How to Transition to Working from Home Permanently

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Some people loved the opportunity to work away from the traditional office structure during the COVID-19 crisis—the first time nearly every company everywhere on the planet sent every worker that could work away from the office away from the office.

(Amazing how many things weren’t possible until suddenly they were, no?)

However, in all honesty, a lot of people didn’t enjoy the transition away from the traditional corporate office environment. These people may feel utterly despondent if their employers announce that they plan to keep their teams working away from an office environment permanently or for the foreseeable future. And a lot of employers have made exactly this announcement or have begun to bandy about the idea as a possibility.

Sound like you? If so, don’t panic. Don’t immediately begin a job search.

Take a deep breath and keep reading.

Nothing during COVID-19 Resembled Anything Normal

As I mentioned in a previous article, nothing about what you experienced during COVID-19 approximated anything normal—and that includes working from home.

Even if you loved the chance to escape the traditional office during COVID-19 and loved the news that you can keep working from wherever forever (or for now), you’ll likely have moments after the honeymoon period when the new setup chafes a little.

Remember: Every change requires a period of adjustment. All change—even good change—takes time.

How much time? Everyone processes things differently, yet I’d say it took at least six months for many of the people on the FrogDog team to have a better workflow after we transitioned to a distributed-workforce structure a few years ago. We needed a year or more to fully expand into our new setup and grow to truly love it. Even now, years into it, we continue to learn new best practices.

Regardless of how the news about moving away from the traditional office made you feel, if you face working away from the traditional office for the long term—whether that means working from home or working from wherever or a combination of the two—you’ll need patience and time for adjustment.

Take a Moment to Get Set Up Properly

First, figure out what you need in terms of equipment and materials for effective work.

If your company has moved you to permanently working outside a traditional corporate office environment, it likely supplied at least a laptop. Some companies provide other types of technologies in a welcome-aboard packet; sometimes, these tools depend on your specific job within the company.

Yet you may need additional tools to the ones you’ve automatically received. For example, if you need a headset for frequent calls and videoconferences, or would prefer a mouse over the laptop’s trackpad for better ergonomics, or require a second monitor for greater efficiency, your company may provide per-employee budget to help you and all other employees get the technology they need to facilitate productivity.

Further, some companies may offer a one-time budget to accommodate some of the costs of setting up your home office if you need a more suitable desk, filing cabinet, or chair than you currently own. After all, certain furniture works perfectly well for a few hours of work here and there—and not at all for sustained effort.

Also, if you’d like to spend part of the week in a coffee shop or a coworking space, many companies offer a monthly stipend or flex budget for employees to use for these purposes.

If you don’t know whether your company will offer these budgets or stipends, find a gentle and diplomatic way to ask the company’s leadership team or your manager.

Understand and Establish Expectations

Next, ensure you’ve had a solid conversation with your manager or have concrete direction from the company about what it means to work from wherever. Setting crystal-clear expectations sets up everyone for success.

Keep in mind that your company may not know how to get crystal clear or what questions you and the team will have, as the new work structure will be new for everyone in some companies. Cut your company and its leadership team some slack here. Help them identify and answer important questions. Even offer to create a FAQ document that everyone in the company can access and that can get regular updates as new questions and answers arise and get addressed.

At first, you may find that your company has more rules and parameters for you and the team than seems necessary. However, as the new workflow gets more established, everyone will see which rules make sense and which can relax. We had a lot of structure for the FrogDog team at the outset of our transition to a distributed workforce; after everyone had adjusted a bit to our new world of work, we quickly saw which rules and parameters we could jettison.

If certain rules that seem heavy handed don’t relax over time—and by “over time,” give it several months of acclimation—consider gently discussing the situation with your manager or company leadership, especially if you can cite data that shows that everyone on the team works at a high level of efficiency and effectiveness precluding the need for the structure you recommend relaxing.

No Single Rhythm Works for Everyone

All of us saw an onslaught of how-to articles on working from home when the COVID-19 stay-inside restrictions came into place.

Most commonly, the articles recommended that you wear what you’d normally wear for a workday, set and strictly maintain regular working hours, work exclusively in a designated spot in your home, take a proper lunch break, and avoid all in-home chores (such as laundry or making the bed) during your set work day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All the how-to-work-from-home rules and recommendations from self-professed experts made no sense and had no basis during a period when everything had gotten tossed into the air and hadn’t yet fallen into a place where you could sort through it and make sense of the world.

Frankly, the “expert” rules and recommendations don’t even make sense for people who work from home or wherever all the time. I’ve worked from wherever for years and know many other people who work from wherever as well.

And none of us have the same rulebook.

Yes, I personally know people who work from wherever who put on “office” clothes each day, because doing so helps them feel more focused on work. Rock on. And I know people who work in pajama pants all day, too.

I know people who work odd hours or odd days. I know people who work traditional hours, from 8 to 6 p.m., every day with a one-hour lunch break at noon. I know people who structure their day in high-intensity sprints with full-stop breaks to watch television or exercise. And I know people who create an entirely different schedule for their day every single day, depending upon what’s happening in their lives and what they need to get done.

All these options are fantastic options.

If you need permission, here it is: Working from home? Do what works for you. Really.

Only you know what that structure (or lack of structure) looks like. Organizing your day according to your workload and your rhythms and your life is part of what makes working from wherever a joy and a privilege.

Find Your Fun, Friends, (and Family) Again

Before you entered the corporate world and the traditional office structure, you had more say over the structure of your day—even if you had classes, homework, and even work responsibilities.

Entering a traditional corporate environment forced you into a long day in an office—often without a lunch and often for far longer than nine hours a day—bookended by typically long commutes. You no longer had much say in how or when you accomplished what needed to get done. You no longer had much by way of leisure time to maintain hobbies, friends, interests, or even your general level of fitness and exercise. Your social interaction became limited to the other people the company hired, with whom you mainly connected during the company’s designated working hours and in the company’s offices or designated working locations.

And while you may have railed against the restriction, monotony, and feelings of oppression at first, you gradually bent to the yoke. We all did. Before the advent of high-speed Internet and the cloud, many of us had little option but to reshape our lives to fit the traditional office structure.

Yet voila: Rescue is at hand!

Moving from a traditional office to a work-from-wherever transition flips the autonomy-to-drudgery process.

Don’t use the time you save on commuting simply to work more. Similarly, don’t use the time saved by becoming more efficient and effective through working at home—eliminating all the wasted time people spend in offices—to cram more onto your work agenda.

Build and rebuild friendships, find and nurture hobbies, get fit or get fitter, explore new interests, reconnect with your family. New rituals around life rather than work sounds pretty good, right?

Find Common Spirits and Get Experienced Insights

Because nothing will help you with a transition more than hearing from multiple people and multiple voices who’ve gone through the same thing and who work in the same way, take advantage of the amazing podcasts and books available today on best practices for distributed workforces.

Along these lines, I’ve really enjoyed the Distributed podcast and the Rework podcast. The hosts of Rework, who built the company Basecamp, have written two books about distributed workforces and structuring work as well: Remote and It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work. Also, you can find some articles about the distributed-workforce structure and different tools and tips via Matt Mullenweg’s blog.

Listening to these stories and reading these books will get you truly excited about the opportunity to work from wherever, will help you identify new tips and tricks to continue to improve your work and your life, and might even turn you into a true evangelist for the distributed workforce.

Also: They’ll tell you just as I did that no one structure works for everyone, helping you feel even less guilty that Monday you worked in your pajama pants and Thursday morning you worked on the couch.

Ready, Set… Expand!

Once you’ve had a bit more of an opportunity to adjust—or at least to get your setup in place—you can review my tips for how to thrive working from wherever and even my article on how to travel and work at the same time. (Once you get the hang of it, you’ll see the opportunity to travel the world and keep “your day job” as a potential huge perk.)

And if you have additional tips for how people can make the transition from the corporate office to the home office, do share!

P.S.—I’ve collected all the articles I’ve written about distributed workforces on this page.