[bicx]

I think the key with working from home is learning to set up and maintain boundaries between home life and work life.

I was working from home fulltime for well over a year prior to the pandemic. Prior to that, I went into an open office every day for about 10 years.

Overall, if you subtract the time from a 1-hour round-trip commute, distractions from coworkers, and longer lunch breaks I had while going into the office, I'm definitely more productive at home.

At least most of the time.

Lately, I've noticed that my boundaries between work and home have been slipping. I'm less likely to tell my wife that I can't help her with something in the house during my work hours. I tend to run errands in the middle of the day. I was doing better, but I need to tighten things up a bit. I'm still productive, but there are weeks that could have been "highly productive" but instead started merging into my home life too much.

I'd wager that a lot of people have an ebb and flow in their productivity at home as boundaries become fuzzy and bad habits come and then go as you realize they're having an impact. And while I don't have kids, I can see how having kids would make working from home a huge challenge.

Let's also not forget that 2020 is a steaming pile of shit, and it's had more horrific distractions than any year in recent memory.

[thurn]

Also the personality type matrix of people who chose to work from home is different from the general population -- of course those people have higher wfh productivity. My wife is the most extroverted person I've ever met, so she's going to have a significantly harder time with remote work than someone who self-selected into it.

[tidepod12]

>Also the personality type matrix of people who chose to work from home is different from the general population -- of course those people have higher wfh productivity

My experience is the complete opposite. I spent a lot of time at a very large company that has always had a "WFH if you want" policy. By and large, the highly productive people were doing a hybrid work-from-office 3-4 days a week and WFH 1-2 days a week. In contrast, the people who self-selected into always WFH were almost exclusively slackers who took advantage of the situation to watch Netflix or sit at the pool all day and get nothing done.

I know it's just an anecdote, but I think it's important because this is probably what executives are most worried about. It doesn't take very much effort to find people posting on Twitter that they love WFH during COVID because it means they get to sit at the beach all day. I've got people on my own timeline that choose WFH because they see it as a chance to slack off without supervision.

A single slacker on a dev team of 5-10 can completely ruin the team's output, and (speaking from experience) it's really hard to prevent, oversee, or correct a slacker situation remotely. You might say "then fire them if they're a slacker", but once you're at the point where you're ready to fire them, the damage and lost productivity has already been done.

[kyleee]

Honestly sounds like a failure of management if slackers are able to keep up appearances for long enough to cripple entire team efforts.

[tidepod12]

It has nothing to do with "keeping up appearances". The slackers are easily and quickly identified (usually just from the indicator that they chose to WFH 100% of the time). The problem is that, as I mentioned, it is ridiculously hard to remotely correct a slacker situation even after it has been identified.

[kyleee]

so everyone knows the problem people, but it's hard to sanction/fire them? again sounds like managment/organizational failure. Surely judging performance of WFH employees and making efforts to help them is a surmountable management problem

[tidepod12]

Have you ever worked in a management position at a decent sized company? Firing someone is not an easy task. Unless it's an egregious case (violation of laws/policy, sexual assault, etc), firing someone, even someone that literally produces zero work product, can take months or even a year. That's a slacker that is going to sit on your payroll, disrupting your teams flow, and eating your budget for months/a year while you build your case for firing.

Then, even after you fire them (or let's even say by some miracle you were able to fire them quickly), it costs a lot of money and time to hire someone new. That's yet more time and budget that isn't going into your team, and your team is also a person short while you go through the process of hiring and then training.

It is leagues and leagues better for "the slacker situation" to not be a problem at all, and it is much less likely to be a problem if prospective slackers aren't given the opportunity to slack off at home to begin with.

[bicx]

This is true! I didn't really choose to WFH personally. Instead, the startup I work for decided to ditch the office and go fully-remote. It ended up working out better for me than others, and personality definitely plays a big role.

[jonny_eh]

> I was doing better, but I need to tighten things up a bit

Why is your work more important than your wife? I see it as a feature that when WFH you can help your wife with the odd task in the middle of the day, which you couldn't do at the office.

[flatline]

Healthy boundaries are important in any sort of relationship - romantic, friendship, professional. Sometimes it’s nice to prioritize a family member’s needs over work, other times it’s inappropriate. Just the very act of having to make that decision n times a day can be exhausting.

[bicx]

Ideally yes, this is true. Which is why I actively make that decision at times. However, if I don't make time later to pick up the slack, I don't feel like that's fair to my employer. If it's a quick task, it's not a problem. It's all about having a fair and healthy balance.

[tzs]

Maybe get an analog chess clock, like this [1]. If you want to work 8 AM to 5 PM, set one side of the clock to 8 when you start work and start that side. Let's call this side of the clock the "work" clock.

When you stop work for something that you would not have stopped for if you were not working remotely, stop the work clock. Start it again when you resume work.

Work until the work clock reaches 5.

This might help in a couple ways.

1. It will make you more aware during the work day day how much time you spent so far on non-work stuff. That may make it easier to do things like help your wife or run errands without inadvertently doing so many of those things on the same day that you don't get enough work done.

2. When you do stop work to do something else, knowing that you'll make up the time later that day might make it more guilt free.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/BETTERLINE-Professional-Analog-Chess-...

[cvhashim]

Thank you, this is a great idea. I’ll look into the chess clock.

[UncleOxidant]

Doesn't the blurring of boundaries tend to work both ways, though? Meaning that, sure, you might be running an errand during the middle of the day, but you might also keep working well past your normal quitting time when you were in the office.

> Let's also not forget that 2020 is a steaming pile of shit, and it's had more horrific distractions than any year in recent memory.

I think that this is probably the bigger reason for any productivity hit that might be happening. Let's see how things are after the election (actually, after the inauguration) and after covid is in the rear-view mirror.

[ix101]

The economic uncertainty is quite likely to be a motivator more than a detractor. I.e. remote teams are keen to prove they are working highly effectively in order to prevent being near the top of the list if the company is forced to down-size.

[invalidOrTaken]

The boundaries thing is hard, it can fall out of balance in multiple ways---working when you shouldn't be, or not doing so when you should.

Ebb and flow, indeed.

[gerash]

One upside of running errands in the middle of the day is most businesses close when your work hours ends so taking care of random tasks midday is sometimes the only option