Difficulty: 1
How-To: Set up a spot in your calendar 10 minutes before every new hour. Stand up, take a break, enjoy yourself for a few.
Remote work can be awesome.
It can also be super difficult.
Here are 40 habits to help you crush working from home:
Difficulty: 1
How-To: Set up a spot in your calendar 10 minutes before every new hour. Stand up, take a break, enjoy yourself for a few.
Difficulty: 1
How-To: In a meeting or taking a break, you need to move those joints. Stretch out, stand up, do jumping jacks, go jousting, whatever.
Difficulty: 1
How-To: I know it's cliche, but this makes a difference. At the very least put on some gym shorts.
Difficulty: 1
How-To: Paging Captain Obvious: your body needs sunlight. Take a walk or go grab lunch. This will energize you more than you think.
Difficulty: 1
How-To: Yes, that Dominos looks delicious. No, it doesn't belong at your desk while you Zoom with your team. Separate your living space from your work space if possible.
Difficulty: 1
How-To: You can use a guided app for this, or just close your eyes and breath at the top of every hour. Take a moment to reset your mind and dive back into the next task.
How-To: This is more for your sanity than your productivity. You'll probably do a lot of repetitive tasks when working from home. Set aside time to learn about something that interests you. Treat yourself and grow in the process.
Difficulty: 1
How-To: Doesn't matter if this is Taylor Swift, Binaural Beats, or the Phineas and Ferb soundtrack: listen to music that energizes you (especially at the beginning of a new task.)
Difficulty: 2
How-To: You'd be shocked how many times you subconsciously check Twitter per day. Set limits on when and how you can browse certain sites. I use Opal for this, but there are tons of other options.
Difficulty: 2
How-To: We don't take enough full days off from work. If you can manage to take a day off per month just to recharge, you'll be able to do effective work much more consistently over time.
How-To: Figure out when you are most energized during the day. Schedule your biggest and most important tasks for that time. Do the same for your least energetic times of day. Schedule repetitive work for these times.
Difficulty: 2
How-To: Set a north star for each day that clearly tells you "If I accomplish X, today will be a good day." Meet that standard daily. Do more if you can, do the minimum if you can't do more.
Difficulty: 2
How-To: This will improve your communication. Zooms and Looms will sound better, look better, and make you feel a little better about hopping on calls all day. This also dramatically improves the quality of your recordings.
Difficulty: 2
How-To: Don't just schedule meetings. Schedule your tasks. If you have to write a blog today, create a task on your calendar and block out the time you need. For best results, don't deviate from the time you set.
Difficulty: 2
How-To: Give yourself time to catch up with...you. Ask what went well last week. Ask what was tough last week. Assess your performance, and make goals for the coming few days. Take notes and keep track of your progress.
Difficulty: 2
How-To: It's not enough to have a to-do list. You have to prioritize the tasks and schedule them accordingly. Do your big tasks in high-energy windows. Make sure you can focus on only that task during that time.
Difficulty: 2
How-To: What you can't touch or see can't distract you (at least as easliy.) Lock your phone away somewhere outside arm's reach. You have enough distractions at home, you don't need one more.
Difficulty: 3
How-To: Focal points are the tasks you need to accomplish this week that tie directly to your core goals.
How-To: These goals may carry over from the past week, and that's OK. What are the 3-5 most important things you can do this week? If nothing else got done but these, you would still feel accomplished. Tie all work back to these goals.
Difficulty: 3
How-To: What are the main projects you know you have to tackle this week? Make sure they tie directly into your core goals for the week. If they don't they shouldn't be included as priority projects.
Difficulty: 3
How-To: Reverse engineer your main projects to find out the tasks that are required to complete them. Plan out a specific time on your calendar to complete each task.
Difficulty: 3
How-To: The actual time doesn't matter. The consistency matters a lot. Wake up at X, start work at Y, and end the day at Z. Every single day.
Difficulty: 3
How-To: Meetings can quickly add up and add stress. Opt to record your thoughts or needs in a Loom video instead. Share the video with whoever needs it. Add to the discussion in Slack instead of Zoom.
Difficulty: 3
How-To: Aim to have at least 2 hours of uninterrupted focus tiem daily. If meetings try to make their way on your agenda during these times, decline them. This time is crucial and it's easy to lose it.
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“We don’t negotiate salaries” is a negotiation tactic.
Always. No, your company is not an exception.
A tactic I don’t appreciate at all because of how unfairly it penalizes low-leverage, junior employees, and those loyal enough not to question it, but that’s negotiation for you after all. Weaponized information asymmetry.
Listen to Aditya
And by the way, you should never be worried that an offer would be withdrawn if you politely negotiate.
I have seen this happen *extremely* rarely, mostly to women, and anyway is a giant red flag. It suggests you probably didn’t want to work there.
You wish there was no negotiating so it would all be more fair? I feel you, but it’s not happening.
Instead, negotiate hard, use your privilege, and then go and share numbers with your underrepresented and underpaid colleagues. […]
Always. No, your company is not an exception.
A tactic I don’t appreciate at all because of how unfairly it penalizes low-leverage, junior employees, and those loyal enough not to question it, but that’s negotiation for you after all. Weaponized information asymmetry.
Listen to Aditya
"we don't negotiate salaries" really means "we'd prefer to negotiate massive signing bonuses and equity grants, but we'll negotiate salary if you REALLY insist" https://t.co/80k7nWAMoK
— Aditya Mukerjee, the Otterrific \U0001f3f3\ufe0f\u200d\U0001f308 (@chimeracoder) December 4, 2018
And by the way, you should never be worried that an offer would be withdrawn if you politely negotiate.
I have seen this happen *extremely* rarely, mostly to women, and anyway is a giant red flag. It suggests you probably didn’t want to work there.
You wish there was no negotiating so it would all be more fair? I feel you, but it’s not happening.
Instead, negotiate hard, use your privilege, and then go and share numbers with your underrepresented and underpaid colleagues. […]
Keep dwelling on this:
Further Examination of the Motif near PRRA Reveals Close Structural Similarity to the SEB Superantigen as well as Sequence Similarities to Neurotoxins and a Viral SAg.
The insertion PRRA together with 7 sequentially preceding residues & succeeding R685 (conserved in β-CoVs) form a motif, Y674QTQTNSPRRAR685, homologous to those of neurotoxins from Ophiophagus (cobra) and Bungarus genera, as well as neurotoxin-like regions from three RABV strains
(20) (Fig. 2D). We further noticed that the same segment bears close similarity to the HIV-1 glycoprotein gp120 SAg motif F164 to V174.
https://t.co/EwwJOSa8RK
In (B), the segment S680PPRAR685 including the PRRA insert and highly conserved cleavage site *R685* is shown in van der Waals representation (black labels) and nearby CDR residues of the TCRVβ domain are labeled in blue/white
https://t.co/BsY8BAIzDa
Sequence Identity %
https://t.co/BsY8BAIzDa
Y674 - QTQTNSPRRA - R685
Similar to neurotoxins from Ophiophagus (cobra) & Bungarus genera & neurotoxin-like regions from three RABV strains
T678 - NSPRRA- R685
Superantigenic core, consistently aligned against bacterial or viral SAgs
Further Examination of the Motif near PRRA Reveals Close Structural Similarity to the SEB Superantigen as well as Sequence Similarities to Neurotoxins and a Viral SAg.
The insertion PRRA together with 7 sequentially preceding residues & succeeding R685 (conserved in β-CoVs) form a motif, Y674QTQTNSPRRAR685, homologous to those of neurotoxins from Ophiophagus (cobra) and Bungarus genera, as well as neurotoxin-like regions from three RABV strains
(20) (Fig. 2D). We further noticed that the same segment bears close similarity to the HIV-1 glycoprotein gp120 SAg motif F164 to V174.
https://t.co/EwwJOSa8RK
In (B), the segment S680PPRAR685 including the PRRA insert and highly conserved cleavage site *R685* is shown in van der Waals representation (black labels) and nearby CDR residues of the TCRVβ domain are labeled in blue/white
https://t.co/BsY8BAIzDa
Sequence Identity %
https://t.co/BsY8BAIzDa
Y674 - QTQTNSPRRA - R685
Similar to neurotoxins from Ophiophagus (cobra) & Bungarus genera & neurotoxin-like regions from three RABV strains
T678 - NSPRRA- R685
Superantigenic core, consistently aligned against bacterial or viral SAgs