So You Want To Work Remotely? Part 1

It’s been now 2 weeks since I started a completely remote job. This will be a short article on my first observations. Is it good? Am I going crazy? Would I change it for an office? What should you pay attention to when switching into such a job? Perhaps I can answer some of these questions.

First of all, before having this remote job, I did not have to go to the office every single day. That was partly because of the COVID situation and partly because of my previous company’s policy. We could take about 2 days a week and work from home. Having said that, this transition was not that drastic for me because I already knew a bit how to work from home.

I’d list a few things I consider essential for most people (even technical people) for such a remote job:

• buy a good webcam — if you have some online meetings, and you will, other people still want to actually see you, which is quite difficult with many integrated laptop cameras (yes, Mac has a horrible camera) where all people can see is a blurred something.
• buy a good microphone — same story, your voice is important if you actually want to get some message across.
• buy a good office chair — working from your sofa is not an option if you mean this seriously. If you don’t trust me, try it for a month and then come back and share your experience :)

By investing into these three things, you’ll already be halfway there :)

Then there’s a question of a daily routine. I personally have no problem with that because I’m an organised person by default, but if you are not, I recommend having the same daily routine every day, that is to wake up at the same time, and start working at the same time. Sometimes your family helps with that, so perhaps you don’t really need to think much about it.

In terms of how working from home (or from anywhere else) actually is, I can pinpoint a few key changes I really enjoy:

• more time for what I like — I have no more useless commuting that previously took me about 2.5 hours each day I decided to go to the office. I can learn what I want, I can spend the time with other people, I can do sport, and I have more energy because I don’t need to wake up so early just to catch a train.
• more energy —it follows from the previous point. I’m not an early morning kind of person, I’d rather work at night (sometimes I do), but waking up at 7a.m. is a bit problematic for me. Now I can easily wake up at 8a.m. and still be at work early :)
• I can now talk to myself when working. What a thing to do, but I do it, it helps reflect on my thoughts, or generate new thoughts. This is a sort of thing that’s problematic in an office :D

Just a few initial thoughts after my first 2 weeks. Perhaps I’ll change my mind later, who really knows. That’s why I want to keep a few notes every few days or weeks. This is a first such reflection, I’ll be writing more later on.