime effectively.
Regardless of what method you chose, be deliberate about it and work when you are working and and non-work when you are not — the last thing you want to do is try to do a bit of both.
Take breaks
This next tip builds up on the previous one. It is to remember to take breaks! When you go to work to your office, it forces you to take breaks. You walk to peoples' offices or desks, you go into conference rooms for meetings or daily stand ups. You go grab lunch, play games in the hallway or socialize with your teammates. At home, you have none of that. So it can easily turn into an 8-10 hours session where you sit slouched on your chair. Sitting for long hours has a lot of negative effects on your body like muscle tightness, nerve damage, bad heart health and lack of proper blood flow. So set up a reminder to get up and walk around or stretch every hour. Go grab a glass of water, let your pet out or just focus on your breathing. This is even easier to do if you follow the Pomodoro technique of alternating between focus time and short breaks.
