Take Control of Working from Home Temporarily

by Glenn Fleishman

Take Control of Working from Home Temporarily is a free book tailored for the sudden onset of telecommuting. It’s our way of trying to help.

We advise you on how to stake out a space to work, how to equip it either with material you already have or what to buy if you can afford to invest in the space. Do you want to stand or sit? (Get a better chair or a laptop or monitor riser.) Should you get an external monitor if you don’t have one? (Yes!)

The book delves into furniture and hardware setup, including the right kind of audio input and output for calls and videoconferencing, as well as looking at security, collaboration, and communication software tools you may be unfamiliar with or might set up for your team or company.

Part of the difficulty in working from home is creating a separation—physically if possible and psychologically—from the rest of your home life. This can take as much effort if you live alone as if you have a partner, roommates, or an extended family. We delve into strategies for staking boundaries, working around others, and trying to communicate limitations to your work that arise from this necessary period of isolation.

For parents, we know that you may have school-age kids at home for weeks or months, and there’s a chapter with suggestions on how to juggle those obligations with your work requirements.

And we remind you to be kind to yourself, take breaks, and not replace an absent commute with simply more work. A little tea or coffee, some stretching, and a brisk walk around the block while maintaining social distancing can go miles towards boosting your mood. This isn’t easy for anyone—it’s OK to admit that.

We’re all navigating this new world together, and we want to help. Author Glenn Fleishman, a veteran freelancer, who has spent the last decade working full-time in a home office, solicited advice from dozens of Take Control Books authors, contributors to the Mac publication TidBITS, and friends and acquaintances who have hundreds of years of collective remote work experience.

If you’re like us—Glenn and Take Control Books owners Joe and Morgen—you feel somewhat helpless in the face of forces beyond our control and with no clear path forward, just that there is a path forward. We contributed our time to this book to provide a little light from our experiences and those of many others who donated their tips and observations.

We welcome your feedback and wish you all the best in managing this transition.

In this book, you’ll learn more about how to:

Stake out a physical space, even if it involves setting up a curtain or moving a bookshelf
Pick or adjust a chair if you plan to sit
Figure out the right mic and headphones or speakers for your needs
Add a monitor for efficiency, or use software to turn an iPad or other devices into a second display
Stand while you work without necessarily investing in a new desk
Set working hours to avoid never being off the clock
Put up a sign or otherwise signify when you’re working to those around you
Invest a tiny amount or a lot into noise-canceling headphones or earbuds
Use videoconferencing to replace meetings and casual conversation you miss from an office
Adjust your expectations and that of your employer to how much work you can produce, initially and in the long haul
Take regular breaks to avoid burnout, but if you get in the zone, you can stay there, too
Juggle the simultaneous burdens of full-time home parenting with home working
Remember to eat lunch

Genres: Nonfiction

66 pages, ebook

First published March 16, 2020

About the author

I started writing as a child and never stopped. I’ve always been interested in what makes things tick and how to explain that. That led to a career as a technology journalist and how-to article and book author. I’ve written dozens of books over my career in some combination of the two.

In the 2010s, I started publish a series of book that combined printing and type history and technology in a variety of ways. These titles include Not To Put Too Fine a Point on It, a collection of essays and reporting; London Kerning, a look at two magnificent London printing collections and the city’s typographical history; Six Centuries of Type & Printing; and How Comics Were Made, a heavily visual history of the production and reproduction of newspaper comics from the 1890s to the present.

I live in Seattle, Washington, with my family, and drink very little coffee.

Reviews

[Amanda McLellan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great tips! Very timely, and helpful to put a framework around this current state of being. Though a lot was 'common sense', I found it helpful to provide a framework, and deeply appreciated that it was free and easily shared with my colleagues.

[Max Rumford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brief but sound compendium of must-dos, some of which I had already incorporated into my newly found WFH. Although it's highly focused on US readers everybody can get the gist and apply one thing or the other.

[Geoffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of good information.

Note: this title has been updated twice since it was published. I started reading version 1.0, continued on verson 1.1, and completed with version 1.2.

[Spike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full of useful tips and meaningful insights. Practical advices. I’ve worked from home for decades and picked up a few useful suggestions.

[Brook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid tips on working from home during this tricky time.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite tip- text housemates so you can communicate without interrupting each other’s work.

[Mark]

v1.3

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good basic recommendations for WFH. But not anything spectacular or inventive, imho.

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing ground breaking. But worth while.