Remote-Working

Working remote means I'm on a lot of video calls. I've come up with a bunch of little tweaks to help with attentiveness and mindfulness during the call. It is important to show you're listening. Look at the camera oftenWhen you're in person you look at people's eyes to show them you're listening. Doing that on a video call requires a bit of counter-intuitive body language by looking at the camera. You won't be looking at the person but they'll see you looking directly at them. It's a subtle difference but I've found it highly effective. ...

The United States Postal Service started a new service in April called "Informed Delivery" which promises to e-mail you images of the envelopes of today's mail being delivered. You'll know what important mail is waiting for you in your mailbox even if you're not at home. You'll also know if mail isn't getting delivered to you properly and you can report it to the Post Office with a couple clicks. ...

Instead of talking in a big group we split off into separate channels which is somewhat anti-collaboration. I realized the other day that channels in Slack (or any other group messaging platform) are both good and bad. When there are a small number of rooms it's easier to find a conversation or to be involved in the majority of discussions. As the number of people in the rooms grows, chats become more noisy. The solution is to create another channel - ideally something subject-specific to filter out the noise. There's a counter-effect which is somewhat unexpected - it can reduce interaction between members. ...

Minutes can make a difference. This is something I quickly discovered early on when I started working remote. The granularity of a usable block of time was much bigger when I worked in an office and had a 20 minute commute each way. Unconsciously I believe I felt 15 minutes was the smallest unit of time I could use to create or do something effective. Since I started working remote, I've discovered that unit of time has decreased to something even smaller which is closer to five minutes. ...

Before Working RemoteIn July 2013 I started working remote at Automattic working on the WordPress for iOS app. I was pretty happy with my life at that time and the transition to the new job was not for reasons of disliking my previous job. In fact I loved working for Red Arrow Labs in Milwaukee and it was incredibly hard leaving them. I only left Red Arrow because it felt like Automattic was my unicorn of jobs and I had stumbled upon it by sheer luck. It turns out that I really wasn't entirely happy with how things were going in my life at the time even though the job was great. ...

When I worked in an office headphones were a requirement for me. I absolutely needed them to focus. I really don't use headphones all that often anymore since I started working remote 2 1/2 years ago. Listening to music over decent speakers seemed to be enough. Lately I'm discovering I missed the power behind having the sound close to your head. The past two weeks I've been using my headphones again to help with my attention & focus in the afternoons. My mornings start with using my treadmill under my desk to walk and work. Mid-day when I find my brain wandering, I stop working and do some sort of exercise. Now in the afternoons I'm finding putting on the noise-canceling headphones gives me the boost to wrap up the work for the day. ...

Working for a 100% distributed company presents a number of benefits as well as challenges. One of those challenges is the fear of missing out or FoMO. It is a real thing. The Fear of Missing Out is the emotional stress we can experience when we feel like things that should be important to us are occurring without our observance or involvement. Social media plays an important role in this as we experience other people's involvement in activities that portray a perceived positive impact on their well-being. Even though we know that the world isn't as rosy as is portrayed through these sites, we feel a tinge of jealous a number of times. ...

Just PublishedThe New York Times just published an article on their Well Blog entitled "The Downside of Treadmill Desks". It's an interesting read. The article mentions a study performed by two groups at the Brigham Young University in Utah and published to the PLoS One Journal in April. After studying 75 individuals it was determined that while there is a significant positive health impact on using a treadmill desk, productivity and cognition decreased. ...

Before coming to work for Automattic, I pair programmed a lot. Developers who pair learn from each other in a symbiotic sort of manner. It's definitely a good way to get a project off to a fast start and to come to consensus on design and intent. Once I started working at Automattic, I realized pair programming is less of a reality since we're all in disparate locations across the globe. We tend to use code reviews as our way of pairing together on code and making sure the design we discussed in chat came through properly. We've also done screen sharing but never really felt it was effective. ...

Some people have asked me what it's like working for Automattic. Every employee of Automattic has a different perspective on what it means to work here. Here are a few things I feel are important to me. Work Wherever, WheneverAutomattic is a completely distributed company. We have a headquarters in San Francisco, CA USA but only a small percentage of us work out that office. Most of us work from home, some of us work on the road, others work from a coworking space. Sometimes it's nice being able to change your location once in a while - I pretty much like working from my home office. I like working a regular day, usually 7am - 4pm my local time and I fit some sort of exercise routine in there half way through. We have flexibility to make our own hours and take the time off we need to. We're adults and we're treated as such. ...