Long Term Remote Work

Working remotely is a wonderful job perk and can make many developers more productive, happy, and less likely to leave for greener pastures. However, it’s no panacea, especially over the long term. The effectiveness of remote work over the short term is a result of your work ethic and your ability to think on your feet. Over the longer term, however, remote work is only successful if you have good habits for managing your remote work environment. In addition to easily forseeable problems, such as communication and productivity issues, there are a lot of hazards to remote work that you might not have considered until you’ve done it for a while. Lots of things are stable over the short term that are completely unsustainable over the long term. For instance, you might need to work an 80 hour week for a week or two to hit a critical deadline that takes your career or your company to the next level, completely destroying your work-life balance, sleep, and personal interactions over the short term to get a much better long term result. However, you can’t do that for very long. In fact, we would generally argue that you can’t (or shouldn’t) do it all, but some people do manage it reasonably well on occasion. If you do it for very long, you not only quickly hit a point of diminishing returns, but you often do damage that can’t be easily undone. The costs of not managing things for the long term are stark. Poor remote work habits can lead to job loss, degradation of skills, damage to your most important personal relationships, financial and health woes, and even chronic pain. We are in a unique period in history where it is not only technologically feasible to work from home, but where we are expected to do so while heavily collaborating with other people. However, if you really want to take advantage of this unique opportunity you need to plan ahead. Working remotely over time has some challenges. While these can be overcome as they occur, you are usually far better off if you address them BEFORE you have to. Not only is this approach more sustainable, it’s also a lot less stressful than trying to fix things after problems have already occurred. Episode Breakdown Ergonomics. The layout of your work area can hurt you a lot. Choosing good equipment and positioning of devices is a must. Simply sitting still for a long period of time is pretty bad for your health in general. Be extremely careful about how everything your office is positioned, and pay close attention to any aches, pains, or stiffness that starts developing. You need to be proactive. Socialization Social interactions happen incidentally when you go into the office. They have to happen intentionally when you work from home. While you aren’t going to get as bad as Tom Hanks’ character on Cast Away, isolation will “weird” you over time. A lot of people rely on work to provide them with socialization. The fix for this is to regularly meet with other people for lunch, or have a social life outside of work. You also need to set aside at least some time every week to have non-work conversations with your coworkers. Don’t let your rapport rot. Health (diet, exercise, mental health) It’s easier to ignore your health, physical appearance, and mental state when working from home where you can adjust a camera and not have people notice that you are putting on weight. There also tends to be a lot of snack food at most people’s houses and it can often be easier to eat that than it is to prepare real food (or to pick something up). If you had a routine of stopping by the gym on the way home, you’ll need to develop a routine oriented around either working out at home, or going to the gym at a certain point. You need to be working out,