100 days of home office - a recap

Introduction

On March 16th 2020 our office officially closed. Everyone had to work from home. Since then I have been working from home, round about 100 days.

This is a little recap on what worked well and what did not.

Context

I live in Berlin and we are very fortunate to have a small garden and balcony. In my free time I like playing online games. My setup at home was pretty decent already, a good chair, a very good screen (4k, 60Hz), a small office, no kids.

Sorting things out

The first days and weeks where mostly about figuring things out. How to separate work and life, how to live healthy, how to distribute information and how to stay connected to friends and family.

Work life balance

In uncertain times strict schedules help me a lot. This was task one. Start working at 9.00, lunch from 12.00 to 13.00 o'clock, end of day at 17.00. To end the day I did some sports (running or yoga).

The strict schedule frees up my mind and I can focus on other tasks. A clear start and end helps to get into work mode and out of work mode.

With the regained time of not having to commute (about 1 hour a day) we started cooking more and decided to go with HelloFresh.

Work and distributing information

The actual work and processes we have in our team did not really change. We extended our standup by 20 minutes to compensate for the morning coffee we used to have. Our virtual coffee break is for all topics, off topic, private chat, work stuff anything that is on our minds.

Our nice scrum board at the office got retired and the work is organized with JIRA. We have a lot more comments now on our tickets. This ensures information does not get lost or stays between two people.

Living healthy

• Tracking calories
• Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
• Enough and good rest
• A bit of sport

That's about all I did.

Keeping in touch with family and friends

My family does not live in Berlin. So it involves travelling which we did not do. Over the time parts of the family came to visit us in Berlin. A vacation where we will see my brother is already planned and booked.

We spend one week of vacation visiting some friends not too far away. This was time very well spent.

Till now, this area of life we did not figure quite out yet. Things are calming down and we will see how to improve here. Of course you can always have a call, but still, kids grow up fast and it is always nice to meet and have some time together.

What did not work so well

Overall things worked out okay. The main parts I will change in the near future are

Private life

To end every work day with some sport is really nice. But we did not manage to keep up with it. Once you start slacking it is really hard to get back into it. The plan now is to not be too ambitious and start with 2 days of sports every week.

At work

Staying in contact with people from other teams is not easy. If you have dependencies on each other it is easier. If not, you have to call them and just chat. This part I have been missing out on and will get to more often.

Things I can recommend

A few things that I really like in my home office setup. For the sound and video you can check a blog post from Scott Hanselman. It is a very good starting point.

Height adjustable desk

This is the one item that really changed working from home for me. In the morning I enjoy my coffee, prepare the day while sitting. In the afternoon I work standing up. Keeps your mind fresh and helps with your posture.

A decent webcam

When you do a lot of calls, a decent camera gives people looking at you a more face to face feeling. With the build in notebook cameras it is easy to be looking down on people.

Microphone / Sound

Make sure your sound setup is good. Meetings with bad sound quality are very hard to follow. Test how your voice sounds to others. MS Teams and Skype have a recording function to test what you sound like to others. Make sure you do not annoy people with our sounds for incoming mails or other notifications.

Thanks for making it this far

There are still a lot of things to improve. Overall I am happy and will ensure that future work is possible to do from home.

Feel free to reach out if you have questions or feedback.