This year marks my eighth year of working remote and on the way I’ve learned and experienced a lot. I want to talk about those experiences and learnings and hopefully it’ll be helpful or just encouragement for those embarking on this journey.
My journey is broken down into three parts: habits, environment and mental state. There’s overlap of when these happened but they had the most impact chronologically so I’ll cover them in that order.
In the beginning — all about habits
When I first started working remote I had been working in office environments for about 4 years (plus the odd summer office jobs here and there). I know that may not sound like a lot of time, but it was enough to condition me to working in a collocated environment and definitely enough to disorient me when I started working remote. I had to cleanse myself of old habits and pick up new ones.
My friends always ask me questions such as, “how do you get work done?”, “how do you stay focus?”, “how do you fight taking a nap?”. In all honesty, the answer to those questions (in the beginning) was “I can’t/couldn’t”. I napped. I took long breaks. I’d surf Wikipedia for hours on. In short, I was doing a lot of “not my job” — luckily for me, working remote was not an intermittent thing. It’s not like the day or week after I’d be back in an office to catch up. I was in this “forever” (until I quit of course). At some point I had to do real work. Often I worked into the evenings and weekends, sometimes to make up time and sometimes just over time. What eventually happened was, I figured out my peak performance hours. It was roughly 10am ~ lunch and post dinner ~ sleep time. I still work outside these hours but I ensure I buckled down during these time and power through. The focus was getting into the habit of being able to do work at home. Over time these time slots widened (and also shifted). I became better at performing even when the situation and time wasn’t optimal, and from there it was just repetition to get better.
If you do something long enough, you’ll get good at it. It took me over a year to become fluent at working remote. Find out when and where you work best. Start with that then work out from that — push your limits. It’s all habits and it requires conditioning. I know it’s difficult, I struggled too. Yes, my job was at stake. Yes, my reputation was at stake. But no matter how I looked at it those never outweighed my desire to do something else. I was just very lucky I loved my teammates and the projects I had at the time long enough to condition me — hopefully you’re doing this with something you love as well.
Then it was about mine and their environment – and them
At this point I had no problem doing my job – it’s now all about tools, environment, and… them. While tools and environment has always been important, it wasn’t till I was more comfortable working remote that I started paying attention and being picky about them. I talked about some of this in my article about employers buying better routers for their employees but I’ll extend on that here.
My tools and environment
To further encourage my work habits I started modifying my environment to eliminate distractions and enhance performance. I moved things such as my PS4, puzzles, and hobby hardware (Arduino etc) out of the room to mitigate distractions. Added more furniture and decorations to dampen the room echo. Got a way more comfortable chair (don’t know why it took me 3 years to do this). I also
- ensured I had a good internet provider,
- changed to a more reliable router,
- worked in a good coverage area,
- bought wireless headphones for long meetings,
- set up a dedicated microphone for presentations,
- replaced my dying AA battery mouse with a rechargeable, and
- much more.
Basically I ensured I was more concerned about solving my work problems than my problems. When my mouse was dying, every day I’d be swearing and fighting with it to make it work. After a couple weeks I brought it up with IT and on the same day it was approved I replaced it with a rechargeable/more reliable one – back to focusing on work. The lesson here (and like the router article) is to look at all the tools and environment improvements you could do to keep your mind focused on work. Always ask your company first — of course, they may not pay for everything, but at least you’ll know for sure before paying out or your own pocket.
Their tools and environment
Sometimes it’s not just about my problems. Unless you’re flying solo, your team’s tools and environment can also be your problem. The biggest of them all is meetings and collaboration. Shitty hardware, shitty collaborative tools (or a lack of) will most definitely lead to a shitty experience for those on the receiving end. Just to illustrate what I’m talking about. Imagine: room with poor acoustic, 6 people talking, terrible mic and speaker, faraway camera, and everybody crowding around a white board drawing “tiny” diagrams. Shitty.
Some may think, “why not get better hardware or use more collaborative tool”. Not to dismiss any upgrades and changes that has happened. Sometimes we just can’t. The problem (IMO) boils down to priority or data sensitivity. As of any company there will be a backlog of upgrades and changes that needs to continuously happen to provide the best working environment for all employees — not just remote ones. These are prioritized with a lot of variables such as cost, effort, and value (who and how many will benefit from this). While I may see some changes as a top priority, in the bigger picture it may not even make it out of the ice bucket. The best thing to do is constantly voice the concern and hopefully it’ll be addressed.
The other aspect could be data sensitivity, this applies to the online collaborative tools we can/cannot use. Some of the clients I’ve worked for has very strict rules around what can/cannot be communicated over the internet, intranet and even intra-organization. Due to this not every tool is available as an alternative. If this is the case the best option is developing good team habits, which I’ll talk about next.
And… Them
The first few years of working remote was relatively easy when it came to my team. I was consistently working with the same core people, but the years to follow became challenging. Even though my projects were long, team members tend to rotate and with every new project came a new team. The problem isn’t that they haven’t worked with remote teammates before — it’s that they may not always be working with remote members so the habits don’t stick. Things such as:
- pointing to physical things I can’t see,
- communicating longer AFKs,
- calling but not moving to a quieter environment,
- physical white boarding — where I can neither see nor contribute properly, and
- talking continuously without giving remotes a chance to speak
are all recurring problems. As I mentioned before, even though some of these problems could be solved with better/alternative tools it’s not always available. Educating the team and pushing for better collaborative habits is inexpensive and always welcomed regardless of the technology that’s available. It’s not always easy for collocated members to recognize these as problems so the responsibility is heavily weighted on us to push for solutions and change.
From here it’s all about emotions
The last couple years has been the most difficult for me when it comes to working remote. While I’m still honing my work habits, enhancing my environment, and educating my teammates — those have become relatively easier. The difficult part is emotions because beyond just a job I’ve always been emotionally invested in the company and the people in it. When that’s the case sometimes situations can be a bit more than heartbreaking.
When the company was small it was easy to communicate with everyone and grasp what was happening, even from afar. I believe it’s because while a lot was happening really fast it was still proportional. There were less people which meant less teams. Finding out everything going on meant talking to a handful of people. Knowledge sharing was easy. Communication was simple. Engagement was — manageable.
As the company grew, none of those sentiments scaled with it. We both lost sight of each other. I lost sight of who was where, what they’re working on, what’s actually happening, and why were certain decisions made. At the same time people lost sight of what I was working on, what challenges I was facing and what achievements I have made. Knowledge sharing was difficult, communication was minimal, and engagement was — non-existent.
Before I could fully grasp what was happening (in the moment) I simply turned bitter and that perpetuated into other negative emotions and habits. Eventually, this affected how I performed and communicated to teammates — negatively. This went on for close to two years and luckily my colleague/friend pulled me back up. Besides just drinking and venting with me she implicitly reminded me what kind of expectations I should have and how to deal with it. Also she greatly reminded me what we can accomplish working with an open mind and positive attitude.
I’m still trying to balance my expectation and feelings, but now-a-days my outlook has generally been more positive. While I can’t offer any suggestions on overall engagement and inclusion I think one thing that helps is keeping everything controllable — controlled. Things such as: my work times, what to volunteer for, and which optional meetings to attend I do my best to control because I can and they are important to me. Retaining these at satisfying level keeps me happy. It’s not the same for everyone so you’ll have to evaluate and assess what can keep you happy.
Some last words
Regardless of where I am on this journey and how I feel there’s no doubt about it — I don’t think I can ever work in an office environment again. I don’t believe I have to sell anybody about the appealing aspects of working remote. Like all things in life, as long as the positive outweighs the negative it should be worthwhile.
