One thing I've struggled with in the past is employers who seem to expect 8 hours of solid productivity a day if I'm remote.
When I was in the office, it was easier to say "well sorry, I've followed up twice in 3 days on issue x, and unfortunately you got back to me after I'd left for the weekend".
When I'm remote, since there is the flexibility to stop and start work, but that seems to come at the expense that when doing work that requires collaboration, someone can delay responding on something that's a block, and then there's some pressure to "make up" for the "unproductive" time. You don't get any good grace for "being present" and there's less of the social aspect. (If I had downtime in an office, I might make some tea and ask a coworker about their kids/hobbies, a random slack DM feels intrusive)
How did you handle this issue? Did you just establish "core hours" you are available?
I've encountered similar issues in non-remote workspaces, and it's something I'm keenly interested in. I am not a lazy person, but I desire a delineation between "work time" and "personal time", and struggle to set that boundary without seeing my career struggle.
The second is that you have to set expectations early, and stick with them. If you want to work set hours, then state that. Don't be easily accessible outside those hours.
Personally, I'm almost always available if something needs done at work, but very rarely have to jump up and do something immediately. It's rare that I want time completely separate from work, but when I do I just let my team know in Slack that I'll be incommunicado and it's not an issue.
I totally agree. However, the issue is being "engaged to work" as labor lawyers put it. If I am waiting for you to give me the information nessecary to perform those two hours, it can be a block on my day.
For example, my ideal day would involve waking up, doing some head down work for 2 hours, and then using the rest of the day to do more rote tasks - having meetings, reading up on technical developments, working less brain intensive stuff like tweaking some automation scripts, or anything else that can be done knowing someone might pop in with a question or concern.
But if instead I wake up, find no responses on 3 separate issues, sit through a long meeting skype meeting, then am frequently "pinged" for questions throughout the day as I attempt to do productive tasks so I can't take some "me time" and 8 hours later, someone responds on the core issue I need to work in... I think this illustratates the issue I and other remote workers often face.
>The second is that you have to set expectations early, and stick with them. If you want to work set hours, then state that. Don't be easily accessible outside those hours.
This is a good suggestion, maybe my issue was that the specific employer I'm thinking of did not have a good culture. I tried to set that expectation but got strong pushback from my manager that as a salaried employee I do not have set hours.
>It's rare that I want time completely separate from work, but when I do I just let my team know in Slack that I'll be incommunicado and it's not an issue.
You don't have any set times/days?
For example, I don't want to be inflexible - if I don't have evening plans I don't mind answering a slack query while I Netflix, but what I fear is if I do that sometimes, it sets a precedent I must do it at all times.
For me, having set times where I am "not at work" is very important, and I actively am thinking about how to set those boundaries without being a burden. I'm not a religious person, but maybe I should try saying Sundays are a day of rest for me...
This is how my office life is..
Except I work on a very large project. So my tasks are so much smaller and less significant than I could handle, it probably takes 50% of my capacity just to figure out how to work productively and efficiently. So regardless of my productivity I very rarely let myself work more than 8 hrs / day.
It's sad that in certain environments you're literally just not going to be "allowed" to work at your full capacity at any given point in the day.
> One solution to my problem is the Pomodoro technique, which is a method to break down work into intervals of 25 minutes.
> A study (that helped me to figure out that question) reveals that the average worker is only productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes per day, the remaining time is spent in activities unrelated to work (checking social media, reading news, discussing out of work activities with colleagues, etc.).
> Taking the 2 hours and 53 minutes as base, that gives us approximately 7 intervals of 25 minutes, although in practice I’m doing 8 to 10 intervals. This could vary per person and the type of work, but at least we could consider 7 as the minimum. Also I found out that writing down consciously what I’m going to do in my next interval helps me to create peace of mind about my productive time, because at the end of each day I finish with a task history that justifies my work.
> After a few months using a spreadsheet and a Pomodoro timer I was looking for a solution to integrate these tools seamlessly, Despite trying different and complex Pomodoro apps I decided to create a simple and minimalistic solution named Work & Flow
One of my friends does nanny share and can work in his basement. That would work well, but you still have to be in stealth mode around the kiddies.
- Newborn to ~6-9 months: not mobile, and not too demanding either (especially early on)
- 6-9 months to 3 years: mobile and constantly trying to hurt themselves
- 3-5 years: mobile, mostly safe, but not understanding what "no" or "I'm busy right now" or "I'm on the phone" or "I need privacy" means; also not napping anymore, which means you lose that daily couple hours of bliss
- >5 years: gets progressively easier as kids begin to get independent and (somewhat) reasonable
Of course, this timeline is different for every kid.
We have four kids ranging in age from 1-7 years old. I work from home, but rarely am I in charge of taking care of the kids (right now, for instance, my mom is watching them while my wife runs errands). On the occasions where I am solely responsible for them, I consider any work I get done to be a bonus.
Toddlers, on the other hand, are little balls of pure energy that get into anything and everything they can touch.
It was hardest for me around 3... my son just wanted to play all of the time.
I'm not sure how you could get much of anything done attempting to do that.
Do you have any particular strategies for getting work done, and somehow keeping your child safe, entertained and developing?
I've got a 6-month old daughter, but my wife doesn't head back to work for another 3 months. I'm a bit concerned about my productivity once that happens.
I absolutely love spending time interacting with my daughter, in my free time. However, I presently find it near impossible to work when I'm the only carer around, unless she happens to be asleep. Hopefully that changes in 3 months and she's capable of short periods of independent play - but I'm not quite sure what to expect.
I've worked full-time at home for approximately the last 5 years. So I have very much got that down pat. Unfortunately, I can't work on a laptop anymore, as I developed RSI doing so a few years back (was working long hours, my own fault). I've also got two dogs which I love having around. However, once my daughter can walk (and harass them) they'll have to be mostly separated from my daughter. They're 50kg, so any small mishap would be a large mishap - can't take that risk. We've got a fully fenced acre out back so the dogs can't really complain!
I'm also a night owl, its 4:30 AM here and I'm pushing Docker images to ECR ;) It's quite strange how much more efficient I am working at night. I've tried all sorts of things to work on a "normal" schedule. Running on the treadmill in the morning, going for walks at lunch etc. No matter what, when I really need to get work done, I fall back into a night routine - even though I'm putting in the same total hours.
How do you manage being a night owl and being awake to look after your child during the day?
However, I was holding onto the hope that I might be able to get some work done with my daughter in the room, and was genuinely curious about the parent post's purported success.
Oh, the noise noise noise noise.
Having the kid and dogs around, combined with occasional errands and household tasks, provides the exact right amount of distraction and interruption I like to have. I typically only work in 2 hour increments, and then tend to another responsibility, or purposefully head out to do something for an hour. Breaks in the day keeps my mind fresh and oddly enough, allows me to focus more when I sit down to work.
As for what the optimal setup is - that's incredibly personal and subjective, and everyone needs to figure that out for themselves over time.
Some generic advice would be:
- set at-work time limits - set off-limits hours where you do not work under any circumstances - find a comfortable space (that can be anything from a coworking space, to the living room) - find your perfect "white noise." it can get really quiet at home. having something in the background can help. I personally like to keep netflix running, or a movie streaming.