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How to work from home. Deletedman's Checklist

There are a lot of notes on the Internet on the topic of remote work, with a concise overview of the minuses, pluses and well-known tips on how to get yourself out of the routine, starting with “First off, take off your pajamas”. In the Surf blog, we already touched on this topic in an article by my colleague who shared her experience, but with the increase in the number of remote employees (and my transition to udalenka ’after 20 years of office experience), I decided to study the matter more deeply: I read foreign blogs about remote work and tried different ideas. Here I will share my experience, methods of maintaining and increasing motivation. And at the end of the article, I prepared a small memo for a home office employee.

UPD: I began to write an article before the virus in Wuhan, and when I finished, the number of friends who had to switch to remote work increased sharply. I hope that the measure is temporary and everyone will be healthy.




Before starting work on the article, I conducted a survey among colleagues in Surf on problems in remote work, asked recipes for motivation and self-organization. She shared the results below.

Surf survey showed that only one employee wrote “everything is fine and I have no problems at all”, almost 40% answered “nothing needs to be changed, even team building is not needed”, 57% would go to the office for a couple of days, 18 % - they want to go to the office for a full week, 30% noted that they lack the motivation to start work and tasks. The results are contradictory - there are problems, not everyone is ready to solve.



The result of the surveys depends on how many employees consciously chose this method of work. 24% of respondents voiced that there are no other proposals in their region. This means that there is no choice and you need to tune in, perhaps, to a not very comfortable option.

How to start your day? Let's see how Surf employees spend their morning:



2017 is a boom in the growth of remote offices, which gave impetus to the development of a large number of new tools for managing time and tasks for distributed teams. But they do not solve the problems of motivation, work schedules, depressive states and lack of verbal communication. The distribution of responses from colleagues from Surf practically coincided with surveys of Google and other large corporations conducted in 2018-2019:



Correlating the answers, the most obvious problem is “getting started”, the next one is “lack of verbal communication”. Nothing original, but this is what most home office employees around the world are struggling with.

As the basis of the information below, I took the practice of IT companies with extensive experience in organizing distributed teams, quotes, tips from the “handbooks” and analysis of the most popular blogs about remote work. I sorted all the recommendations into 5 main parts:



Time


Stages


Divide your work day into 2 large work steps. Ideally, 4 hours and changing the location, if possible.

Night


If you are comfortable working late in the evening - do not break yourself. But this should be only part of your work (no more than half), and colleagues should know your schedule. 5 hours during the day for tasks that require communications and 3 hours in the evening - a good schedule with a timer.



Beginning and the end


Set the start time and end time of the work phase. In the office, time feels different. You can better manage your tasks and control the balance between work and personal life. If you understand that there is an hour left, and there are two tasks - not so easily distracted.

I am always online


No need to pretend that you are online if you left the workplace. The speed of response to requests is much more important than the created sense of presence. Team members are worse off if they don’t respond online than to the non-standard schedule of your work. According to a survey among 5,000 remote employees (USA), the status “went out for a walk with the dog,“ went for lunch ”is perceived positively, colleagues are ready to wait for an answer, and“ active work ”without an answer is perceived as an ignore.

10 minutes every hour


Spend up to 10 minutes on your affairs every hour. In the office, everyone is distracted, chatting, drinking coffee. A short break every hour, for example, calling on business, ordering food, washing, pouring coffee, checking instagrams, walking a dog, chatting with a child - this is necessary for unloading the brain, otherwise it will slow down. To adjust the time, the timer settings on the smartphone are suitable.

The severity of the big task


If it is difficult to force yourself to start large tasks, it is better to break them into small ones (25 minutes each) and try the Pomodoro technique:



There are many instant trackers for this mechanics, for example MarinaraTimer and Pomodoro , and this technique has proven itself in large companies. There are also applications Focus Time Activity Tracker

Social schedule


Create yourself not only a working, but also a social schedule. At least 1.5 hours a day, you must not be at home. Fitness, cinema, an exhibition, a shopping center, a cafe, just a walk in the park or a board game with friends - any option for activity outside the home. The item “Not at home” should be on the to-do list for the day and it’s better to come up with it in advance, and even make a plan for the week, and even better to have paid classes on schedule.

Oh this family


All family members must know the rules of the game: you can be disturbed in the event of a "fire or mortal danger." Or at 12:50, 13:50 in one of your “breaks”, strictly in time. The clock is given to the children and the rules are explained, and it is even better to hang the rules on the door of your room. Set a time for all couriers and services that are hanging on you, as you are "sitting at home." If a sign hangs on the door, then you can’t enter.

Communications




Why do 42% of Surf employees and at least 35% from surveys from other companies see the problem in the absence of verbal communication?

Acquaintance


Rule # 1 for Google Remote Workers: Get to know each other, instead of jumping right on the agenda, set aside time at the end of the meeting for an open-ended question, such as “What did you do this weekend?” This is an easy way to create remote connections and establish mutual understanding. The practices of foreign companies are very different from Russian ones. Managers make additional efforts to get to know the members of a distributed team, this brings benefits and ease of communication.

Vocabulary. Very important rule


The presentation style should be softer in tone than the same words you said orally. Any conflict occurs in the key to which opponents read what was written in the chat. There is no way to convey intonation, midtones, openness or, conversely, categoricality. Your voice in the head of a colleague from your words, but does not belong to you. If the interlocutor did not have the opportunity to hear and see you personally before - the whole tone of the correspondence should be at a level more friendly than your feelings.

Please and thanks. Is always


“Send a file” - without the word “Please” can be perceived very rudely (paragraph above). Never be lazy to write these 2 words. And also “Good morning”, “Good afternoon” and other greetings. The word “Thank you” has many synonyms and translations into other languages: “Thank you,” “Mercy,” etc., if you want to be original.

Unsuccessful Scrum rallies, “silence of the lambs”


It is not always necessary to discuss everything in a team, and if you feel that some participants are more effective in discussing problems in their tasks in private with you - support it and set aside time for face-to-face. Moreover, while the team is still not very familiar with each other.

Do you hear me game?


The effectiveness and need for video conferencing for remote employees has been proven. At least 1 time per week, preferably 1 time per day. This is not a way out of the comfort zone and not the need to comb your hair, it is just necessary for the speed of involvement in the issues discussed. The level of attention to what is happening by video conferencing is 40% higher.



Scatter phone


Frankly, how often do you look at the phone while someone is trying to convey his thoughts to you because of all his strength? At this moment, you spend not only your time, but also the time of your opponent. Your answers are superficial, as a rule, and the lack of involvement is felt by the “back”. Before the rally, set the airplane mode or remove the phone as far as possible from the hands.

Agenda


Is it familiar “Ahhh, and wait, will I still see what questions I had?”. Spend 5 minutes writing a short abstract in your notebook, even if it seems like you remember everything. Save 20 minutes for both yourself and the other person.

Active listening


Often we listen to the interlocutor and after a short passage we already want to answer, and at this moment we stop listening. Active listening requires a present presence and a genuine interest in what the other person is saying. The purpose of active listening is to understand why opinions differ. In the absence of visualization tools, during a telephone conversation, listening to the interlocutor from the position of “why he thinks so” instead of “now I will prove the opposite” will lead more to the true reason for the opinions of the two parties and to the solution of the issue than a dispute and interruption.

What is your weather like?


Chat in Slack, where one by one the bug or development approach is discussed in sluggish mode - that's great. But the concept of “team” is the rapprochement of people and communication beyond the scope of work tasks. Do not be shy to tell that you are runny nose, ask "what should I see in the evening?" or tell how you just burned an omelet. The simplest little things bring colleagues together and it becomes easier for them to hear each other and take different points of view. Set yourself a rule: one message and one question per day, which does not apply to work issues.

Virtual kitchen


Some companies have ZOOM open rooms for “breaks”. People come there at any moment to chat with a cup of coffee by the screen to discuss both working issues (sidelines) and the latest series of favorite TV shows.



Habits or how to trick the brain


Writing with hands


Return to writing pad or make a Kanban physical board. Any work with hands involves more areas of your brain, the momentum from a break, for example, when you wash a dirty cup in the kitchen or write a to-do list with your hand, will give the desired effect. Doesn't the task go? Draw, write down the problem on paper. Several colleagues from Surf modestly indicated "we are old-fashioned with a notebook in the morning" and were very shy about it.

Jacket of fortune


You are going to work effectively, you know what to do now, are full of energy. Choose comfortable and favorite clothes or just one attribute of it, put on and start performing tasks. At the end of the working day - change clothes. The principle of NLP - "anchor" is successfully applied to itself. After several iterations, just changing clothes to “effective” will give a big motivational kick.

Status


In one of the companies, where there is a very large staff of remote employees, they tried to change the status in Slack and write briefly what task, like it or not, what are the chances. For example, “I’m doing a bug about entering a password, it infuriates me, I’ll finish it by dinner.” Any “public” statement about the result programs the brain to execute it and forces it to take the task to work.

No super feats, move in small steps


The planned “Physical activity from Monday to 2 hours” is a failure for the majority. The most optimal solution is something simple, useful in the form of a 30-day marathon. Squats are considered the best exercise for employees who work at home. Exercise is in the top 3 on the acceleration of metabolism. Print the table and hang it at the workplace. Cross out daily and at the end of the path give yourself a gift, encourage yourself. Can do for the whole team. The number of approaches does not matter - the main thing is to complete the amount per day. Next month we find a table on the bar and add it to the desktop. The plus is that in the office this is not easy, but it’s easy for you. Start with a very small amount, which takes 10 seconds to get distracted. On the fifth day, the excitement will appear to fulfill the plan,and by the 30th day - several breaks a day for a warm-up will become a habit.



Nutrition


Big hearty breakfast


In the morning, maximize the use of carbohydrates and glucose to improve brain activity.

Modest light lunch


After a hearty meal, your body will direct most of its energy to the digestion process, resulting in you feeling tired and drowsy, and you will not be able to do the hard work.

Water


Buy a 1 liter sports bottle and put it in the workplace. Drink every hour so that by the middle of the day the bottle is empty or close to it. Many different experiments and scientific experiments showed the relationship of “vigor” of both the body and the brain on the amount of water consumed. There is a mandatory recommendation for truckers to drink 1 glass every hour. If the driver does not drink water within 4 hours, the percentage of falling asleep while driving will increase by 10 or more times.

Snacking


After breakfast, cut yourself thin slices of cucumber, apple and other vegetables, put a plate at the workplace. If you want to sharpen something - take a piece. This will help you avoid bad blockages with carbohydrates, which sharply increase the level of sugar, and after its fall you feel weak.

Satiety for a long time


If you need to sit down for a long time to work and not be distracted by food, your snack or lunch should consist of protein foods without carbohydrates (boiled eggs, meat, cottage cheese).

Tools




The information in this block is not new for experienced employees, I did the analysis for myself, but if there are any "new products" for readers, I will be glad.

Distracting sites


Applications and extensions that help you set up barriers and restrict access by setting up your work time without distractions. When you break and complete tasks, you can deservedly switch to the series.


Meetings and chats


Zoom is the most commonly used tool for scrum and other meetings, as well as for the "open rooms" of remote employees. In many companies, video calls are required. Other interesting meeting management alternatives: Soapboxhq and Clickmeeting , Google Hangouts , Join.me
Slack - the most popular chat for distributed teams around the world. And here an interesting “book” about corporate communications in Slack is simple and affordable.
Alternative chats: Basecamp , Fleep , HipChat .
Worldtimebuddy - a service that allows you to quickly and conveniently determine what time all team members have now, save the settings and quickly make a decision about the time of the call.

Boards, tasks, time management and others


Trello , Favro , Asana , Redbooth , Paymo for the formation, distribution and control of tasks;
Scoro is recommended as a very interesting and optimal Dashboard. It is convenient when working with a large number of small projects.
Zapier will link your tools and used programs into a single system.
Toggl is a convenient and easy time track for yourself.
Timely and Time Doctor are simple and easy team time tracking tools with alerts and flexible settings.

Multifunctional specialized software


Sococo - all tools, including a virtual office, virtual meeting rooms . An interesting example of the gamification of distributed teams



Hubstaff - a system for managing remote teams with integration with accounting, Jira, etc. Detailed system of accounting for working time and marginality.

Content, notes, prototypes


Pocket is a good "wallet" for all types of content that you need to select on a given topic (often used by business analysts). As well as Evernote.
Google Drawing is a good alternative to draw.io when you need to draw simple diagrams and work together on them. Everyone knows about documents, drawing undeservedly bypassed.
InVision is the most popular tool for collaborating on content, a project and its discussion. In blogs about remote work, its alternatives are: Marvel , Webflow , Framer, Kite Compositor .

Desktop memo




From myself


My office experience is over 20 years in the field of project management. Periodically, she worked from home, but on the whole, verbal communications occupied 70% of the time. Six months ago, I switched to remote work. My main difficulty in the first months was constantly distracted without active listening to the interlocutor, visualization and personal presence. I caught myself hanging up on the phone and then asking again. The first thing I did was set the airplane mode and put the phone away; I learned to take notes during the interlocutor’s story. The latter is very important, since we focus on what we want to object and no longer hear anything that we are told further. Having noted to yourself that ask after do not start talking until you listen to the end. And often, your objection will go away on its own if you do not “listen, but“ hear ”. I understand the difficulties of young professionals,who do not have enough office parties (do not refuse them too early if you are an extrovert). I had a lot of them, this stage was replaced by calmer meetings with friends and now they have more strength.

Everyone has their own methods of preserving motivation and effectiveness, not everyone is suitable, including the above. The main thing is to be able to pay attention in time to the fact that the “buildup” before the big task has become a long one, the boundaries between working and personal time have been erased and do not forget to try new ways of organizing the working day.

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