# How to work from home

When you first started working from home, one of the first things you notice is that there's almost no outside influences on your schedule.
You probably have meetings, some over [team chat](https://opensource.com/alternatives/slack) and others over [video](https://opensource.com/alternatives/skype), you have to attend, but otherwise there's nothing requiring you to do *anything* at any specific time.
What you find out pretty quickly, though, is that there's an invisible influence that sneaks up on you: *deadlines*.
This can be a dangerous combination. 
It fosters procrastination, sometimes willful and other times aimless, followed by frantic sprints to get something done.
Learning to mitigate that, along with all the distractions working from home might offer, is often the hardest part of your home-based work.

## Reactive schedule planning

Everybody reacts to schedules differently.
For some people, schedules offer guidance and comfort.
For others, schedules are rigid and oppressive.

An office space generally provides focus.
There might be plenty of distractions at the office, but you usually find a good stretch of time at some point during your day when you can get a big chunk of work done.
Even in an office, though, each person actually keeps their own schedule.
Your colleague might arrive early in the day, happily completing a day's work in an empty office before anyone else arrives and then spending the rest of the day doing menial tasks and socializing.
Another colleague might arrive late and leave early, maximizing time spent in the office for actual work.
Still others follow a steady pace throughout the day.

For the first week or two at home, you should treat yourself (and your remote team) as a new hire.
Instead of trying to mimic or impose the same schedule you kept at the office or at school, take time to monitor your own activity.
It takes time for your body and mind to establish new and comfortable habits, and if you're the kind of person who wanders into a routine, then you need to give yourself time to discover what those are.
For instance, if you're consistently finding that you do your best work just after breakfast, then relegate menial tasks (like responding to email, or reviewing tasks, or triaging bug reports) to the early morning, and make sure you have a big task set up for after breakfast.
If you're having a hard time maintaining focus, then make time for morning tea so you can relax, re-assess your workload, and plan your next step.

Take notes, either mentally or physically, on what seems to work well for you.
If you like formalized systems, then build a schedule for yourself after a week or two, based on what you've been doing naturally.
If there's something that just isn't working for you, then drop it from your schedule.

Once you've found a good rhythm for yourself, you can manage your day with a [to-do list](https://opensource.com/article/19/9/to-do-list-managers-linux) like [todo.txt](https://opensource.com/article/20/1/open-source-to-do-list), or if you prefer sledgehammers (or you actually manage a department), you can try a [project management](https://opensource.com/article/18/2/agile-project-management-tools) application.

## Stay flexible

Not everything on your schedule is under your control.
If you have children too young for school, or else they're home from school, then their schedules take precedence.
It's a perceived benefit of working from home that your schedule is more flexible than at an office, but with that assumption there can sometimes come a little guilt.
You might feel you're not working "enough" because you have to stop to wake up and feed children, or because you have to take a few play breaks every now and again.
That's mostly illusory, though, and if you just swap out "children" for "manager", you might remember some times at the office where your "real" work was interrupted because you had to entertain upper management with sparkly presentations, or HR with piles of paperwork, or colleagues with chats by the water cooler.

Your work from home is no different.
There are plentf of distractions, and they're only a problem if you fail to acknowledge and manage them.
Unlike at the office, you're not forced into a 9 to 5 structure, so if your day has to start at 7 AM, contains a lot of breaks, and doesn't end until 7 PM, then that's alright as long as you define that as your schedule.
Pick your start and end times, establish break times with your housemates, whether they're children, spouses, pets, or just mates.
Work when you're supposed to be working, and don't work when you're not scheduled to work.

If you've got a very young child who's not given to staying on any schedule, then you might have to stay more flexible than most, but it's important to at least establish times you stop thinking about work, no matter what.
Give yourself permission to actively be inactive.
Do something you enjoy, even if it feels unproductive.

The goal is to recognize when you're at home and when you're at work.
Finding stuff to do at work is relatively easy, but sometimes finding things to do to relax can be hard.

If you have children, you can collaborate with them using Scratch for [drawing beautiful art](https://opensource.com/article/19/9/drawing-vectors-scratch-3), [programming video games](https://opensource.com/article/18/4/designing-game-scratch-open-jam), or even [robotics](https://opensource.com/education/13/8/student-programming-scratch-and-finch).
For the times you're not necessarily looking to collaborate and need your little one to do some exploration of their own, there are some [great open source alternatives to MineCraft](https://opensource.com/alternatives/minecraft), too.

If you're interested in getting away from the screen, though, you might try some [Arduino](https://opensource.com/article/17/3/arduino-garden-projects) or [Seeeduino](https://opensource.com/article/19/12/seeeduino-nano-review) gardening projects.
Start with some programming, and end up outside in the garden!

## Change is good

Humans don't generally love change.
We're primarily creatures of habit, so moving from an office into a home office can be upsetting.
And yet invariably, we've shown that change can be exciting and even good.
Few people would willingly revert to technology from even 2 years ago, much less 5 or 10.
If we embrace change in technology, why not embrace it elsewhere?

When you work from home, you should be willing to explore change.
If you find that a meeting time doesn't work for your schedule, mention it to your team.
It may not work for them, either, and moving it to a different day could mean making room for a work sprint that knocks out a good chunk of your work for the week.
If you find that a tool isn't working out for you, find a different one.

In fact, some of the most productive people I know are constantly evaluating new applications and new methods of working.
They're constantly learning new things, developing new skills.
They don't do this because they need the new skill, at least not by the letter of their work contract, but learning new things often reveals a surprising applicability to something they *do* need.
Tinkering with a Raspberry Pi for fun could result in a home server running [useful apps](https://opensource.com/article/20/2/newsboat) to help you stay informed. 
[Learning](https://opensource.com/article/19/9/introduction-markdown) how to [write in Markdown](https://opensource.com/article/18/11/markdown-editors) could introduce you to a new and more efficient workflow than you ever knew possible.
Setting up a [computer with Linux](https://opensource.com/article/19/9/found-linux-video-gaming) could reveal a new world of open source software that changes the way you approach problems, and improves the methods you use to solve them.
The possibilities are limitless, but if you don't know where to start, you can browse through some of our articles or [cheat sheets](https://opensource.com/article/20/1/cheat-sheets-guides) for ideas and tips.

## Working from home

The habits we've built up around work aren't always healthy, or efficient, or fun.
If you're starting to work from home, though, it's a chance to reinvent what work means for you.
Keep the lines of [communication open](https://opensource.com/article/20/3/open-source-working-home) with your colleagues, embrace new ideas and the potential of change, and discover how you can be more productive by enjoying yourself and the place you call home (and ``/home``).