For lots of people, this is the first time in their careers they are working from home. Home can be a wonderful place to focus, shut out noise and do your best work. It is also very easy to get sidetracked or slide into habits that wreck your work/life balance. Forgetting lunch because a spreadsheet has your full attention is as hard to avoid as spending the whole day in pyjamas.
So you stay safe and stay in touch with your colleagues, we are passing along a few habits we rely on when we work remotely. Consider this a quick TunnelBear guide to working from home.
Stick to a regular work schedule at home
It is tempting to treat a work-from-home day like a day off. There is no commute, everything you love is within reach, you can sleep late, and you hardly need to get dressed or leave bed. In reality, plenty of people struggle to work without a firm schedule. A day or two may feel like fun, but once it stops feeling like work, actually getting things done becomes hard.
“Get up and stretch your legs regularly”
A fixed schedule makes the day feel like a genuine workday. Rising at your usual hour and getting dressed for work puts your head in the right place to get things done.
Keep to that schedule all day long, too. Skipping breaks and working through lunch is a trap that is easy to step into. Stand up and stretch your legs at regular intervals so you do not spend the whole day hunched over the keyboard.
Create a dedicated work area at home
We cannot emphasise this enough. Set aside a place just for work, and put it as far from the rest of your belongings as you can. A dedicated workspace helps you switch into work mode, and it also lets you step away from work when the day is over.
In the same way a regular schedule does, a separate space splits work from home life, which is tough when both share one roof. A spare room is ideal. In a smaller place, try working at the kitchen table or counter, and keep the living room and bedroom for after hours.
Stay in touch with coworkers
Keeping up with your workmates keeps remote work social and enjoyable. Plenty of free communication tools are available. When you need to pass sensitive information to teammates, an encrypted messaging app is a smart choice.
For a casual chat or a virtual get-together, video calls grow more popular every day. Quality is excellent and most services cost nothing to join, though free plans frequently limit how long a call can last. That rarely matters for a friendly catch-up, but for bigger meetings a paid account may be worth considering.
“If you have regular video calls, make a space with good lighting, and no distractions behind you”
A quick pointer for frequent video calls: pick a spot with good lighting, a plain wall behind you, and no window at your back. A tidy backdrop keeps everyone on the call looking at you rather than your overflowing laundry basket.
Securing your home network for work
Everything is ready. Your morning coffee is poured, the desk is arranged just how you like it, you have scrolled through your favourite subreddit, and work is about to begin. One catch remains: your home network. Even with a password on it, or a limit on which devices may join, your data still crosses thousands of kilometres of unfamiliar network infrastructure on its way to the office.
TunnelBear is a solid way to keep your online activity safe. With your connection encrypted, anyone sharing or watching your network, your ISP included, cannot see which sites you open or record your browsing habits. Advanced research, medical and legal staff are only a few of the fields where VPN use has been growing.
How to share your encrypted work files
For one more layer of protection, lock your shared work files in an encrypted locker before sending. A good choice allows you to send large files at no cost, with the contents encrypted before they leave your computer.
You can also send files to contacts through encrypted messaging apps. Many cost nothing and follow a "zero-knowledge" design, meaning the provider learns neither what you send nor who receives it.
Another route, suited to files of any size, is anonymity-focused file sharing, provided your coworkers are fine with the tooling. It needs a little setup, and the files can only be opened through a privacy-preserving browser. But when security matters most, it helps keep your data protected.
Staying safe
For now and the foreseeable future, staying home helps protect you, your colleagues and those around you. Working from home takes some getting used to, but after a while you will see why the vast majority of those who tried it say they would rather work from home, at least part of the time.
We hope these tips make working at home more comfortable and pleasant. Remember to take breaks, stay in touch with others, get outside and stretch your legs often, and most of all, stay safe.
Sincerely,
