I feel far more productive working from home, both professionally and personally. I keep a running list of the tasks I want to accomplish. It includes my work, my hobbies, exercise, and my chores around the home. I just keep working that list, almost constantly, and get more done than I ever did while in an office. Because there is a variety of work and fun on the list, I don't get burned out. I also don't get overwhelmed because aside from updating the list, I focus on one task at a time. I do take breaks to just relax and spend time with family, of course.

Working from home can turn into a blur of you do not manage your work and your time somehow. For some people, that just try to replicate the office and work 9-5 with some activity to replace the commute to give themselves a psychological distance from their "home" time. But I've found that the most productive remote workers are the ones who work a few hours at a time, a few times a day, and live their own life outside of those working times.

I'd recommend playing with different schedules to find on that works for you, and be deliberate about what you are doing - work when you are working, play when you are playing, relax when you are relaxing.

I need to do this, thanks for sharing.

I'm more productive at home, but when I'm online during "working hours" I feel guilty doing house work or side projects during that time, so when I have free time I end up doing the same time wasting stuff I used to do in the office, surfing, news, reddit etc.

I appreciate the feedback and will try to get better at listing my tasks. One thing that I will struggle to copy is figuring out the best schedule that works for me.

Our team finds it hard when there is too much flexibility in the schedule when working remotely. If you are more of an individual contributor, flexible schedule works, but the setup of our team is not like that due to the nature of our projects.

To solve this, our company set working hours that we would follow. However, not all comply with this since some of my co-workers are still going out for long errands.

There is also a lag due to technical issues and the overall setup of remote work where you don't know what's going on with your co-workers. Questions that would typically take a minute to answer if you are working onsite take minutes or sometimes hours to be resolved.

It might be useful to make a distinction between async work and remote work. We are remote but not async; if you are going offline for several hours between 9 and 5 you need to warn the team in advance and probably take some PTO because you are going to be missing from your Zoom calls, not responding on Slack, etc.

I am not the person you are responding to, but the two are not mutually exclusive. You can still answer your messages and not miss meetings. For example:

- 8h30AM start working, until 10AM, mostly focused work.

- Take 5 minutes to start the laundry.

- 10h05AM to 11AM, back to work. Mostly focused work.

- Meeting from 11AM to 12PM.

- Lunch from 12PM to 12h30PM.

- Work/meeting from 12h30PM to 2PM.

- Random chores around the house from 2PM to 2h30PM.

- Work/meeting 2h30PM to 4PM.

- Go for a 30 minutes run. I have my phone with me, obviously won't go if I have a meeting.

- 4h45PM I am back in my chair and I work until 6PM.

Now to my colleagues, I was there the whole day. To my employer, I worked the correct number of hours. Yet personally, I was able to break my focus/meeting time into chunks and get a lot more done than if I was in office from 9 to 5.

It's not really about being async. It's about accepting that my brain will start slowing after 1-1h30 of focused work, so I can take a real break, while still doing something valuable. Whereas at work I'd probably just browse HN for 15-30 minutes.

You are correct - and I'd expand my statement to say that the most effective remote teams I've worked on are teams that supported flexibility.

All my remote teams have established expectations of what response times should be expected. I have never worked on a remote team that expected quick responses on Slack, although I know such teams do exist. My teams have varied from 1 hour to 4 for Slack response expectations. Meeting attendance is clearly expected, but my teams have always tried to respect people's boundaries and schedule them at times that work for people. It does take effort to make remote flexibility work at a team level, but the benefits in job satisfaction and getting the work done are totally worth that effort.

I have had mixed results with lists. When there’s an obvious priority for each task, i.e. I can just complete the tasks in order, I am a machine. When I need to prioritize and order the tasks, I end up paralyzed and crash hard.

Do you have any advice in this regard?

Prioritization will depend on your goals, so it is hard to give specific advice. But I will say that defining your goals is the first step. Once you have those, you can figure out which tasks take you towards those goals most effectively, which tasks are blocking others, and prioritize accordingly.

FWIW, I split my tasks into three lists - Personal Tasks, Home/Property Maintenance (I live on a 40 acre hobby farm, so this adds up), and Work Tasks. Personal Tasks are driven by my goals to stay healthy and create artwork. Home/Property tasks are driven by my goals to increase food production at my home and improve our self-sustainability, and Work tasks follow my employer's goals.

Your goals likely won't match mine, but a similar breakdown might help.

Prioritization is the hardest thing for me. If you follow GTD, working on Horizons 2-5, especially 4&5, make a big difference by recognizing what your purpose and visions are for your life.

With that, prioritization has become much less challenging for me.

I deal with this same problem every day. But I reach out to different business people and construct a priority for my team. I would say your manager should be setting priorities for you.

My question is what happens if you ever get to the end of the list? And on the other hand, what if you never can? Work from home and the pandemic in general seems to have had an effect on many peoples' sense of purpose; mine included.

Keep in mind, you're not just "working remotely" these past two years, you're "working remotely through a pandemic". These are two very different things.

There are a lot of extra stressors that are involved in surviving through a pandemic, and honestly maybe your goal of not just surviving, but thriving, is unreasonable. Maybe just getting through it so you can kick-start your life on the other side is just fine!

For example, if you were in an accident and had to undergo extensive physical therapy, you'd be a lot more understanding with yourself if you weren't also running marathons at the same time.

Be kind to yourself, OP. This shit is hard and you're doing an important job just getting to the other side of it.

> Keep in mind, you're not just "working remotely" these past two years, you're "working remotely through a pandemic". These are two very different things.

I will disagree with it. I may have agreed the first year but not the second. The pandemic doesn't excuse anything anymore.

This is a needlessly callous take. For many people, the second year was when the pandemic actually started to hit close to home. Of the handful of people I knew who died from covid -- it hasn't even been a full year yet.

Many people are dealing with profound levels of grief and loss. It may not "excuse" anything, but it's necessary context. Be kind.

What do you mean by that? Just that some/most countries have lifted most COVID restrictions?

I was thinking the same as the top-level comment you responded to - before the pandemic I was already quite bad at making time for adventure, exercise, seeing my friends etc. I was new in the workforce and putting all my mental energy into my job. IMO the lockdowns and WFH has been great for my work life but not so much for any other facet of it.

It's going to take me a good while to get used to getting out more, being active, scheduling things to do with friends...

The “other side” would be:

* My main activity most days involving physical presence with a group of peers.

* Conversations with coworkers not running through the fog of Zoom. Not ending most days shattered by Zoom fatigue.

* Real reasons to be away from the apartment, not just to exercise and buy things.

The “other side” has been kicked out from under me by the remote work partisans. I don’t see any path to having a life like that again while still being a software engineer. If present compensation packages hold then maybe I will be able to retire and pick up a low-paying but in-person career in 7-10 years. As long as I don’t go starting a family… if I do that then I’m pretty well locked into Zoom and nothing else all day every day forever.

Other than some shortages an inflation, isn't the pandemic mostly over?

Cases are rising for lots of communities, we just lost another half-week of school to a close encounter quarantine, I’m still masking to avoid all the possible serious side effects of even a mild case. Plus we have an unvaccinated person in our home and have to live accordingly.

I’d say no, not quite over.

Parents are still dealing with it, exposures and cases in school mean kids can and are sent home surprisingly often.

I think there’s an effect that isn’t well-recognised, but which is something along the lines of “working-from-home-in-the-pandemic-low-level-chronic-burnout”.

I see this a lot in many colleagues - everyone is just really tired, fed up, fighting to keep things on a level and just exist.

It’s a weird concept, as (from a personal perspective) pre-pandemic, working from home was always a pleasanter, stress-reducing choice. So I don’t think it’s purely related to the location - but there’s definitely something happening on a large scale related to how we’ve been working and existing over the past couple of years now.

Anyway, I wonder if this is what you’re describing? And if it is, then the ‘procrastination’ you describe maybe isn’t actually procrastination, but a natural (protective?) secondary reaction to something else going on in the background.

And if so, the correct response is probably to recognise and accept it, not beat yourself up for not being productive, and instead figure out what you need to do to recover and heal.

Definitely agree with this. I was eventually so burnt out that I quit my job and wallowed in depression for a good 6 months and started therapy. After starting to rebuild myself and my personal environment, I finally felt like I was in the right place to work again. I recently started a new job and I feel like a different person. I couldn't imagine procrastinating because I'm so motivated to work again.

I know what I did is maybe not an option for a lot of people (thank god for the German social net and healthcare system), but I feel many could really benefit from therapy and focusing on their mental health for a while.

> I recently started a new job and I feel like a different person. I couldn't imagine procrastinating because I'm so motivated to work again.

I am hoping to do the same over the next few months. I haven't started looking, and I am quite horrified to do so, but my back is up against the wall at this point, and I have no where left to hide.

If I stay at my current job, my life will be a constant spiral downwards, and if I leave but cannot find another job, then my life will still be a constant spiral downwards, so I have nothing to lose in my search.

Two potential elements:

- WFH means normally working alone in physical terms, normally we have aside a physical local social life, during covid scenario that part was much cut and as a result people WFH are also lone people (well, except for family members);

- WFH in the classic sense, with a properly organized work is a thing, people normally working in an office that have been forced to work at home arranging a place with craptops (and perhaps no external monitor(s), real keyboard, good desk etc) forced to use crappy VDIs and overloaded + badly used communications is another totally different beast.

In general WFH, with a good home, a dedicated room for the working part with anything needed there, a good surrounding area etc is a thing, living in small flat in dense cities, with no good home setup, incertitude about how much such model will remain and how in general so incertitude about mid and long term investments, like leaving the city and flat for a house in a good place with the risk of being forced back, even worst hybrid work with the need of moving gears from home to office and back etc does not help at all.

A good, well cooked steak, is good; a potentially equally good steak, badly cooked, badly cooked can be just a shoe sole. Things pushed rapidly typically have issues, even when potentially they are extraordinary good and life changing for good. That's is. Pushing a good thing sometimes is needed because people tend to be reactionary, just think about the history of potatoes in Europe where at first no one want them fearing they are bad, poisonous etc and only after a massive campaign of military goes through the countryside dropping potatoes around showing how easy they grow, then coming back collecting them and eating them remaining perfectly alive, satisfied and healthy change the game. In the meantime some get seriously ill for having eaten potatoes left exposed at sunlight tough. People need a tool, an incentive but also time to understand it before profiting.

>normally we have aside a physical local social life

A normal physical local social life is dramatically smaller in quantity than the working day. Meeting friends for meals or weekend activities does not really make up for being alone 9-5 Monday-Friday. And it is pretty hard to activate people on weeknights after 5-7 hours of Zoom.

That's one of the reason we (humans, in various countries around the world) actually push 4 days workweek especially since the evolution of productivity and actual natural resource scarcity.

It will take time, of course, but that's the good target we can tray to reach, in the end basing social life around work is not that good for many reasons, specially when you do not like much a colleague but have to work with him/her etc.

I think if you procrastinate at the office you have less of a bad conscience when you head home.

OTOH when you procrastinate at home you end up working late to make up for it.

If you're not mentally in a good place, WFH combined with social isolation (lockdown) can be a pretty brutal combination. If you think you'll thrive more in an office job, go find one! The increased social opportunities and separation between work and home are beneficial for lots of people.

You might also consider if you're in the right job. If you're not given engaging work, you don't care about the company's goals, and you're not being monitored/managed properly (due to WFH) it's easy to procrastinate. First step would be to discuss this with your supervisor, but changing job to a more interesting one, even if it pays less, might help.

I personally spend less hours working but doing more when at home. I first thought it was procrastination until I measured my output and noticed that I was being far more effective and doing work in maybe 50% of the time so I can just take days off.

hi @tluyben2, what is the nature of your work and how do you measure your output?

Oh yes, I struggled with this a lot. I started working full time remote about 4 years ago, then decided after a couple years it wasn't for me, and swapped to a short lived office job as the quarantine happened. It's only in the last few months I've been able to go to an office.

The problem, for me at least, is that my brain doesn't want to swap to "work mode" when I'm at home. I can do it for the short term but over the long term I really struggle with focus at home.

How did I cope with it? Well, sad to say, I never found anything that completely worked. Outside of lock down I'd go work in a coffee shop and that was my most productive time. Now, going into the office, it's crazy how productive I am compared to when I'm at home.

I think all you can do is try to trick your brain into work mode. If you have space (which I didn't), a dedicated office that you only use for working is one approach. Only enter that room 9-5 when you're working. Other people have similar tricks. Prior to lock down, at least half the remote engineers I was working with had co-working offices they'd go to.

Another trick I used was to have a dedicated pair of noise cancelling headphones just for working, and use them at home just like I did when in the office. This seemed to help quite a bit.

I will say though that the flexibility of working from home is wonderful. But I never feel quite as productive work wise.

When covid started, I was working for a different company that was traditionally 100% in the office. When we switched to work from home, the number of meetings doubled/tripled and I was definitely procrastinating more. It felt like there was no point starting anything because in 1 hour I'd have a meeting. And that statement was true the entire day. It was really hard to force myself to work during those 1-2 hour gaps between meetings.

I switched to a startup that's fully remote and it feels much better now. I went and traveled east from the regular working hours and started work at 12 instead of 9. Then I spent the morning surfing/snowboarding (depending where I was). By the time I came back, I was physically exhausted but mentally prepared to work.

I realized, for me, I procrastinate when I have too much physical energy. I wanted to get up and move around rather than sitting and coding. Maybe that could help you?

I find more meetings empowers you to decline them. The more you decline them the quicker people realize your time is important. People at meetings need to be there to contribute and not be passive unless it’s a one off all hands. If you need status then emails. Don’t waste my time, your time or company’s time.

I work from home as a freelancer. As a freelancer I can decide to stop working when the job is done. This is completely different when you work for a boss. Then you start 'spreading' work over 8 hours per day. When you are in a office you don't notice this much because you have interaction with colleagues. But when you are alone at home you might start to wonder: why am I sitting behind my screen all day while I can do this job in 4 hours or less.

And as others comment: the pandemic is also what influenced your mood. You sound a little down. And I think that is normal because most restrictions during the pandemic were very destructive for society.

One fix for procrastination is to think about the first step for something you would like to do. Do you want to go walking outside: the first step is to put shoes on. Start doing only that and the rest will follow.

Can I ask, how do you find work as a Freelancer? Generally I find a majority of companies are looking for FTE workers and often its hard to negotiate to work as a contractor/freelancer on a role that's advertised on a job board.

What works for me best is to tell people what I do. This includes family and friends. Most of the time someone knows someone who needs a custom webapp.

Sometimes you can also join a business club in your community. This sometimes costs money but this can be a good investment.

And the most important: deliver good work. That will spread the word.

Majority of companies are looking for contractors. Which is pretty much the same as a freelancer. FTEs are still a thing in a lot of companies because the company enjoys maximum control over them, fluffing it up with a bunch of fake benefits that contractors supposedly don't get. It's psychological manipulation to make the lowest paid micromanaged people think they are getting the good deal.

If you’re overwhelmed seek comfort in the fact that if you do something then you have taken a step forward. Start with small reasonable things that take ten minutes. They give you the energy and motivation to do the big things. Eventually this builds into self control and organisation which allows you to do the huge things.

When you get demotivated and start procrastinating look back at what you did to remind yourself what you can do.

Oh and write lists. Lists are cool. Don’t procrastinate by spending ten hours reading HN trying to find some list software though; just use whatever you have on your phone already (I just use reminders on iOS). Don’t use some outliner software on a PC because you need that on you all day every day.

@uuyi thank you, starting with a small reasonable task or things that take ten minutes seems to be a good trick. I will try this.

Whenever I start my day, I try to finish some of the complex tasks right away, thinking the rest of my todos are easier. Then I would find myself spending time on other things distracting myself from being overwhelmed, and ended up achieving nothing or incomplete work

It definitely has, mainly because I lack motivation for my work (very underpaid, boring tasks, temp contract). At the office there was more social pressure to do something other than reading the news, and I got some enjoyment from random discussion with co-workers. Now all that's left is endless boredom and apathy. I also struggle to separate work from my personal life due to living in a small apartment, I definitely could use a separate room to use as home office.

I believe WFH would work great if my job was motivating and I could afford a proper house with clear physical boundaries between work and leisure. Small apartments are absolutely depressing if you have to spend nearly all of your waking hours in them.

Probably less productive on an average day, but it’s also far saner for my mental health if I’m having an off day to be able to do less vs being forced to be at a desk in some office.

As a result I have more high value deep work days where I can get difficult things done.

The biggest thing is being able to proactively manage my own burnout without a manager physically breathing down my neck.

It is however easy to slip into multiple unproductive days and it takes conscious effort to get out a funk.

Lol, I used to be a workaholic. Now for some reason I hate working. Barely work an hour a day (unless I'm oncall). Still haven't been fired.

Same

No. Procrastinating is mostly a function of whether I want to do the thing.

A working environment where you set your own rules is an ideal breeding ground for bad habits to fester and take hold, you just have to develop new strategies to counter this.

I have found that maintaining a daily routine is an effective way of dealing with procrastination. I still get those moments of thinking I should be wasting my time rather than doing something productive but knowing that it is only an hour until lunch, or 2 hours 'till nap time helps me push thorugh the tedium.

I have also found that anything that requires creative thinking is best done early in the morning and simple mechanical stuff late in the afternoon.

My easiest rule to adhere to, and my one concession to my procrastinating alter ego, is that from 12 noon until 2pm I can do what the hell I like.

> I have also found that anything that requires creative thinking is best done early in the morning and simple mechanical stuff late in the afternoon.

Note that this varies from person to person. I have the opposite polarity to you: it takes me a few hours in the morning to get out of the mechanical crap stage, and I hit my coding flow in the latter half or two-thirds of my workday.

The important thing is for each of us to figure out what works individually and plan around that. I am fortunately able to have most of my meetings in the morning, for example, where they don't interrupt my creative time.

WFH actually helps with healthy procrastination. Sometimes I just need to think a bit while washing the dishes or even take a short nap.

There's no secondary task at work to help me rest my mind a little, nor a comfy sofa to get some rest.

Naps are natural and super important. Me not being able to crash on the couch for a while isn't helping anyone.

As my procrastination is mostly anxiety fueled, I have more ways to cope at home than in the office.

In the office I would end up browsing social media to distract myself while at home there is lots of things to do from listening to loud music to just walking around, doing the dishes, stretching, going for a brisk walk and so on. It is way better.

This also helps with my creativity as sometimes the best ideas come when I do house work. The best way to solve a problem is sometimes not found starring at a screen but when you allow yourself to relax.

No! On the opposite: I try to do the work quickly so I have more time for my hobbies. It's fantastic!

On the other hand, when I'm in the office, I'm a bit depressed and feel like a powerless slave, just can't wait to be free. Fortunately my companies has an elastic WFH policy but I'm not sure how long it will hold.

I've been working mostly remotely for the last 10 years, I think if I remember correctly the only jobs I had an office at that I had to be physically present at were my very first job that I got immediately when I started attending university (held it for two years), and then half a year as a research assistant at the same university to bridge the gap between my 2nd job (that was already fully remote, as a research assistant) and my 4th job when I got my bachelor's degree.

All others have been remote (with a few days/year spent at the office at most). I like to think that I'm more productive at home because there the way I show my work is to actually produce visible results instead of being at a certain place for a certain amount of time. It's IMHO way easier to goof off at the office.

Just a datapoint. No, I procrastinate less now. My tip is to schedule remote co working, even if you are not working together, just talking to someone- planning your work and help them plan their work and end of day check etc has helped add structure better than onsite.

Sometimes, but that was primarily because the job was very dull and didn't actually require much work. I would some days do absolutely nothing and it wouldn't matter at all (and I stopped feeling guilty before too long because I was being paid so little). When I was working from the office I would usually be motivated by people being around and fill those gaps of boredom with extra work, but when working remotely I realized how pointless that busywork was.

I got a new job around 6 months ago, and now I feel more productive than ever because it's interesting and fulfilling.

I procrastinated more at the office. There was always a time to go and play some ping pong with the mates, now not so much. It's non stop work except for lunch and maybe 10 mins during the afternoon.

I really only have to go to the office once every month to regain my apprecciation/motivation for working at home.

And that is at like 5% occupation. Can’t imagine how horrible it’d be when everyone moves back to the office.

I apparently had someone hotdesk in my spot (fair, it’s a kind of nice one, with a ultrawide screen near a window with a view), but when I saw someone had rearranged the stuff that had been in the same place for the previous 2 years, I found out how much I absolutely loathe the idea of anyone doing that.

I struggle with procrastination in general, but yeah, working from home started out great for me for lack of noisy colleagues and diversions, but ended up making me feel lonely and unmotivated and messing up my daily rhythm. So I decided to go back to the office with the other people that feel likewise or have some obligations there and I really like it. Thankfully the office is still pretty quiet, so it's kind of the best of both worlds for me.

In my case not at all. While it is true that I may do laundry between meetings, even have a power nap, in the end I have more energy for the demanding marathon of work.

One more important thing: I thrive in the environment were important things are written down. In my world it eliminates the power of "popular" people and cliques who work via "charming" and "politics".

Yeah, I haven't been remote working but I tried working from home before with that result. Now I know I have ADHD.

Absolutely. April 2020. Lost the job because I couldn't do anything but go from my bed to work, no gym, no social, no stimulation from life. Somehow writing React components that render react components didn't suffice. Also I didn't respect my manager. But now it's better because I can do those things.

Absolutely not. I am definitely more productive working from home, at least 40% more. Whenever I go to the office, I spend at least half of the day in random off-topic conversations (where people talk to me while I’m trying to focus and write some code). Getting into the flow is almost impossible in the office.

Not my experience at all. I am way more productive working from home. My home office is setup the way I like it, no interruptions from nice but noisy coworkers, the ability to cook healthy meals instead of buying expensive crap etc. I will not accept working for a company without a flexible WFH policy.

Not really.

But I transitioned into it from a one year sabbatical in 2014.

The job I had before was full-time employment in an open office. I never procrastinated more in my life.

Currently, I'm self-employed and work from home. Now, I simply work explicitly less and take time off more often, so the procrastination turned to something more enjoyable.

Not work, but university. I had nearly failed my first year at it, it was fully remote. I could not focus at all on the lectures or my homework, I've spend the whole year on my phone.

Now that we get some stationary lessons, it's going better, and I've got some contact with my peers.

Wouldn't call it procrastinate. but I do play a game of dota2 every now and then. Then again, I still put in more hours than the contract says, so...

> put in more hours than the contract says

This is the exact opposite of procrastination.

No, it makes me more productive. I only go in for whiteboard design sessions and that forces decisions. I also get to avoid busy work and time wasters.

> I always feel overwhelmed, and basically, I don't have the energy and excitement to do the things I should do in life.

Who says you should do them?

No, even though it feels like it would. At home, I need to pretend working much less, which feels less like working.

I began WFH in October, 2018. At first it was a bit disorienting, and I found myself struggling with anxiety about my performance. Instead of "enjoying" and 8-hour day (minus a commute), I began working 10-12 hour days so I would feel productive. Even that wasn't enough - I kept slogging through, working on weekends, etc.

Eventually, I began to understand "remote culture" and that just because I was seeing others doing stuff, asking questions, committing to repos, etc. at all hours didn't mean I was expected to be "up and working at all times".

Once I made my peace with things, I began to see what advantages WFH brought. Once I understood what I really needed to be working on, I found that the quiet of my home office made me much more productive. I bought a standing desk (and, yes, YMMV) and it's been a great way for me to focus, especially early in the day.

There are still some advantages to going into an office. Two that stand out to me are: • Early planning meetings where it's much more productive to brainstorm/whiteboard together. • Water cooler conversations. Yes, you can still connect with your co-workers remotely, but it's a lot less organic.

TL;DR - Yes, there are times I find myself justifying running personal errands or other stuff that ends up deferring (procrastination of) the things I need to accomplish for my team/employer. However, I've learned that I'll feel much better about myself and work product if I'm "diligent enough" to do just that.

Downvoted because some people want to downvote reality and prefer remote work, i suppose.

I have been working remotely for years, at first it was hard, until I found a routine and stuck to it.

My issue is that I can't seem to ever stop thinking about work

@johndavid9991, do you work from home alone?

@pgt, yes, throughout the pandemic, I work from home alone. Before that, I worked at the office for more than 8 years

quit. If I'm not mentally engaged I bounce. just left a 6 figure position 2 weeks ago.

I'm seriously thinking about doing the same thing. Seems really dumb financially though... did you save up a ton? I actually just got promoted and get paid well but somehow not engaged mentally at all. Everything big is done and it's just fixing smaller issues and implementing tedious things. And support.

Yep, pomodoro technique rules.

Yes.