With the actual COVID-19 worldwide outbreak many programmers are already forced to work remote, and we can expect that most of us will soon be home.

In the IT and especially in the development industry we are lucky enough: the bulk of our work can be done remotely. I guess many of us will enjoy changing their daily routine will less social obligations and more time spent within the IDE.

I am working remotely for 15 years so here are some advices I’d give.

Care for your Workspace

Most passionate programmers already have a workspace at home. I won’t go through the invest in great hardware advice because as a programmer you certainly have thought about all this. However it is certainly time to improve your workspace.

The number one move for me has been to work in a room different than the bedroom. Your brain needs to identify clearly where to code and where to rest. Mulling over programming problems is common outside the work office, but working at home bring that to a different level. Unfortunately working outside of the bedroom is not always practicable, especially taking account that kids will likely have to stay at home if the government’s choose to close schools as they already did in several countries. If you can free-up working time in a room different than the one where kids are staying, it is time to invest in noise cancelling headphone that can be combined with a pair of earplugs. Custom silicone earplugs (made for my ears by a professional audioprosthetist) combined with my Bose QuietComfort lead to great noise reduction.

When working at home reducing distraction is a major challenge. If one of your window has a nicer view, or at least a clear sky view, it is worth working near and turn the head 90 degrees for micro-pauses. If possible work in a room where there is no TV nor game console. However the biggest source of distraction are chats, meetings, social networks, mails, news, youtube.. Of course some time must be dedicated to all those but I advise to be radical: turn-off the WIFI when it is not time to go online. This is inspired from some of my most productive coding sessions that took place in planes. Not being able to access github or stackoverflow can be problematic so you can be less radical by logging-off from all social media and use the browser in incognito mode: the key is to voluntary stay away from temptation. The more you resist, the easier it gets to resist.

Having a secondary informal workspace can help, especially if you must stay home. Working on a couch for one or two hours with my laptop often leads to quite productive coding sessions. But avoid working in your bed: your brain will associate bed with work and you’ll get hard time to fall asleep.

Structure your daily routine

Identify the time of the day when you are the most productive and structure your daily routine around it. You must agree with your company when you’ll be available online for virtual chats and meetings. If they are not flexible on social work schedule, insist to get some chunks of uninterrupted time. Working at home is your chance to avoid being interrupted during your peak coding hours and you might be well experiencing at home some of your highest productivity time.

There are some times of the day that deserve particular attention:

Starting the working day, here is a tip recently shared by Scott Hanselman. More generally I’d advise to do anything non-digital for 20 to 40 minutes before getting started (exercise, walk, time with family, breakfast, mindfulness meditation…). Also keep in mind that getting started is the hardest part: be especially careful of what you are doing during the first minutes of your working day, this will determine your productivity for the next hours.

Lunchtime : if possible this is the time to go outside and meet people. Also you’ll benefit from daylight which is an important component for good sleep at night.

: if possible this is the time to go outside and meet people. Also you’ll benefit from daylight which is an important component for good sleep at night. After lunch : a 10/15 minutes nap can help a lot to counter the digestion tiredness, to start the afternoon fresh and focused.

: a 10/15 minutes nap can help a lot to counter the digestion tiredness, to start the afternoon fresh and focused. Log-off time: unless you are the kind of programmers that gets hyper-productive during the night, it is important to decide ahead when you’ll log-off. Coding is a quite an addictive activity that can ruin your evenings, your sleep cycle and your social life.

Communicate

You are certainly already using a remote code hosting platform like github. But there are many coding situations where a short face-to-face video chat is more efficient than hours of back and forth over. This necessity needs to be acknowledged by all team members and you must agree ahead which situations deserve a synchronous interruption.

Also everyone is different and you should be aware (and take account) of communication mediums favored by each of your colleague.

Trust plays a big role in a team of remote developers. It is a good habit to advocate yourself by explaining what you’ve done and ask for feedback. If for some reason you estimate that you don’t progress as quickly as expected, discuss with others. However talking too much about yourself can quickly become bothering for others: find the right balance and also take some extra care to listen to others.

Ask for code reviews and review your peer code, especially if reviewing code is not part of your team habits. Keep in mind that the code itself is a great way to communicate with other developers.

Care for Yourself

By losing your daily routine at work it is easy to become a sloth potato, especially if you are living alone. This is why you should take care of yourself by abiding by a number of no-brainers routines:

Keep your shower and shave time.

Get dressed. Even better, dedicate some comfortable clothes for work.

Exercise at the same time everyday. It is a great mindset trick to consider exercise as an integral part of your work to never miss a session.

Take care of what you are eating, no need to ramble on how important is quality food.

If you can go out, go out at least an hour every day. Else make sure to take some daylight from your window.

Get started with mindfulness meditation. The goal is to step back and watch yourself working most of the time. This way when your mind slides to a social network or procrastinate you know it is time to take a break.

Ideally you should anticipate when you’ll take breaks.

Make sure you sleep enough, at least 7 hours a day, 8h preferably. I know some developers that sleep less to work more but they are ruining their health and their long-term productivity. This is not a judgment but a scientific prediction.

If you are working alone at home for weeks you’ll quickly feel lonely. Be aware of this threat and do everything you can to fight it: go out and meet your friends and relatives if possible, else do some video chats with them. Listening to music while coding can help (personally this kind of music bring me quickly in the zone).

Before having children I enjoyed working during the weekend with no email interruption, and do weekend’s stuff during the week to avoid the crowd. By now my weekends are entirely dedicated to family and social time and even during busy period I don’t sacrifice them. It is really up to you to decide to work at night and/or during weekends but keep in mind that the standard work hours scheme exists for a reason. The key to all great achievements is to take some rest at the right pace.

Conclusion

We’re facing weird time and we can only expect worse for the weeks to come. Many professional programmers will experience for the first time remote work. The good news is that mathematic tells us that the COVID-19 worldwide outbreak will curve down by this spring. Take care.