Remote Tips: Remote is Exhausting

Creating the right working environment

• Everyone should have a good audio headset with a directional mic.
• Establish boundaries and transitions: separate work from life by carving out a dedicated workspace and find ways to remove it from your vision while not working.
• It’s OK for family and pets to appear in your video; we’re all human.
• Introduce variety: work from different parts of the house.
• Turn off notifications.
• Try Krisp, a video conferencing add-on that mutes not only your background noise, but also that of everyone else on the call.

Looking after yourself and each other

• Schedule breaks.
• Stretch, dance, or take up bird watching!
• Spend time outdoors, exercise, or have exercise breaks with your team.
• Stay hydrated!
• When on break, allow your eyes to rest at a distance.
• Stay connected with friends, family and community.
• Block time for personal care.
• 🔥 Monitor your potential for burnout using Burnoutindex.org.
• Take an occasional “mental health day.”
• Help each other and keep each other accountable.
• Ask each other the right questions.
• Discuss in retros how to support each other and reduce fatigue.

Setting a routine

• Make time for breaks, planning, reflection, and team social time (e.g., take 10-min break for every 80 minutes of work; Mary needs to deal with childcare at 3 PM every Wednesday, so plan meetings around it).
• Having a fixed working routine helps you to maintain and manage your energy levels.
• Use a timer to help plan breaks.
• Find ways to mark the start and end of your day (standups/catch-ups); daily stand-downs might help to shorten standups.
• Replicate your commute to punctuate the transition from home to work by doing something relaxing and fun before work, and clearing your workspace at the end of the day.
• Don’t go straight to work after you wake up.
• Keep regular times for meals.
• Experiment with different ways of working to find out what’s best for the team; not everyone shares the same peak hours of energy and focus.
• Designate a pair of engineers as the “interrupt pair” at the start of each day to lower the cost of interruptions and minimize the need for conversations, decisions and context switching.
• Respect the routine, but experiment with change.