Category: WFH Tips

Graham’s WFH Tips – Some Advice for a Changed World

I’ve worked in a hybrid way for many years. Some days I would be in the office, at others I would do work from home or another location.

My work is now, almost exclusively, done from an upstairs room at the back of my house. I work from home, I don’t “work from home (with a knowing nod and a wink)”, work is the place where I do work.

There are certain things that I do to maintain my productivity and retain my sanity. I figured that it was about time I shared some of that advice, and thus a new series of posts was born.

There’s a huge debate going on at present about the value of working from home, most of this is mired in ignorance and mistrust, although some of it is raising genuine concerns. I’m not aiming to get into all of that because my hope if that it will work out, in time, as people find ways of working that are right for them and their organisation. I’m writing these posts from the perspective that people are going to be working from home, that change has already happened, it’s not a new thing. What they want is to be the best at working from home that they can be. If I can give some tips that help some people along that journey then I will count that as a success.

All of these tips, I’m sure, will have been covered by someone else in a far more erudite way somewhere, I’m not claiming any ownership of them. I will try and link to other more detailed material, but I can’t guarantee that I know where the advice came from.

It might help you to know what kind of work I do, from home, and the type of challenges that I face. Some of the tips are particularly relevant to my context, so may not be as relevant to yours.

I’m an IT Architect which means that I take business needs and translate them into designs that other people build. My current, extended, team is international with members in every continent apart from Antarctica, we are resident in over ten different time zones. I’m regularly in conversation with people at +12 hours and -8 hours from my UK location. Adjusting for daylight saving time, summer time, can be interesting as some people go one way and others go in the opposite direction, on different dates. All of the people in my management chain are in a different time zone to myself. There are many things that I can do without meetings, but I spend a significant amount of my week in meetings.

That’s probably enough for now, I’m sure more will come out as we work our way through the tips.

As we start off on this journey I’m reminded of a quote:

Advice is like snow – the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

As I put this advice out there, I leave its landing to you.

Here’s are links to the first few:

Header Image: This is Crummock Water, it’s a swimming favourite. It’s not quite local, but is local enough that we can go as part of a day trip.

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