Danny B

ha ha, that's the best part of my day as well.

Atlantic Xpat

I've worked from home 9 days out 10 for a couple of year or more. Suddenly, everyone else is doing so to. All the advice about having a separate space, breaking up you day, not working 2/47 is valid. What's veen interesting for me over the past week or more is now everyone is working from home. Our company is taking a positive line on doing what you can in current circumstances and not sweating it if family gets in the way. It is quite refreshing to see and hear other peoples kids, dogs, better halves etc. Somehow humanizes some folks a bit! My thing is not to stress over putting in your 7.5hrs during the working day - take a break, walk the dog, shovel some snow etc. Focus on outcomes rather than time in front of the screen. And switch off. (he says typing this at 10.10pm at night). With family getting in the way during day time, sometimes you can make the time up at night. By the time I've put the kids to bed thats gone 9pm. I can do that a few nights a week but eventually I reach a point where I say "F*** it" and go watch some tv instead.

sharkus

Apologies if any of these have been mentioned previously.

Set out a proper "office" like space. Get a desk, chair, and lamp. They don't need to be big or fancy, but working from the bed or sofa isn't going to be enjoyable for a long period.
Stay hydrated, and stay fed. I'm really bad at hydrating when I normally work from home. I also tend to miss lunch, or just get snacks - not good, well, it'll drop weight, but it's not healthy.

Set up a meeting in your calendar for lunch, mark yourself as busy. Do the same thing for other 10 or more minute breaks you want during the day. This will, hopefully, let those planning meetings see that you're not available at those time periods. I believe outlook has some scheduling assistant thing which might help with this. It's very important to make sure you're having breaks.

Do set alarms for waking up, treat this as if it were a normal working day.

Check to see if video is enabled before joining a meeting, and also check there aren't any "special effects" type things going on with your video conference software.

dbd33

Have two machines. I currently have one on my lap and one on the central sofa cushion with the phone on the arm of the sofa. The reason for the two machines is that in these times usage will be monitored more closely then usual. Breaking up the day with the odd porn video may have been ok in normal times but will be less so now. Video tends to enable itself, people don't realise, electrical tape is safer.

Gozit

This is actually good advice, lol. For me doing online classes it is good to have the lecture on one computer and other stuff on other computer, that way i can record the lecture without getting things I don't want in the recording in there.

Gozit

So far so good. I find it easier to stay focused on the lecture at hand when there aren't other people around me. I have a nice desk with 3 monitors and a docking station for my laptop. I miss having a reason to properly get dressed and it feels weird wearing nice clothes when you're sitting at home all day.

One thing i've found helpful is to have multiple spaces you can work from. I have a desk in my room, but if I want some social interaction i'll go sit at the kitchen table for an hour or two if the assignment i'm doing can be done that way, or i'll go down to the basement for a change of scenery.

MillieF

Yes my son is having on line lectures and had an online exam this morning- I don't know how it's going...as his mother I'd be the last to know

Danny B

Remember this family from 2017?

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-52...king-from-home

Gozit

online exams are great they have no way of supervising them so they have to make them open book.

scrubbedexpat091

I took an online class once and all the tests except the final exam (which was done on campus) were open book technically, but they put a 2 minute limit on each question so had to make sure to know as much as possible and not look everything up or you would run out of time and get the question wrong for not answering it within 2 minutes,.

All closed book tests do is show that some memorize things better than others, really the only reason I do poorly on closed book tests, I have a poor memory so can read material over and over, and will forget most of it before the test. Not being able to memorize things well is really my downfall to being a good student.

Partially discharged

Surely there's a story there dying to get out

Oakvillian

Late to the party here, and don't have a lot to add to what's already been said. I'm lucky enough to have a proper home office space in the basement, which more or less replicates the set up I have in the actual office - proper keyboard and mouse and pair of monitors for the laptop, proper office chair, etc. I also have my home computer on the same desk, and do somewhat echo DBD's view that it's helpful to have a second machine to do the non-work-related stuff, or - in my case - to test changes to a website on a different machine with different browser configurations. Since some of what I do involves looking after a couple of websites, there are times when I have the same page open on three different desktop browsers, an iPad, an iPhone, and an ancient Android tablet, just to see how it renders in different configurations. That's something it's easier to do when I can spread stuff around a whole room. i don't do the tape over the video camera thing, though - most of my chats with colleagues are on video, as I find that increases the "value" of the interaction from a social point of view, if you see what I mean.

Food and water are critical, I agree that it's really easy to get carried away with work and not notice the time, probably especially in a basement office where the passage of time isn't really easy to see from the shadows in the window-well! That feeling of it suddenly being 2.00 and you haven't had a coffee break, let alone thought about lunch, becomes familiar quickly unless I set alarms and reminders.

As to taking breaks, that's probably a little easier when there are kids at home - there's always something to do that gets you away from the desk for a few minutes while the kettle boils. Today's tasks, for example, included installing the new brake blocks onto child #3's bicycle, as he's the third kid to have ridden that bike and there was not a lot of meat left on the old ones. He then went off with OH and the dog, scouting ahead down the trails in case there were any other people around that might require the leash to be hauled in and the dog socially isolated...

I've also been using the time I'd normally spend driving to the office to get out for a quick spin round the neighbourhood with the dog in the early mornings. Poor bloody creature has never walked so far or so often - he's off three times a day or so at the moment, as it's the only legitimate way any of us can get (a) exercise or (b) away from each other. He was actually reluctant to go for a(nother) walk yesterday afternoon for the first time ever.

MillieF

If my Cairn Terrier reads this, he'll be starting a dog support group! He no longer rushes around with excitement when we open the leash cupboard.

I'm find it difficult to establish a routine, everything that I can do in my office like a flash takes me for ever. I can't make the electronics play nicely and I'm getting scratchy as hell as it feels like I'm going through the motions but achieving sod all. I don't have a designated area, we do, but my husband has always had it, we have another one too but my son is doing online lectures in it. I'm seriously thinking about the basement toilet with the cat tray...

scrubbedexpat091

Our dog usually likes her walks but she is growing tired of them it seems, usually she runs to the door if she hears her leash, last night she was on the couch, saw me get the leash and ran under the bed, clearly she had no interest in another walk.

Guess you know things are bad when dogs are not wanting to go for walks anymore....lol

Danny B

I bought some wireless (not Bluetooth) noise cancelling headphones with a microphone mute button on the left ear the other day. The range is so much better with these, now when I'm on a long call I can at least walk around the house and stretch instead of being stuck at my dining room table. Plus I can tap my left ear to speak, and then tap it again to mute. Before I had to click a button in Skype.

Cannot believe this is only week 2 at home, March is dragging.....