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This week we are going to focus on the most relevant topic for a lot of people right now: working from home/remote for the first time, and dealing with it. We’ll talk about setup, some tips and tricks we’ve learned over the last few years, and also staying sane when the news isn’t.
Links for this Episode:
- Logitech Ergo K860
- Logitech MX Ergo
- REMOTE: Office Not Required
- The Essential Ergonomic Gear (Wirecutter)
- 7 Rules for Remote Work Sanity (Opensource.com)
- Mitchell & Webb – Working from Home (NSFW)
Thanks for this! I’m trying to set up work-from-home and went from working at the kichen table because it gave a separation between work-computer and fun-computer, to just setting up at my home desk and swapping out computers when I clock out because we’re clearly in this for the duration. This was also exactly the wrong time to kind of need a new desk chair. Does anyone have recommendations for a good one? Preference for no arms or fold-away-able arms, <=$200ish though I could go up to $300 for something ideal. I was going to be good and actually go out and sit on chairs to test them and find one that fits my particular backside, but that's evidently not going to be an option for a while. :-/
On the business-clothes question, I will add a recommendation that even if it's totally fine for you to work in your pajamas, at least put on *new* pajamas or comfy sweats or whatever. As someone with depression who has a tendency to sink into the bad kind of rut with no external structure, it really helps me just to mark the new day with new clothes.
I wanted to say that Ursula talking about her med refills at the beginning of this episode prompted me to call my one doctor about the same and I’m very glad I did because it turns out that they’re closed (with an answering service) and I have to call a slightly different number for refills when it comes time, so thanks for that! Also, last episode I was laughing about some of Ursula’s discoveries of how non-ADHD and/or medicated ADHD brains work and it was wonderful and felt similar to things I’ve thought and things I’ve seen friends diagnosed with adult ADHD go through
My boss decided to schedule social meetings 3 days a week in Teams. They’re scheduled for periods where were normally slow and would be chatting anyway, so they work out. We all turn on our cameras and just talk.
My terrible dark humor caused me to email my therapist who has been working with my on agoraphobia and tell him he’s gonna be a lot busier. (And asked to do the next visit by telephone.)
So much for “hey, you need to find that boardgaming cafe”.
I know it’s fun to rag on bosses and complain about micro-management, but this time is really really hard for us. We’ve got bosses too and they need to know that we’re all still working and there are no problems in the department. At the same time, we’re trying to make sure that all of our leaders and their teams are healthy and sane with all the equipment and human contact they need.
Throwing in multiple stand ups and alignment meetings in a day, and reporting isn’t always micromanagement. A lot of the time it’s about making sure multiple small teams are aligned and working strongly together and we can’t do that without some structure.
It’s been an interesting week. I’ve spent 99% of my day in video chats making sure the department is happy and that we’re all aligned together and have made more speeches than Commander Sinclair in Series 1 of Babylon 5.
Remember, your bosses are going to be losing it too and no-one looks after them. If anyone wants a Zoom call to talk about coping strategies, happy to make myself available.
Be kind.
I feel so bad for my supervisor right now. She’s having to juggle the needs of all her employees, completely re-think how our department functions and come up with virtual engagement strategies (we work in museum programming and outreach), finish a major grant proposal that the organization decided needed to be done NOW, push through the re-hiring of one employee (one co-worker is technically a temporary employee and has to be “hired” every year), plus she’s got two young kids at home AND her husband is a public school teacher. I have all the respect and sympathy for her!
Hi Kevin, I’ve been saving up badge codes for a while, and when I put them in today I got a really weird glitch. After I put the first code in, Episode 130, I got one notification email. After the second I got two notification emails. After the third I got three. Etc, etc, until I received nine for the ninth (Episode 138). It didn’t cause me any problems since gmail just stacked each set in its own conversation, but I thought you might want to take a look.
Thanks!
Well that’s odd. I’ll see if there are updates to the plugin that sends the email. Sorry!
Badge code for ep 139 didn’t work, “no access at this time”.
I screwed up the release time on the badge. It is fixed now.
This might be helpful for some folks… free webinar training on working from home.
https://ca.ctrinstitute.com/working-from-home-during-covid-19/
re: reading horror for stress relief in difficult times — for other delicate flowers like me who are bad at being scared, I recommend reading ancient history as a calming thing during times of duress. With the context of 2020, your imagination will provide the emotional context of living through a plague and civil unrest, but closing the book and going out into a present that at least contains germ theory, antibiotics, the internet, relatively accurate meteorology, and highly effective worm medication (even if these things are not equitably distributed) makes a person very kindly disposed toward the Sumerians, the ancient Egyptians, the Olmec, etc. None of this is new and we’re still just mammals doing our wobbly best.