// This is a guide I put together as a remote employee for Fundbox, during this time where a bunch of devs are getting sent to WFH for prolonged periods of time, I thought it's best to share this wide

WFH productivity guide

Intro (TL;DR - why should you read this doc)

Some of you may need to work from home from time to time. Given COVID-19

you may even need to work from home for multiple days in a row. Feel

free to refer to this doc for productivity tips and tricks for working

from home.

Can WFH be productive at all?

A lot of great companies you know have decided that remote/distributed

will work for them. Automatic (Wordpress), Invision, Netlify, Netlifx

and a bunch of other companies see remote as not only productive, but

part of their culture. It does require adjustments. Think of it as like

training muscle memory. You're used to the office environment, being

able to tap someone on the shoulder and ask your question. Being remote

might feel like this is going away, but as with all muscle memory,

practice makes perfect and according to the companies above, it can be

even really productive.

As a 100% remote employee for the past 8 months, including leading a

distributed team for 3 months, I have researched and collected some

remote work tips and tricks. They might not all be for everyone, but

hopefully some will help you to be more productive.

💼 Work/Life balance and separation 🏡

👨‍🏫 Find your work place. If you have a spare room, make that your office. Do not work from the couch!

This is one of the main things about being remote that people quickly

notice. You have to force yourself to separate work life and home life.

Otherwise it's easy to get worn down, as there always might be one more

slack to answer, one more bug to fix, and you're already home, so

there's no commute right?

🌅 Getting up in the morning, and getting ready (AKA put some pants on!)

Going through your regular work day morning regimen, get up with an

alarm clock, shower/wash your face, wear "outside" clothes, even putting

on shoes, are good ways of "preparing to go to work" even if you

then sit down at your kitchen table and work. It helps separate work

life and home life.\

Try to schedule your working day with clear star/stop hours and try to

commit to them.

👨‍👩‍👦 Family needs to know you're working 👨‍👧

Family, if they are home also, should know that you're working and

you need to set expectations as such. Having that chat with a family

member who's also home might be difficult, but in the long run it will

make it much more productive for you. Same goes with kids. If you are

able, try to set clear boundaries for work/family ahead of time. Maybe

postpone things till your next break, or put on headphones and explain

that you're busy while in headphones.

From the other hand, you can spend more time with your family during the

time you would have otherwise spend in traffic/commuting. Use that time

with them.

☕️ Take breaks & stand up.

Taking breaks is also very important, it's easy to be forced to a break

in the office (maybe too easy) but when you're connected to slack, make

sure you take breaks from time to time. Stretch your legs, go outside

for a little bit and see the sun. You might not notice this in a while,

but being in the office, you stand up more often than you do at home.

Those things will prevent potential burn out.

🤝 Be social

Don't forget that part. Join some slack channels for jokes, sharing

pictures of dogs/cats or create a meme channel. Some companies even

prompt you to have social zoom calls for 5-15 minutes that are not about

work. This is a big part that's missing when WFH and it's an important

part of being in the office so don't forget it.

👤Stay off of Social Media

Do this on your breaks, but make it harder on yourself to get sucked

into social media. Install different browsers for personal/work life and

log out from everything social on your work browser. (I suggest Brave

for personal browsing)\

Install extensions like Go F***ng

Work

which will limit your social media time and for you to go to work.

🤧 Being sick is allowed

Even though you are working from home, don't be ashamed of taking a sick

day if you're not feeling well. This will feel weird, but do the same thing

you would do when working from the office, take a sick day, wear your

PJs and let folks know (with a slack status or actively in YTB) that

you're sick!

Getting context is key for success!

Knowing what's going on is especially hard if you're working remotely.

While meeting in the kitchen over coffee, you can overhear things, when

you're remote, you will see that this type of communication is really

hard. Some of this can/should be solved on the culture level, but

personally, don't be afraid to reach out and actively admit that you

don't have context. It won't reflect badly on you when you're actively

asking because you're not sure.

Sharing context

You will need to take on the responsibility of identifying water-cooler

context and pulling it down into written form. It's a muscle worth

exercising; you'll find that it's equally effective at identifying and

bridging silos of communication (i.e. private slack channels) as it is

connecting remote employees with office culture.

Written text isn't great for conveying intent the way face-to-face

conversations are. Facial expressions, tone, cadence, and body language

contribute to how we interpret the intent behind words. The same set of

words can be interpreted as condescending in one context and well

intentioned in another.

Emojis may not seem professional but they help convey the intent behind

our words. Putting a smiley face at the end of a slack message cues the

reader into how our words should be interpreted. Consistently giving

these cues can be the difference between being seen as a brilliant jerk

and a stunning colleague.

👥 Remote meetings and async communication

There will most likely be fewer meetings (a good thing!) if you're

working mostly remote, but there will still be some. Taking notes and

sharing them with the team is a great idea in such a case.

📆 Daily stand ups and YTB (Yesterday, Today, Blockers)

We've been slacking YTB in our team chat for a while, and while that was

good, adding a 5 minute meeting to go over those posted item really

helps with questions on each item. Put that stand up meeting on the

calendar, make sure you post YTBs in the slack channel before, and this

meeting will be a brief one. You'll also get to see your teams faces

every day, which connects you to the team.

🗓Scheduled meetings

Your scheduled meetings will proceed as usual most likely, be sure to

prepare 5 minutes before, check your setup, microphone, webcam and

internet connection so that the meeting will start on time.

👋 Impromptu meetings

Sometime slacking is not going to cover it and you need to talk to the

person. Don't be shy inviting them to a quick zoom! (see below for zoom

tips)

🖖 Be responsive!

When not in meeting, try to be very responsive during your work hours.

Even saying "hey, I'll get back to you in 15" is helpful than not

answering for a few hours.

📷 Zoom Zoom - Being super productive with Zoom

⏱Be on time to meetings!

Punctuality is especially important when you don't have to "walk" to the

meeting room!

Prepare for your zoom meetings in advance by checking your

microphone/webcam and internet connection are all in order. This will

make sure the meetings start on time and are as productive as possible

🧩Use the zoom slack integration - fastest way to join/start meetings

Type /zoom into slack and it will start a meeting with the channel /

person you're chatting with

🐭Screen sharing and taking control

Zoom allows for easy screen sharing. Make sure no sensitive info is on

the screen before you share.

Zoom also allows you to share a specific window of an app, or the whole

screen itself. Depending on your situation, choose one or another

accordingly.

Sometimes, especially when speaking to IT or doing a code review,

sharing control of your screen is really helpful! See how to

here

🔇Make sure to mute yourself if you're not talking

While zoom is pretty great, intermittent internet issues and bad

microphones might make it hard for folks to hear other folks. Mute

yourself when you're not talking please.

🌐 No zoom on VPN (if possible)

Try to get off VPN if you can before a meeting, this will speed up your

zoom connection and leave some bandwidth for other folks on VPN.

🌇 Virtual backgrounds

If you'd like to express yourself with a nice background, hide the mess

you have behind you or just generally surprise folks, Zoom allows you

set up a virtual background easily!

https://youtu.be/YL736HaaJCk

👖Slacking like a pro

💬 Threads

Use threads to remove clutter on public channels effectively. If a

conversion required the attention of everyone in the channel, have it in

the open. But if you are thinking "maybe I should take this private",

try to respond a thread. This will remove the noise from the channel,

but also will leave information accessible for the rest of the team.

In channels like #general and #random please use the thread feature to

reply to most message, as otherwise most of the company will receive an

unread notification about your witty comment

If the whole channel still needs to know your response, hit the little

"send to channel" checkbox in the thread, this way it will keep the

threads structure and present your message to the larger channel.

🧩 Slack Apps

Add Google calendar integration to slack, it will change your status, so

folks will see that you're in a meeting (see

how)

Make sure you have a picture of your face on slack, folks need to know

who they are talking to. Having a picture of your cat, or a caricature

of your face might be funny but it will make it hard for newer folks to

connect with you and know who you are.

Slack has react emojis, and it's really helpful to use them as a way to

convey "I've read this" or "I also think like this" , Slack has a full

breakdown of how to use their react emojis

here

Slack is much more productive when you learn the basic shortcuts. Hit

cmd/ctrl + / in slack to see all of them.

The main one is cmd/ctrl+K which will open the search and give you a

fast way to navigate to a person DM, channel, search and everything in

slack!

Slack has a remind me later feature, use this to your advantage. Slack

messages tend to disappear, especially if you read them and then read

something else. If there's an action item, or you need to respond

someone after your meeting, create a reminder

Even more resources

I hope this was helpful, and if you need some more resources, checkout this collection by @notionHQ -> https://www.notion.so/Remote-work-wiki-1b21ef5501714fffa9f5c5c25677371f