Permanently wfh - tips and advice?

[Lochnessgiraffe]

Does anyone have any tips and advice? I've been wfh since lockdown but it always felt like a temporary thing. I'm about to start a new perm position that is permanently wfh so I have possibly years of this. Dh is also changing jobs to be wfh in Jan. So both of us wfh permanently. So any tips?

@Disfordarkchocolate

Also, figure out how to keep warm without having the heating on all day (unless you are rich).

Oodie if you don't need to look presentable.

Actually I don't have strict boundaries in terms of time or space but I love my job and my job is judged more by achievement of tasks than by hours worked. I can do my work whenever it suits me so sometimes I will do some work in the evening which frees me up to hear what the children have been doing at school. It does depend on what your new job involves.

Also wear thermal underwear. The heating will need to be on more and your heat expense will increase

I like the idea if a laptop stand with drawer to put pens and notebooks in.
Decent headset sounds good.
I will need to be smart at least from waist up so unfortunately blouses and hair/makeup done otherwise an oldie would be great

I have worked from home for half the week for about ten years now.

Agree with much of what has been said. I have a magnet board on the wall behind my desk. I have some funny postcards up, reminders, a calendar etc. I like it much more than looking at the wall.

Does anyone have a dh who also wfh?

I do @Lochnessgiraffe, I've forced him back to a local office two days a week starting next week.

I only work part-time for mental health reasons and couldn't cope with my home being an office on days I needed to decompress.

Rarely wear proper shoes when WFH but I replaced my crappy supermarket slippers with fleece-lined fitflop ones. Stopped me getting sore feet on hard floors and so cozy. Best purchase of lockdown.

He's currently in the office 2 days a week but from Jan will be permanently wfh in his new job as well. With food delivery we don't need to go out except for dog walks. Though the dogs love having people around all the time

My husband also WFH. We are fortunate to have our own offices on different floors of the house so don’t really interact much during the day. My door is shut when I’m working, if he needs me then he will WhatsApp.

I've worked from how for years. My tips

Get a dedicated office space, be it a spare room or office at the bottom of the garden. Good office chair, headset, treat it as an office and have it set up as one.

Thermos flask although sometimes getting up and down for tea means I have a break and get up from my desk

Get organised and take breaks, dinner break especially - go for a walk, watch telly or read a book

My dc and dh know not to come into my office. If I'm free I'll come out and say hello

Housework etc comes second best to work, some weeks I get loads done, others nothing

Go into the office for team meetings and if you can, stay over. It's important to have a relationship with colleagues. I'm lucky I'm close to two of my colleagues and we have private WhatsApp group and will have virtual lunches every week or so. I also schedule telephone calls with my friends during the week too. Book out an hour in my diary and ring them.

I find the pomodoro app helpful.
Also if I'm in a slump then I sometimes work in a different room, which feels like a change of scene!

I’ve installed hive and hive TRVs, bought a pack of three. It means I can heat my office separately without heating the whole house all day.

Oh yes I forgot slippers, but a good pair, they wear out really quickly when you wear the all day. I've never worn out a pair of slipper u Tim I started working from home

My nearest office will be 5hours away so I'd definitely need to stay over but would only be expected to go there twice a year if that. My colleagues are all over the world so no team meetings.

@Cattitudes

Build yourself a network of local friends whom you can meet with for a quick lunch/ walk to get out, exercise and socialise with.

How do you do that?

I'd like to know that too

My tips:
A decent desk (I got the biggest I could that would fit in my office)
A decent chair - your back will thank you.
Block out regular chunks of time where you can get some actual work done. Thursdays is a dreadful day for me - I've got recurring meetings pretty much back to back so if that's the same for you make sure you've got time to do the job!
Get outside for a walk every day, even 20 minutes around the block is great.
Drink water.
Make sure your workspace is well lit and at a comfortable temperature.

And if you can, work in a room where you can shut the door when you're finished for the day. I rarely go into my study once I've finished work, and I never go in there at the weekend.

Also me @Lochnessgiraffe, we’ve agreed to make a conscious effort not to interact with each other as it’s such a distraction. He’s very disciplined, ‘uniform’ on, head down self employed and I kept nipping in to speak to him. Wasn’t working.

We now work in separate areas of the house and keep doors closed to avoid call noise being too distracting/ irritating. We can go all day without speaking to each other, especially as I’m often on back to back zoom calls.

We lunch separately and do the odd house task when we need to get out of the room. I need to build up more out of house activities, I can easily go a week without leaving the house bar the school run.

@Mangozesty you are going to have to unpack and pack up your equipment at the start and end of every work day otherwise your mental health will suffer.

Yes it will take extra minutes but think of it as part of your mental commute that takes you in and out of work mode.

Some of my siblings do have a separate office while others, including me, work in any available space.

The ones with a separate office don't ban anyone from entering it and using it outside their working hours as they know first and foremost their house is a home. I do have friends whose office is their own office but they actually do hobbies in that room as well.

I have a separate office and absolutely do not go in there to work (my spin bike is in there) at the weekend.

When I have to work at the weekend it is usually to finish a report or something like that, something with an unachievable deadline (struggling to recruit). I make sure that I do it outside of my office because I spend so much time in there Mon-Fri.

Weekend working is done from a sofa with family watching a film, Not me watching the film 🍿, but definitely not at my desk!

@TravelLost some are work colleagues who live nearby (large organisation across UK) others are parents of the children's friends whom I have collected along the way. Some of those are SAHP, others wfh, others are part time. Some are neighbours. I have worked at home for over a decade now so have had time to build up the friendships, it doesn't happen overnight but it is nice to have a local friends, some know each other, others don't. Sometimes we arrange to go out in a group. You do need to be proactive at first.

I also have trusted work colleagues whom I can have a little banter with remotely even though some I have never met and others I haven't seen in person in two years. Sometimes I walk and chat to a friend on the phone.

My biggest tip is to have a really brilliant computer set up. I have a very good chair which is genuinely comfortable. Then a stand-alone screen with my laptop set on top of a riser plus a proper wireless keyboard and mouse.

It’s a totally different experience to March 2020 when I started out with my laptop propped on top of a pillow on the sofa.

my dh has wfh for years, me just 18 months. we have lunch together, sometimes a dog walk together. (I do the bulk of the kid-work too as I work a day less, i earn substantially less and I want to.). lunch together for us, that seems nice and important.

So I get up early, yoga and meditation, kitchen stuff,, shower, at my desk by 7/7.30. getting kids up blah means I have done an hour before 9 which takes the edge off my hours. The main prob is our downstairs wc is just off my 'office' aka family room so I can basically hear him pissing unless I close a lot of doors! but yes office chair, headphones, breaks, counting up my hours, discipline, lunchtime snooze if I need it, working late if I need to, ignoring dh when he wants to chat and 'hang' , making the effort to chat to colleagues, sending gifs and just saying hi, taking opportunities to be helpful. I have a new job so am being super 'keen' but I want to keep my good habits.
are you worried 'bout working near you dh?

Oh yes, if the company uses Slack or similar that can be a brilliant way of feeling connected to your colleagues. I work in sales for a start up and when we’re wfh we have just as much chat and banter throughout the day through our Slack channels. It’s encouraged by the business that we use Slack for making everyone feeling motivated and sharing our highs and lows. Even just posting a celebration gif or emoji when someone closes a sale is a great way of creating connections. Appreciate this may not work as well if you’re an accountant

DH and I both WFH tbh we don't bother with each other during the day? Email each other with stuff as if still in separate offices. Take our lunch times separately.