Secrets of a successful shut in | Locklin on science

Secrets of a successful shut in

My bona fides: I’ve effectively been doing the “work from home” thing since 2007. There’s been times here and there where I visit customer sites, or have been traveling a lot, but it is more or less the same thing for 13 years. I’ve helped build a couple of businesses, kept in decent shape, traveled, read many great books, written a few hundred thousand words for the general public, have maintained an active and satisfying social life and many great friendships. I’m no role model, but most people could do worse, and I did it all almost entirely with a 10 second commute from bed to desk. It may be new to you, but you can have a good life living like this. 

First thing: when you get up in the morning, get the fuck up. Then get some exercise. Touch your toes, swing a kettlebell, go for a run, do yoga. Doesn’t really matter what you do; just do something. Get your blood flowing to your brain before you get to work. Some people do their full exercise program in the morning; I train too hard to do that and be productive. So, for me, the mornings are just a little warm up (karate warmup or Farmer Burns, maybe Indian clubs routines), joint mobility (Pavel Tsatsouline and Max Shank routines) and stretching. 

Next thing: get dressed. Take a shower, put your pants on; you’re going to work, so you should behave like you’re going to work as in an ordinary work in the office day. I used to actually put on a tie and sports coat (this was before zoom meetings); it’s the right mentality to overdress when you’re working at home. Sure some of you can get away with doing work in your slippers and sweatpants; you shouldn’t try to do this if you’re new at it. Overdress even if you feel dumb. Put the slippers and sweatpants on when you’re done work.

When you sit down to do work; do your work in a special place in your house. If you’re new to this; take your laptop to a place which you put aside for your work. If you have a family, ideally this special place is somewhere they won’t disturb you much. Key is to pattern match on “this is work” -make all your habits agree with this work mindset. You should not goof off there, or if you do, make your physiology such that it’s different during work time and goof off time (aka standing desk for work, sit down for goof off time). You’re trying to fix your brain to the habit of working there.

Lighting: you need bright lights to be fully awake and at work. Nobody has mood lighting in their office. Factories are brightly lit; not always to view the workpiece; it keeps people alert. Open the windows, buy a corn cob light (google it; corn cob lights are amazing); do whatever needs to be done to have a brightly lit workspace. Not optional; if you try to work in a cave, you’ll be moosh headed and worthless and living a half baked life.

Not goofing off: you’re probably goofing off right now reading this. Don’t do it. Use a pihole if you have to and block off your goof off websites this way. Your brain does need little breaks; get up and walk around. If you have to take breaks using computer or checking social media or whatever; try to use a different device than your work computer. 

Pomadoro: the pomadoro technique is a great tool taught to me by Kevin Lawler. I don’t think it is universally applicable, but it is generally applicable. Anything you’re grinding out; pomadoro it. The little breaks keep you fresh, and the schedule keeps you working instead of getting stuck down the  wiki hole. The other thing that makes it super helpful; the regular interrupts keep you from going down a non-productive direction on your work tasks. 

Not over communicating: slack is sort of useful when your company is 20 people; it becomes unweildy beyond that. If you’re like me, your high impact stuff is small projects that don’t require much collaboration. I check slack and email once or twice a day unless I’m managing people, and have all alerts for these things turned off. For those of you who have alerts on your phone (fools!): those need to be turned off as well. Use the telephone for talking on; it saves lots of time compared to thumb typing on your stupid ipotato. It actually feels nicer too; you get no real human interaction from thumb typing, but voice is …. talking to someone at least.

Keeping a schedule: you need to keep regular hours, and not be on call at all hours of the day and night. If you’re working at home, you should be in front of a computer, working.  If you’re messaging people on slack over dinner, unless you’re C-level (and even then), you’re an imbecile and you have not only failed at your job; you have failed at life. 

One of the most difficult professions is that of creative writer. You’re completely alone with your thoughts; there’s nothing else, no process or outside world to interact with (there are successful team writers, but they’re rare). As such, they really “work at home.” One of my favorite books on this is Pressfield’s War of Art. Everyone who does creative work should buy this book and live his advice. For those who don’t, two takeaways; point your lucky work doodad at yourself to give you power, and say a prayer to whatever gods you believe in (or don’t believe in -Pressfield prays to ancient Greek muses). You’re prepping your brain for work.

Frens: no man is an island, during the imbecile lock downs which will occur in the West in coming months, you may become isolated. There are dozens of free video chat softwares out there if you don’t have a work zoom license you can use; stuff like Kosmi allows you to play games and watch videos together. If you have pals nearby and you/they don’t live with elderly family, you should go visit them; don’t be a covidiot. There’s lots of other stuff you need to get right as well; have friends, hobbies, religion, make your bed, clean your room. You should take care of all that as well. But I figured I’d mention talking to your pals, since sometimes people forget.