I'm going to be moving from a partial WFH to full-time WFH situation in the near future and I'd like to learn from those who have been there before: what works for you or doesn't work in your home office?
I'm going to be moving from a partial WFH to full-time WFH situation in the near future and I'd like to learn from those who have been there before: what works for you or doesn't work in your home office?
For me, having a space that is the dedicated office space is crucial. It's important to me to have the ability to basically quarantine my work so it doesn't bleed over to my home life, and honestly, vice versa. Being able to close the door to an office let's my brain acknowledge that either I'm in work mode or home mode.
Sales guy w/home office 15+ years. Get the right desk/chair. A proper desk and not the trendy way I went.
1. Indiana University library table - antique table where 6 students could gather. Cool, old but no storage so the top gets cluttered since you can't put anything away. Sold.
2. Pop's restored 1956 drafting table. Flatten it and it's a big desk with drawers except you're on a stool and end up hunching over to do work. Current.
Privacy - I close my door but the wife hears my conversations and sometimes calls me out on my standard sales guy embellishments. I also hear her talking to her lady friends.
Motivation - being older I do struggle to be motivated at home. Mail came? Time to walk outside. Let dog out?
100% WFH here.
Positives:
Negatives:
Overall, its not too bad. +10 to the right desk/chair combo. Also, I never noticed how important good lighting is for office work. I have invested a bunch of dollars in good light, and noticed an immediate change in my energy level and less eye strain. Also, I prefer a dedicated workspace. SWMBO can work from literally anywhere in the house, so I think that comes to personal preference.
Taking stock of my setup:
Yep, a good, proper, comfortable desk and chair.
Comfortable regarding temperature.
Big monitor.
Fast internet.
Nice view of the backyard.
Dog.
Also, being at work–no matter where–means being at work: properly dressed and contact lenses in vs. at the kitchen table with the TV on.
Don't let the fact that you are comfortable at home make you think you don't need breaks. Being able to step away for a while can be very important for many people. This is one of the reasons why having the dedicated space noted above is important. There are work areas, there are home areas, try not to mix them.
Be prepared to put a LOT fewer miles on your primary car. You will likely need to pay far more attention to time rather then mileage for oil changes.
4cylndrfury said:Negatives:
- who knew coffee costs money
The one nice thing is that the coffee in the home office is *way* better than the coffee in the regular office.
In reply to Puddy46 :
+1 to that - our office coffee reminded me more of the stuff at the bottom of a parts washer rather than a finely crafted blend of of aromatic beans.
On the plus side, I found out that McCafe medium is actually damned fine coffee and the big cans are not a bad price. I stock up when theyre on deal.
I will second the lighting. I didn't realize how important it was until I bought a 2x4 LED light panel - same size as your basic troffer lights in an office - after the great flood a month or so ago. You'd think that since everything I do is on a computer screen it wouldn't matter, but somehow having the bright and somewhat cool-color light switches my brain into work mode.
I don't really have the space to be able to have two separate offices for personal stuff and work stuff but I do have two separate desks that are at a right angle to each other. Works stuff stays on the work desk, my stuff stays on my desk.
A comfortable chair is pretty important. I've got this wicked gaming thing that has a little slide-out footrest and a lot of adjustability.
I'm on con calls a lot a lot and I don't do cameras. I got a nice wireless gaming headset that has a flip-to-mute microphone so that I always know if I'm muted or not. I put the receiver USB dongle on a long USB extension cord and have it hung up along the ceiling so that I can wander the whole house with it. It makes it a little nicer when I have back to back calls or calls that last for hours. I can step away from my computer and still fully participate while making coffee or whatever.
My wife works from home as well sometimes and I have found that by turning on a white noise generator on my personal computer, I can completely mask her phone conversations. It doesn't fix everything, but it can be pretty useful.
It's also important to make sure that everyone knows the boundaries. Including you. Keep work out of personal time and keep personal out of work time. Yes, you'll bleed a little of both, but that's okay as long as you know you're doing it and you're being careful with it. Too much slacking is bad for the job and too much job is bad for the digestion. The family needs to know that work time means you're basically not there. When I started working from home years ago, my wife didn't work and she was constantly wandering in because she was bored. A little bit of that can be nice, but eventually we worked out a system where if the door was locked, I was working working and if it was unlocked or wide open, interruptions were okay.
Time zone difference from other coworkers....i start earlier and seem to always work later due to this
Puddy46 said:For me, having a space that is the dedicated office space is crucial. It's important to me to have the ability to basically quarantine my work so it doesn't bleed over to my home life, and honestly, vice versa. Being able to close the door to an office let's my brain acknowledge that either I'm in work mode or home mode.
Came here to pretty much say this. If it helps, I also recommend getting ready as if you are going to an office–but maybe skip the shoes.
David S. Wallens said:Also, being at work–no matter where–means being at work .....
I've never worked from home, my son and brother do. Both have showed up in the home office in dress down mode; COULDN'T get their head in the game! Like taking a Karate class not dressed in a Gi. And yeah, if the door is closed I'm not here. Don't knock unless the house is on fire.
In reply to 4cylndrfury :
I'm a fan of the McCafe breakfast blend. It's better than it has any right to be.
My "office" is in our basement but it's really just a cluttered sprawl of my wife and daughter's crafts, which really agitates me. I can have my desk clear and go to WFH and have to move a sewing machine, crafts, cut up fabric, and tons of sewing thread and needles. I've complained about this but nothing is going to change until I kick them out. I'm planning to section off my portion of the basement and make a separate office space. Added bonus: It smells like cat pee/poop because the litter box is in the basement. My final hill I die on is there will be no more cats in my house when this one is gone which won't be too much longer. I didn't mean for that to turn into a rant but I feel better now.
So yeah, separate space and keep others out of it.
I turned my music room into my office back in early 2020. I built my own desk at the height I wanted that was the perfect size to fit in an alcove and I have a really good chair. The most important thing is that I can walk away. The worst part is that there are some big windows behind me so I sometimes get too much light on the monitors.
My wife's home office is at the end of our kitchen. She is surrounded by windows (good), her cats (good) and food (not as good from a snacking perspective). She's also on a desk I built for her, but hers has a lift mechanism under it so she can stand if she wants (tip: Ikea sells the mechanism and it's commercial grade). I'd like to move hers to somewhere else but we don't a lot of spare rooms. She was originally set up in her sewing room but that meant she never wanted to go in there outside work time.
In reply to Puddy46 :
I make my first cup at home but my 2nd cup is the senior coffee at McDonald's. Paying $.86 for a small coffee just feels right.
A lot of good advice here. I will +1 the comfortable chair and proper (for you desk). My company required us to do a WFH ergo assessment. I think that is a really good idea and it has led to me being comfortable working full time from home.
Agree on the car deal, depending on what you do you can re-evaluate what your car needs are. We are a multi car family because we always have been but my truck saw 3,000 miles in the past 12 months, half of them was towing a camper, 30% ish were going to the airport for work trips, and that's not a lot of miles left of general use.
Agree on the separate space too. It is critical for me to be able to have a dedicated work space. I also need some sort of background noise, total silence drives me mad. Lastly watch your health, if you leave to go to work you get what I call "casual exercise". You walk to the car, sit and stand, walk into work, hit some stairs. When I work from home I can walk less than 1,000 steps a day if I don't do something else. In a normal office day I will get 6-8,000 steps and 10-15 flights of stairs just from being in the office. This has kicked my ass over the last 3 years and I have recently recognized it and I am trying to correct, that said you can gain a lot of weight on accident.
The guy that manages the property berkeleyin trashed it and won't clean it up.
I want to get a standing desk. But nice ones are $$$$$$
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