Tips and tricks for working remotely

[kate.merriman]

Hello Autodesk community!  Do you have tips and tricks about how to survive and thrive while working remotely?  Share them here to help those who may be struggling with working from home for the first time or for much longer periods than normal (now that companies are helping slow the spread of COVID-19 by requesting or requiring employees to work from home).

What keeps you motivated, connected and feeling well?

What technologies are you using to stay productive?

Share your thoughts, both silly and serious and let's get each other through it!

[kate.merriman]

Staying connected - 

Our team has set up some Zoom meetings without formal agendas to just chat and socialize, stay connected with each other in ways we might have in the coffee room.  We talk about what we ate, how things are going with our families and point our cameras at our cute dogs.  It definitely helps my sanity.

I'm also using this time to gain better empathy for the Community Team members who work remotely all the time!  I hope I'll learn ways to be a better teammate for them in future.

[diana.yr]

Distractions!

I've heard from a lot of people that they get distracted working at home. For me, I've taken to making sure I do not sit in my bedroom and work, so my mind can kind of distinguish between sleep versus work environment. I don't keep the TV or radio on, I do tend to play a lot of Spotify playlists of more instrumental, lo fi beats or jazz for studying do it best for me - upbeat but not too intense OR too slow. 🙂 

Before I was at Autodesk I worked remotely for about a year with another company not based anywhere near me; Weekly blue jean check ins on Monday mornings were key for us to staying on top of things going on, as well as just having virtual 1 on 1 check ins to stay in touch. Communication is BIG when you're not together with your team!  

Also - keep some snacks year, TAKE YOUR BREAKS and try to get outside or do something else for lunch so you're not feeling TOO confined or stuck. 

[scott-sheppard-autodesk]

Some teams keep a Slack channel open that they are all members of and converse interactively throughout the day as if they were in the office. This requires less bandwidth than having a Zoom meeting open all day.

[scott-sheppard-autodesk]

If you have family or others at home, it's best to isolate yourself. I am lucky in that our spare bedroom is my office. I can close the door. I ask my family members to treat me as if I am in San Francisco. In other words, don't come to the spare bedroom and ask me things that can wait "until I get home from work."

[diana.yr]

Yes!! I always had a hard time with people/family coming by and just starting conversations or asking my help with something and had to consistently remind them "I'm on the clock!!"

[patrick.emin]

Hi, on a lighter note, because life continues in this difficult period, I found those tips for remote workers amusing... and true.

[christopher.coumbe]

It's not distractions that bother me at home, in fact it's an awful lot quieter at home than in the office! The thing that I notice is the lack of movement I get when I work from home. When working in SR I probably average 6000 steps a day, when working in SF I can easily beat my 10,000 step goal.... but at home I am lucky to beat 500. So.... lunch breaks will become walk breaks....unless I borrow one of those treadmill desks from the SR office 🙂 The message is, be mindful of movement throughout your day!

[shaan.hurley]

How I cope with working remotely is making sure there is some music. The music helps calm the mind in times of anxiety and stress. 

Also, reach out to others and talk whether digitally in text, but even better is a rare thing called a phone call to a loved one to check in with them.

[MarkGunnAutodesk]

I've found these two links excellent for corona dodging, a lot of good stuff in there.

• Transitioning to distributed teams in a time of crisis (John O'Duinn)
• Remote process and rules (Kristian Segerstrale)

Mark.

[AllenJessup]

For some the challenge is more of a technical one rather than a motivational one. While I have worked at home on consulting jobs I did it only through email.

My employer has very little opportunity to work from home. If you need access to our network. It's a long process for IT to get you set up. I believe that they have to come to your home to set up equipment. There's also the question of what computer you have. While I have a Mobile Workstation that will handle the AEC Collection. I doubt many of our Engineers would have adequate  hardware. So while we could all use MS Office at home. Not many could do any design work.

Our state DOT is trying to put together a list of their employees computers but I don't see them progressing quickly.

This should be a learning experience for the future. Things need to be in place before a situation develops. I spent 2 years on a committee dealing with Y2K. Nothing can be slapped together overnight.

[tori]

We just posted 11 WFH tips on our internal site... we'd love to share it here.

1.  Find a space where you work best and make it yours. 

Surprisingly, our surroundings have a lot to do with our productivity running the gambit—depending on the person—of facing a certain direction while they work or being surround by certain colors or amount of space. For some, it’s just having the area well organized and clean. Find a space that works well for you and work in that same space each day. If possible, have the space separate from your living area so you don’t end up feeling like you’re always at work even when you’re done.

2.  Communicate expectations to anyone who will be home with you.
Make sure anyone who will be at home with you (spouses, children, etc.) understand what you need and when you will be off limits during the workday.

3.  Get started early. 
Transitioning from pillow to computer without the benefit of the work commute can be difficult. Simply getting a project started first thing in the morning can be the key to making progress on it throughout the day.

4.  Structure your day and stay on schedule. 
Segment what you'll do each day and when during the day and then calendar it so you know what to shift gears.

5.  Take a walk.
It’s easy to get so focused on a project or deadline that you lose track of time, especially when there aren’t people around you heading to lunch or grabbing a coffee as a reminder. Make sure to take breaks throughout the day that don’t involve a computer or screen. Take a walk; it also helps you unravel complex problems by taking a moment to step away from it and let your subconscious do the work.

6. Don’t like your background? 
Don’t like your background from home in Zoom meetings, change it to something fun (Ferris wheels, Caribbean beach, whahaveyou). It’s a great ice breaker.  You’re sure to get comments. (In Zoom, go up to the zoom.us menu and click preferences, then virtual background.)

7.  Celebrate your wins. 
At the end of the day, take a minute to focus on what you’ve accomplished.

8.  Interact with others. 
Things can get lonely and isolating quickly when working at home. Make sure to interact with others via Zoom or family in your home during the day when you take breaks, and make plans for the evening to be around another human. 

9.  Keep yourself visible.  
Check in regularly with your colleagues and managers.

10.  Over-communicate. 
When you’re working at home, chances are, much of your communication is happening via email and Slack. It’s easy to misinterpret tone through these channels and consequently be misunderstood. Take extra time to fully explain what you have to say and always reread your message for tone before sending.

11. Keep growing. 
When working at home, it’s easy to feel you’re working in a vacuum. Set up meetings with colleagues to get their input and pov, join groups to learn something new, and do anything else you can think of to stimulate new thoughts and ideas—preferably with other humans.

[Jason.P]

Music and schedule are key for me. I do not like how quiet it is at home, so music that is motivating to work to helps me a lot. I will not get into what my play list is, but variety is the spice of life. I also try to keep a schedule like I would at work. Work start at this time, take a break at that time, lunch, work break done. Oh and chat with others from work, drop a line on teams and see how everyone is doing, or better yet make a phone call. 

Good luck to everyone and I look forward to hearing what everyone else does and will do in the coming weeks. 

[Mistress0fTheDorkness]

I've been working from home partially since about 2007 and fulltime since 2016. 

I used to try to keep to a schedule religiously. 

But, now I've found I work more productively with being as random as my mind wants me to be. 

If I wake up at 4:30 in the morning, I'll log on and get work done. 

Get the kids up and out to school. Run some errands when the stores are totally quiet (morning rush hour is perfect for seeing next to no one). 

Back home to work for a couple hours. 

Take a break and get dinner started and chores done, then log on again after dinner to plow through a bit more. 

Working 8-10 hours in a single block kills me, but, breaking it up makes it seem like not as much work. 

My client actually mandates that all of our calls be video calls, which I think is great. Helps to show peoples' personalities, and now with more people working from home on the main campus, we've got talking points like 'oh, JJ, your art on the wall looks like Melanie's!' or see when each others' pets come up to snuggle them. 

My first FT at home job with InfoNarus, we felt alone because we mainly kept to our own projects at first, so we started a morning meeting with video in order to feel that team togetherness and just run down projects we were working on, so when problems shake out someone can say 'oh, I had that on my last thing, let me send you my code'. 

Now, I've been at this long enough, my kids know when they can bother me and when not. When I have meetings, I have a chalkboard sign on the front door, so their friends know not to knock... so, they knock on the playroom window and one of the boys will come out and let them in with a SHHHH. 

Oh, and as for noise, I play reruns of tv shows or movies I've seen a lot. I need the background noise, but, don't want something that will distract me too much.

lol Patrick's link makes some good points. I like to wear tank tops and comfy clothing at home, so, I have had to become mindful of camera angles (but, seriously, if you don't like it, move me off screen, I've got the important bits covered). My company store actually sells the laptop sliding camera covers. But, I turn my camera off when I need to... the icons are pretty clear to me. 

[leowarren34]

Whilst I'm not at work yet, I'm still at college, I know I'm going to get set work from teachers so my general method for anything at home is:

30 mins of solid working, or more if I get into a groove, music on in the backgroup (no lyrics = no distractions imo) then take a break, grab a drink, do that a few times. Have an hour off or so for lunch, play games, talk to friends on Discord, then back to work. I like to change my setting every so often so I walk about the house, garden if sunny and use my bike (on a stand) to get some exercise in.

More just keeping busy and varied so boredom and burn out don't set in. When family are home, I'll avoid them when I'm working so no distractions. Just avoid being that caveman and isolating yourself. 🙂

Clothing is also important. I'm an outdoorsy type of person so I have nice paramo fleece which regulates tempertaure well so I'm not getting uncomfortably warm. Open windows and fresh air can also help.

Wish everyone the best!

[cbenner]

Gooooooood morning Autodesk Community!  😄

I found a couple of good articles on accessing Vault and opening Inventor files through VPN, for those who are considering doing some work from home for a while:

Support for opening Inventor files through a VPN connection

Which ports needs to be unblocked on a VPN Router to allow a Vault client to connect?

Good luck!

[cbenner]

Another good one:

Troubleshooting client connections to Vault Server through a VPN (Virtual Private Network) or to the...

[wittenb]

What a great post Kate, thanks for this first of all. Your post was shared also inside our Autodesk Ambassador Hub and so here we go.

Today we just got the information, that the schools will be closed in Germany for the next 5 weeks (3 weeks + 2 weeks vacation), so the kids are remote as well and have to work for the school.

I used to work remote, cause the community I am working with is remote as well. So this is nothing new. And the community was and is my motivation to work. I get so many energy out of that group of nice people.

We are using our hub as the main technology. Besides that I use Zoom, Teams, FaceTime, WhatsApp.

It is always good to see always the positive side in everything. This time it is scary and also since yesterday my brother is one of the coronas and he will make it. People try to do their best and think ahead. I am thinking especially about the people who are really scared, like the "older" guys, so in my flat a lot of them are living here. Even our 3rd grandma (selected by my son) is almost 80. I stay at home and hopefully I will not infect someone, if I will get it.

A thing is, that we all take more time to talk with people. The world is so fast and it is good to take the phone and talk with someone or have a Zoom call, like I had with 2 amazing Student Ambassadors on Thursday. Greatings to Salai and Leo.

We will make it through this s**t, for sure. 

[dan.stine]

I co-authored this Enscape blog post with detailed tech tips for AEC :professionals: https://enscape3d.com/community/blog/working-from-home-tips/

I also wrote this blog post, sharing my experience teaching remotely at University: https://bimchapters.blogspot.com/2020/03/teaching-remotely-architecture-and.html

[dan.stine]

Oh, and if using Microsoft Teams, the Blur Background tool is great for hiding distractions, especially while at home, if you don;t have an office space:)