Nrwl has been primarily a remote company from day one, and in the wake of the pandemic, there are many other companies now joining us. We have found that when working with our clients, we already have the remote work expertise and insights that we can share with other teams. Here are some tips for anyone looking to tune up their remote work experience.

Favor video chat for open discussions

Slack and email are great for asynchronous communication. Allowing your team to respond at their leisure gives them control over their schedule, which can help people get more deep work in and increase their productivity. But it’s easier to get on the same page as your colleagues quickly when you’re talking in real time. At Nrwl, we often favor hopping on an impromptu video call over messaging — especially for brainstorming, pair programming, and debugging sessions. There’s just no replacement for a face-to-face conversation for this kind of nuanced problem-solving.

Invest in the right equipment

It probably won’t come as a surprise that there’s a lot of folks at Nrwl who are passionate about tooling. We have a slack channel entirely devoted to WebStorm tips, and a discussion about keyboards is never far around the corner. As professionals who spend so much of our time interfacing with our computer workstations, good ergonomics is crucial. If you work 40 hours in a week and sleep for the prescribed 8 hours a night, you’re spending about 36% of your waking hours in a week at your desk. It’s absolutely worth spending some time researching and investing some money into a sustainable ergonomic set up, even if you’re expecting to return to the office within a few months.

Try tracking your time

When you’re working from an office, interacting with colleagues helps you remember when to take breaks or head home at the end of the day. Many people find that when they start working from home, they miss those environmental queues and don’t have as clear of a sense of how long they’ve been working.

At Nrwl, we’re big believers in measuring anything you want to understand and improve. The more info you have, the better you can assess where adjustments can be made (if you’re interested in this idea, check out the book Measure What Matters). We use Harvest to track time we spend working with clients, but a time tracking tool can also be useful as an indicator for when it’s time to get up and enjoy a few minutes of sunshine outside. Taking regular breaks and having a clear stopping point at the end of the day can improve your mental health.

Keep improving

After working remotely for just over two years, I’m still constantly adjusting my routine to find ways to be healthier, more productive, and communicate better. Keep working on your routine and when you find something that works for you, share it with us!

As always, if you are looking for enterprise software consulting, training, and support, you can find out more about how we work with our clients here. We’re always happy to support our clients to use Nx or Nx Cloud. Just ask us!

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