health – Alice, Eve and Bob

7 weird points about travelling again

There’s going to be more travel happening

After nearly 23 months without getting on a plane or leaving the UK at all, due to Covid, I’m back travelling. I had a trip to the US last month, and I’m off there again next week. For the past 10+ years, I’ve mainly worked from home, so not going into an office hasn’t been an issue for me, but the flip side of that is that I rarely get any chance to meet colleagues, partners and customers face-to-face except when I do travel. Before the pandemic, I was generally out of the country once a month – a schedule which suited me and the family pretty well, on the whole – so having nearly two years of minimal external contact has been strange.

I’ve blogged about travel before (see Travelling, keeping well, Travelling and the (frankly ill-fated) 5 resolutions for travellers in 2020) and I quite enjoy travelling, on the whole, though I’m not always good at it, and I don’t really enjoy being away from home (which I know is somewhat strange). As we move into a world where there’s going to be more travel happening, conferences move from virtual only to hybrid or in person and face-to-face business meetings become something closer to the norm, I thought it might be interesting to add some personal thoughts about some points that I’ve noticed, and which might be interesting to those considering travel or elicit comments from those who’ve already started in earnest (or never really stopped).

1. Regulations keep changing

Last month, when I went to the US from the UK, I needed a negative Covid test within 72 hours of arrival. That has changed, in the intervening weeks, to a test taken the day before. You need to be on the ball and work out the very latest regulations not only for where you’re going, but also for any countries through which you’re transiting. If you don’t get it right, you may be refused entry, or have to quarantine, which may be not only disruptive to your trip, but very expensive.

2. Masks are everywhere

This may feel normal now, but the default in most places is “mask on”. I’ve found myself keeping a mask on even outside, if I’m making a quick trip to a store or coffee shop from the office, rather than taking it on and off. It’s really worth packing a good supply of (quality) masks with you, and remembering to change or wash them every day: there’s a difference in wearing the same one a few times for 10 minutes each time to wearing one for several hours. You don’t want to wearing the same one for more than a day if you can avoid it.

3. Airlines have strange rules

Cabin crew are trying really hard, and it’s not their fault that there are new rules which you have to follow. One airline I travelled on last month had a rule that you weren’t supposed to spend more than 15 minutes unmasked to eat your meal. That’s difficult to abide by (particularly when the crew are serving different parts of it at different times) and really difficult to enforce, but I see what they’re trying to do. Stick with it, realise that the crew aren’t doing it to make your life hard or because they enjoy it, and try to have empathy with them. A major tip (whether in a pandemic or not): always be nice to the cabin crew, as they have the power to make life really difficult for you, or to ease the way in certain circumstances.

4. You’ll get paranoid about surfaces

Well, I did. While most of the focus on transmission of Covid is around avoiding airborne particles these days, I became aware that many, many people had probably been touching the same surfaces that I’d been touching, and that some of them were probably contagious. Luckily, many shops and places of work are making hand sanitiser available at the entrance/exit these days. I found myself using it on my way in and the way out. It can’t do any harm.

5. It’s quiet out there

I feel for retail and hospitality businesses, I really do. Getting out and about made me realise how quiet things still are – and a little nervous when I was in environments where it was a little more busy. Don’t expect to see as many people on the street, at the airport, in the malls. They’re unlikely to be empty, but things certainly felt abnormally quiet to me. Be pleasant and friendly to those who serve you, and tip well when you get good service.

6. Colleagues are making an extra effort

This isn’t particularly weird if you work with nice people, but I’ve noticed a trend for people to ask just a little bit more about each others’ health – physical and mental – both on calls and in person. I’ve also noticed more awareness of colleagues’ possible risks, such as elderly relatives or immuno-suppressed close family members, and offers to take particular care or implement specific measures to protect those they work with, whether asked for or not. Long may this continue.

7. Long-haul flights in a mask aren’t fun

Top tip? Buy a couple of “ear savers” for your masks if you’re using the type which sit behind your ears. These attach to the loops and then fasten behind your head, relieving the pressure on your ears. I may have a particularly large head, but I found that even twenty minutes of wearing a mask without one of these started giving me a splitting headache. I ended up fashioning one from pieces of an old mask to save my head until a colleague was able to buy some online. Even with this, I can’t say that it was fun wearing one, and getting sleep was much more difficult than it would normally have been. Beyond ear savers, I’m not sure what to suggest beyond finding a comfortable mask, and making sure that you try it out for an extended period before you travel.

On holiday – no post this week

Next I’ll … have a sleep

Sometimes, it’s time to break the cycle.

I’ve had a crazy week and a half, and I have another crazy week or two coming. Last night (as so often, it seems) I didn’t get as much sleep as I would have liked – for various reasons, the main of which includes an anxious 9 year old basset hound – and I have a busy day. So many important things to do. And they’re all important, and I need to do all of them. Of course. That’s what I’ve been allowing my brain to tell me, anyway.

So far, I’ve had breakfast, brushed my teeth, shaved, put the washing out, seen two kids off to school, got dressed, and walked the dogs with my wife (who’s about to head off to spend a couple of days with family – she’s been busy, too). I could (should?) get right down to the work that I need to do today. That’s the work that I’ve not already looked at – emails, documents, spreadsheets. It’s just gone 8am, and I don’t officially start my work day till 10:00am (I allegedly finish at 6:00pm).

But I’m going to have a sleep – just an hour, probably no more. The mountain of work (as it seems) isn’t going to go away, but it’s not going to get appreciably worse. And if I don’t take a bit of time, it’ll feel worse, I’ll probably do a worse job of managing it, and I’ll feel worse. An hour, I know, will make all the difference.

The fact that I can do this is one of the benefits of working from home. I’m not going to say “temptations”, because I don’t see it as a bad thing. This is partly because I’m not sure it would be as much as an issue if it weren’t for the fact that I’m working from home in the first place. There’s no easy dividing line between work and home, and there’s no commute to force me to take some time out and do something else, either. I can (and do) start checking my email at 6:05am, and only stop at, well, far later than I should have done. To be claer, I’m not asking for sympathy, but trying to identify the problem, own up, and encourage other people to take it seriously, too.

Sometimes, it’s time to break the cycle, or just realise that a cycle is about to start. We don’t want to be grumpy (grumpier?) with our family, or quietly seethe at our colleagues or work acquaintances, or resent the people on social media who seem to have it all covered (they don’t, at least most of them). We need to take a break, and that’s what I’m about to do. I have work support, and I don’t need to do everything myself, right now. It’s time for a sleep. See you in a while. In fact, do tune it next week: there will be some exciting news.

Eat, Sleep, Wake (nothing but…)

At least I’m not checking my email every minute of every hour of every day.

If your mind just filled in the ellipsis (the “…”) in the title of this article with “you”, then you may have been listening to the Bombay Bicycle Club, a British band. I’ve recently seen them live, and then were good – what’s more, it’s a great (and very catch) song. “You” is probably healthy. If, on the other hand, your mind filled in the ellipsis with “work”, then, well we – or rather, you – have a problem.

When I wake up in the morning, one of the first things I do – like many of you, my dear readers, I suspect – is reach for my mobile phone. One of the first things I do on unlocking it is check my email. Specifically, my work email. Like many of us, I find it convenient to keep my work email account on my personal phone. I enjoy the flexibility of not being tied to my desk throughout the working day, and fancy myself important enough that I feel that people may want to contact me during the day and expect a fairly quick reply. Equally, I live in the UK and work with people across CET (an hour earlier than me) to Eastern US time (5 hours after me), often correspond with people on Pacific US time (8 hours after me), and sometimes in other timezones, too. In order to be able to keep up with them, and not spend 12 hours or so at my desk, I choose to be able to check for incoming emails wherever I am – which is wherever my phone is. So I check email through the day – and to almost last thing at night.

This is not healthy. I know this – as do my family. It is also not required. I know this – as do my colleagues. In fact, my colleagues and my family all know that it’s neither healthy nor required. I also know that I have a mildly addictive personality, and that, if I allowed myself to do so, I would drown in my work, always checking email, always writing new documents, always reviewing other people’s work, always, always, always on my phone: eat, sleep, wake…

In order to stop myself doing this, I make myself do other things. These aren’t things I don’t want to do – it’s just that I would find excuses not to do them if I could. I run (slowly and badly, up to 5 kilometres) 2-3 times a week. I read (mainly, but not exclusively, science fiction). I game (Elite Dangerous, TitanFall 2 (when it’s not being DDoSed), Overwatch, Civilization (mainly V, Call to Power), and various games on my phone), I listen to, and occasionally watch, cricket. And recently, I’ve restarted a hobby from my early teenage years: I’m assembling a model airplane (badly, though not as badly as I did when I was younger). I force myself to take time to do these things. I’m careful to ensure that they don’t interfere with work calls, and that I have time to get “actual” work done. I keep block of time where I can concentrate on longer tasks, requiring bouts of concentration. But I know that my other work actually benefits when I force myself to take time out, because a few minutes away from the screen, at judicious points, allows me to step back and recharge a bit.

I know that I’m a little odd in having lots of activities – hobbies, I guess – that I enjoy (I’ve only listed a few above). Other people concentrate on one, and rather than interspersing blocks of non-work time into their day, have these blocks of time scheduled outside their core working hours. One friend I know cycles for hours at a time (his last Strava entry was a little over 100km (60 miles) and a little under 3 and a half hours) – an activity which would be difficult to fit in between meetings for most working routines. Others make the most of their commute (yes, some people do commute still) to listen to podcasts, for instance. What’s in common here is a commitment to the practice of not working.

I realise that being able to do this is a luxury not shared by all. I likewise realise that I work in an industry (IT) where there is an expectation that senior people will be available at short notice for many hours of the day – something we should resist. But finding ways of not working through the day is, for me, a really important part of my working – it makes me a more attentive, better worker. I hesitate to call this “work-life balance”, because, honestly, I’m not sure that it is a balance, and I need to keep tweaking it. But at least I’m not checking my email every minute of every hour of every day.

Masks, vaccinations, social distancing – and cybersecurity

The mappingn the realms of cybersecurity and epidemiology is not perfect, but metaphors can be useful.

Waaaaay back in 2018 (which seems a couple of decades ago now), I wrote an article called Security patching and vaccinations: a surprising link. In those days, Spectre and Meltdown were still at the front of our minds, and the impact of something like Covid-19 was, if not unimaginable, then far from what most of us considered in our day-to-day lives. In the article, I argued that patching of software and vaccination (of humans or, I guess, animals[1]) had some interesting parallels (the clue’s in the title, if I’m honest). As we explore the impact of new variants of the Covid-19 virus, the note that “a particular patch may provide resistance to multiple types of attack of the same family, as do some vaccinations” seems particularly relevant. I also pointed out that although there are typically some individuals in a human population for whom vaccination is too risky, a broad effort to vaccinate the rest of the population has positive impact for them; in a similar way to how patching most systems in a deployment can restrict the number of “jumping off points” or attack.

I thought it might be interesting to explore other similarities between disease management in the human sphere with how we do things in cybersecurity, not because they are exact matches, but because they can be useful metaphors to explain to colleagues, family and friends what we do.

Vaccinations

We’ve looked a vaccinations a bit above: the key point here is that once a vulnerability is discovered, software vendors can release patches which, if applied correctly, protect the system from those attacks. This is not dissimilar in effect to the protection provided by vaccinations in human settings, though the mechanism is very different. Computer systems don’t really have an equivalent to anti-bodies or immune systems, but patches may – like vaccines – provide protection for more than one specific attack (think virus strain) if others exploit the same type of weakness.

Infection testing

As we have discovered since the rise of Covid-19, testing of the population is a vital measure to understand what other mechanisms need to be put in place to control infection. The same goes for cybersecurity. Testing the “health” of a set of systems, monitoring their behaviour and understanding which may be compromised, by which attacks, leveraging which vulnerabilities, is a key part of any cybersecurity strategy, and easily overlooked when everything seems to be OK.

Masks

I think of masks as acting a little like firewalls, or mechanisms like SELinux which act to prevent malicious programs from accessing parts of the system which you want to protect. Like masks, these mechanisms reduce the attack surface available to bad actors by stopping up certain “holes” in the system, making it more difficult to get in. In the case of firewalls, it’s network ports, and in the case of SELinux, it’s activities like preventing unauthorised system calls (syscalls). We know that masks are not wholly effective in preventing transmission of Covid-19 – they don’t give 100% protection from oral transmission, and if someone sneezes into your eye, for instance, that could lead to infection – but we also know that if two people are meeting, and they both wear masks, the chance of transmission from an infected to an uninfected person is reduced. Most cybersecurity controls aim mainly to protect the systems on which they reside, but a well thought-out deployment may also aim to put in controls to prevent attackers from jumping from one system to another.

Social distancing

This last point leads us to our final metaphor: social distancing. Here, we put in place controls to try to make it difficult for an attacker (or virus) to jump from one system to another (or human to another). While the rise of zero trust architectures has led to something of a down-playing of some of these techniques within cybersecurity, mechanisms such as DMZs, policies such as no USB drives and, at the extreme end, air-gapping of systems (where there is no direct network connection between them) all aim to create physical or logical barriers to attacks or transmission.

Conclusion

The mapping between controls in the realms of cybersecurity and epidemiology is not perfect, but metaphors can be useful in explaining the mechanisms we use and also in considering differences (is there an equivalent of “virus load” in computer systems, for instance?). If there are lessons we can learn from the world of disease managemet, then we should be keen to do so.

1 – it turns out that you can actually vaccinate plants, too: neat.

Leaving space, making balance

No substantive article this week.

I had an interesting idea for an article this week (I even took a picture to illustrate it) – but it’s going to have to wait for another time. I’ve got a busy week, and a couple of (non-urgent) medical appointments which have just got in the way a bit. This is one of those times when I’ve decided to set things aside, and not add to my pile of things to do by writing a proper article.

I should be back soon: in the meantime, follow my example and consider dropping a non-critical task and give yourself some breathing space.

Saving one life

Scratching the surface of the technologies which led to the saving of a life

When a loved one calls you from the bathroom at 3.30 in the morning, and you find them collapsed, unconscious on the floor, what does technology do for you? I’ve had the opportunity to consider this over the past few days after a family member was rushed to hospital for an emergency operation which, I’m very pleased to say, seems to have been completely successful. Without it, or if it had failed (the success rate is around 50%), they would, quite simply, be dead now.

We are eternally grateful to all those directly involved in my family member’s care, and to the NHS, which means that there are no bills to pay, just continued National Insurance taken as tax from our monthly pay packets, and which we begrudge not one jot. But I thought it might be worth spending a few minutes just scratching the surface of the sets of technologies which led to the saving of a life, from the obvious to the less obvious. I have missed out many: our lives are so complex and interconnected that it is impossible to list everything, and it is only when they are missing that we realise how it all fits together. But I want to say a huge – a HUGE – thank you to anyone who has ever been involved in any of the systems or technologies, and to ask you to remind yourself that even if you are seldom thanked, your work saves lives every day.

The obvious

The combined ECG and blood pressure unit attached to the patient which allows the ambulance crew to react quickly enough to save the patient’s life
The satellite navigation systems which guided the crew to the patient’s door
The landline which allowed the call to the emergency systems
The triage and dispatch system which prioritised the sending of the crew
The mobile phone system which allowed a remote member of the family to talk to the crew before they transported the patient

The visible (and audible)

The anaesthesiology and monitoring equipment which kept the patient alive during the operation
The various scanning equipment at the hospital which allowed a diagnosis to be reached in time
The sirens and flashing lights on the ambulances
The technology behind the training (increasingly delivered at least partly online) for all of those involved in the patient’s care

The invisible

The drugs and medicines used in the patient’s care
Equipment: batteries for ambulances, scalpels for operating theatres, paper for charts, keyboards, CPUs and motherboards for computers, soles for shoes, soap for hand-washing, paint for hospital corridors, pillows and pillow cases for beds and everything else that allows the healthcare system to keep running
The infrastructure to get fuel to the ambulances and into the cars, trains and buses which transported the medical staff to hospital
The maintenance schedules and processes for the ambulances
The processes behind the ordering of PPE for all involved
The supply chains which allowed those involved to access the tea, coffee, milk, sugar and other (hopefully legal) stimulants to keep staff going through the day and night
Staff timetabling software for everyone from cleaners to theatre managers, maintenance people to on-call surgeons
The music, art, videos, TV shows and other entertainment that kept everyone involved sufficiently energised to function

The infrastructure

Clean water
Roads
Electricity
Internet access and routing
Safety processes and culture in healthcare
… and everything else I’ve neglected to mention.

A final note

I hope it’s clear that I’m aware that the technology is all interconnected, and too complex to allow every piece to be noted: I’m sorry if I missed your piece out. The same, however, goes for the people. I come from a family containing some medical professionals and volunteers, and I’m aware of the sacrifices made not only by them, but also by the people around them who they know and love, and who see less of them than they might like, or how have to work around difficult shift patterns, or see them come back home after a long shift, worn out or traumatised by what they’ve seen and experienced. The same goes for ancillary workers and services worked in other, supporting industries.

I thank you all, both those involved directly and those involved in any of the technologies which save lives, those I’ve noted and those I’ve missed. In a few days, I hope to see a member of my family who, without your involvement, I would not ever be seeing again in this life. That is down to you.

Acting (and coding) your age

With seniority comes perks, but it also comes with responsibilities.

I dropped a post on LinkedIn a few days ago:

I’m now 50 years old and writing the most complex code in my career (for Enarx) in a language (Rust) that I only started learning 9 months ago and I’ve just finished the first draft of a book (for Wiley). Not sure what’s going on (and I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me this 25 years ago). #codingtips #writing #security #confidentialcomputing #rustlang

I’ve never received such attention. Lots of comments, lots of “likes” and other reactions, lots of people wanting to connect. It was supposed to be a throw-away comment, and I certainly had no intention either to boast or elicit sympathy: I am genuinely surprised by all of the facts mentioned – including my age, given that I feel that I’m somewhere between 23 and 31 (both primes, of course).

I remember in my mid- to late-twenties thinking “this business stuff is pretty simple: why don’t the oldies move aside and let talented youngsters[1] take over, or at least provide them some inspired advice?” Even at the time I realised that this was a little naive, and that there is something to be said for breadth of experience and decades of acquired knowledge, but I’m pretty certain that this set of questions has been asked by pretty much every generation since Ogg looked at the failings in his elders’ flint spear-head knapping technique and later got into a huff when his mum wouldn’t let him lead the mammoth hunt that afternoon.

Why expertise matters

Sadly (for young people), there really are benefits associated with praxis (actually doing things), even if you’ve absorbed all of the theory (and you haven’t, which is one of the things you learn with age). Of course, there’s also the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is a cognitive bias (Trust you? I can’t trust myself.) which leads the inexperienced to overestimate their own ability and experts to underestimate theirs.

Given this, there are some interesting and bizarre myths around about software/coding being a “young man’s game”. Leaving aside the glaring gender bias in that statement[2], this is rather odd. I know some extremely talented over-40 and over-50 software engineers, and I’m sure that you can think of quite a few if you try. There are probably a few factors at play here:

the lionisation of the “start-ups in the garage” young (mainly white) coders turning their company into “unicorn” trope;
the (over-)association of programming with mathematical ability, where a certain set of mathematicians are considered to have done their best work in their twenties;
the relative scarcity of roles (particularly in organisations which aren’t tech-specific) of “individual contributor” career tracks with roles where it’s possible to rise in seniority (and pay) without managing other people;
a possible tendency (which I’m positing without much evidence) for a sizeable proportion of senior software folks to take a broader view of the discipline and to move into architectural roles which are required by the industry but are difficult to perform without a good grounding in engineering basics.

In my case, I moved away from writing software maybe 15 years ago, and honestly never thought I’d do any serious coding again, only to discover a gap in the project I’m working on (Enarx) which nobody else had the time to fill, but which I felt merited some attention. That, and a continuous desire to learn new things, which had led me to starting to learn Rust, brought me to some serious programming, which I’ve really enjoyed.

We need old coders: people who have been around the block a few times, have made the mistakes and learned from them. People who can look at competing technologies and make reasoned decisions about which is the best fit for a project, rather than just choosing the newest and “coolest”[3].

Why old people should step aside

Having got all of the above out of my system, I’m now going to put forward an extremely important counter-argument. First, some context. I volunteer for the East of England Ambulance Service Trust as a Community First Responder, a role where I attend patients in (possible) emergency situations and work with ambulance staff, paramedics, etc.. I’ve become very interested in some of the theory around patient safety, which it turns out is currently being strongly influenced by lessons learned over the past few decades from transport safety, particularly aviation safety[5].

I need to do more study around this topic, as there are some really interesting lessons that can be applied to our sector (in fact, some are already be learned from our sector, particularly in how DevOps/WebOps respond to incidents), but there are two points that have really hit home for me this week, and which are relevant to the point at hand. They are specifically discussed with relation to high-intensity, stressful situations, but I think there’s broader applicability.

1. With experience comes expectation

While experience is enormously useful – bringing insights and knowledge that others may not have, or will find difficult to synthesise – it can also lead you down paths which are incorrect. If you’ve seen the same thing 99 times, you’re likely to assume that the 100th will be the same: bringing in other voices, including less experienced ones, allows other views to be considered, giving a better chance that the correct conclusion will be met. You increase diversity of opinion and allow alternatives to be brought into the mix. The less experience team members may be wrong, but from time to time, you’ll be wrong, and everyone will benefit from this. By allowing other people a voice, you’re also setting an example that speaking up and offering alternative views is not only acceptable, but valued. You and the team get to learn from each other, whether it’s when you’re wrong, or when you’re right, but you get to discuss with others how you came to your conclusions, and welcome their probing and questions around how you got there.

2. Sometimes you need to step aside to apply yourself elsewhere

Perhaps equally important is that sometimes, tempting as it may be to get your hands dirty and apply your expertise to a particular problem (particularly one which is possibly trivial to you), there are times when it’s best to step aside and let someone less experienced than you do it. Not only because they need the experience themselves, but also because your skills may be better applied at a systems level or dealing with other problems in other contexts (such as funding or resource management). The example sometimes given in healthcare is when a senior clinician arrives on scene at an incident: rather than their taking over the treatment of patients (however skilled the senior clinician may be), their role is to see the larger situation, to prioritise patients for treatment, assess risks to staff on scene, manage transport and the rest. Sometimes they may need to knuckle down and apply their clinical skills directly (much as senior techies may end up coding to meet a demo deadline, for instance), but most of the time, they are best deployed in stepping aside.

Conclusion

With seniority comes perks: getting to do the interesting stuff, taking decisions, having junior folks make the tea and bring the doughnuts in[6]. But it also comes with responsibilities: helping other people learn, seeing the bigger picture, giving less experienced team members the chance to make mistakes, removing barriers imposed by organisational hierarchy and getting the first round in at the pub[7]. Look back at what you were thinking about the beginning of your career, and give your successors (because they will be your successors) the chances that you were so keen for back then. Show them respect, and you (and your organisation) will benefit.

1 – I think that the “like me” is pretty implicit here, yes?

2 – which, sadly, reflects another bias in the market.

3 – there’s an important point here: many of us older folks love new shiny things just as much as the youngsters, and are aware of the problems of the old approaches and languages – but we’re also aware that there are risks and pain points associated with the new, which need to be taken into account[4].

4 – that really made me sound old, didn’t it?

5 – in large part influenced by the work of Martin Bromiley, a civil aviation pilot whose wife Elaine died in a “routine” operation in 2005 and who has worked (and is working) to help the health care sector transition to a no-blame, “just” culture around patient safety.

6 – this is a joke: if you have ever, ever find yourself in an office or team where this is the norm, and hierarchy shows in this sort of way, either get out or change that culture just as soon as you can. It’s toxic.

7 – I’m writing this in the middle of the UK’s second Covid-19 lockdown, and can barely remember what a “pub” or a “round” even is.

Taking some time

I’m going to practice what I preach, and not write.

I’m going to practice what I preach, this week, and not write a full article. I’ve had a stressful and busy few weeks, including needing to spend some extra time with the family (nothing scary or earth-shattering – we just needed some family time), and I think the best thing for me to do today is not spend time writing an article. Let me point you instead at some I’ve written in the past.

On self-care:

On security:

On trust:

Keep safe, and look after yourself, dear reader!

9 tips for new home workers

Many workers are finding that they are working from home for the first time.

I wrote an article a few months ago which turned out to be my most popular ever, called My 7 rules for remote work sanity (it’s also available in Japanese). It was designed for people who are planning to work remotely – typically from home, but not necessarily – as a matter of course. With the spread of coronavirus (Covid-19), many workers are finding that they are working from home for the first time, as companies – and in some cases, governments – close offices and require different practices from workers. Alternatively, it may be that you suddenly find that schools are closed or a relative becomes ill, and you need to stay at home to be with them or care for them. If you are one of those people – or work with any of them – then this post is aimed at you. In it, you’ll find some basic tips for how to work from home if it’s not something you’re used to doing.

1 Gather

In order to work from home, you may need to gather some infrastructure pieces to take home with you. For many of us, that’s going to be a laptop, but if there are other pieces of hardware, then make sure you’re ready to bring them home. If you don’t have a laptop normally, then find out what the rules are for using your own devices, and whether they have been changed to account for the period when you’ll be working from home. Download and install what you need to do – remember that there are open source alternatives to many of the apps that you may typically be using in the office, and which may provide you with a sufficient (or better!) user experience if you don’t have access to all of your standard software.

2 Prepare

What else do you need to do to make sure everything will work, and you will have as little stress as possible? Making sure that you can connect to work email and VPN may be important, but what about phones? If you have a work-issued phone, and it’s the standard way for colleagues or customers to contact you, then you may be OK, as long as you have sufficient coverage, but you may want to look at VoIP (Voice over IP) alternatives with your employer. If you have to use your own phone – mobile or landline – then work out how you will expense this and with whom you will share this information.

3 Agree

If you have been told that you may (or must) work from home by your employer, then it is likely that they will be providing guidance as to what your availability should be, how to contact colleagues, etc.: make sure that any guidelines are plausible for you, and ask for clarity wherever possible. If you are having to work from home because of family commitments, then it’s even more important to work out the details with your employer. Rules to support this sort of situation vary from country to country, and your employer will hopefully be aware that their best chance of maintaining good output and commitment from you is to work with you, but if you don’t come to an agreement up front, you may be in for a shock, so preparatory work is a must.

4 Educate

Just because your employer has agreed that you should work from home, and has agreed what your work-time should look like, it doesn’t mean that your boss and colleagues will necessarily understand how this change in your working life will impact on how they relate to you, contact you or otherwise interact with you. Let them know that you are still around, but that there may be differences in how best to reach you, when you are available, and what tasks you are able to perform. This is a courtesy for them, and protection for you!

5 Video-conference

If you can, use video-conferences for meetings with colleagues, customers, partners and the rest. Yes, it means that you need to change out of your pyjamas, brush your hair, get at least partly dressed (see some of the tips from my semi-jokey seasonal post The Twelve Days of Work-life Balance) and be generally presentable, but the impact of being able to see your colleagues, and their being able to see you, should not be underestimated. It can help them and you to feel that you are still connected, and make a significant positive impact on teamwork.

6 Protect

During the time that you are working from home, you need, if at all possible, to protect the workspace you will be using, and the time when you will be working, from encroachments by other tasks and other people. This can be very difficult when you are living in a small space with other people, and may be close to impossible when you are having to look after small children, but even if it is just room for your laptop and phone, or an agreement that the children will only come to you between television programmes, any steps that you can take to protect your time and space are worth enforcing. If you need to make exceptions, be clear to yourself and others that these are exceptions, and try to manage them as that, rather than allowing a slow spiral to un-managed chaos[1].

7 Slow down

One of the classic problems with working from home for the first time is that everything becomes a blur, and you find yourself working crazily hard to try to prove to yourself and others that you aren’t slacking. Remember that in the office, you probably stop for tea or coffee, wander over to see colleagues for a chat – not just work-related – and sit down for a quiet lunch. Take time to do something similar when you’re working from home, and if you’re having video-conferences with colleagues, try to set some of the time on the call aside for non-work related conversations: if you are used to these sorts of conversations normally, and are missing them due to working at home, you need to consider whether there may be an impact on your emotional or mental health.

8 Exercise

Get up from where you are working, and go outside if you can. Walk around the room, get a drink of water – whatever it is you do, don’t stay sat down in front of a computer all day. It’s not just the exercise that you need – though it will be beneficial – but a slight change of scene to guard against the feeling that you are chained to your work, even when at home.

9 Stop

Another common pitfall for people who work from home is that they never stop. Once you allow your work into your home, the compartmentalisation of the two environments that most of us manage (most of the time, hopefully) can fall away, and it’s very easy just to “pop back to the computer for a couple of emails” after supper, only to find yourself working away at a complex spreadsheet some two and a half hours later. Compartmentalising is a key skill when working from home, and one to put into your daily routine as much as possible.

Finally…

It’s likely that you won’t manage to keep to all of the above, at least not all of the time. That’s fine: don’t beat yourself up about it, and try to start each day afresh, with plans to abide by as many of the behaviours above as you can manage. When things don’t work, accept that, plan to improve or mitigate them next time, and move on. Remember: it is in your employer’s best interests that you work as sensibly and sustainably as possible, so looking after yourself and setting up routines and repeatable practices that keep you well and productive is good for everybody.

1 – I know this sounds impossible with small kids – believe me, I’ve been there on occasion. Do your best, and, again ensure that your colleagues (and manager!) understand any constraints you have.