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As others have said, in this thread, there are a lot of mixed issues in this article. Living a nomad/traveling lifestyle =! remote work. Loads of people remot

As others have said, in this thread, there are a lot of mixed issues in this article. Living a nomad/traveling lifestyle =! remote work. Loads of people remote-work from home, but change nothing else in their lifestyle. I've been working remotely my entire life. 30+ years now. One thing that is key, is looking at the blue sky. Being outside occasionally. You will note that the article talks about work/life balance, about working a lot, working long hours. And after months and months, become more and more depressed. What I suspect is happening is, winter! Shorter days! With shorter days, it is harder and harder to find sunlight when you just happen to wander outside. In the summer, at least where I am, daylight lives from 4am to 10pm. I doesn't matter when I wake up, or when I go to sleep.. if I wander out just once, there's almost always light. Further, there's a much better chance of good weather. In the winter, if it isn't night, it's often cloudy, and therefore darker. Unless you work away from all windows, this affects the type of light, even when working inside. On top of all that, in the winter it is more often unpleasant. You think with glee, it's cool/cold, raining/snowing, and I work remote! I don't have to go out into that! Yet, this is a trap, for going out in that is key to your health... just for the light! My point in all of the above is -- when you work on site, you have to go outside, and transit outside, to and from work. This gets in that vital light, even often in the winter. It's about the light, it's about blue light from a blue sky, it's about being outside. That's what 30+ years of remote work has taught me.

hodgesrm 7y ago
Speaking as an employment _provider_ I fully agree nomad != remote. I'm actually hesitant to employ nomads if they are likely to move without warning to time zones that aren't convenient for the rest of the team. For example, one of the things that makes distributed teams work is to have a small number of very stable meeting times that remain invariant for long periods of time. The reason is that people need to structure their lives (e.g., dinner with family) and if you change things capriciously it affects relationships with families or other things in their personal lives. Having team members suddenly move and then want meeting times changed for everyone is a real non-starter for me.
- jpgvm 7y ago
  I have been on remote teams with 2 different types of coordination. Meeting coordinated, which is usually centered around 1 or 2 weekly meetings when status updates and some amount of discussion of planning occurs. This model works best when a large portion of the team is on the same timezone or there is a physical office somewhere but isn't ideal for nomads or people that are permanently located in an inconvenient timezone. These meetings often come at a very high cost so if someone isn't getting value out of them then they don't feel great about them usually. The other is async/adhoc coordinated that mostly does synchronisation and planning through async means like chat, email and issue tracking. This I found works way better for travellers/nomads and people that generally don't need or want structured meetings. Especially if you mostly work on long tasks and the vast majority of your updates are "still doing the thing". If you couple this with adhoc/on-demand meetings where you grab small portions of the team to talk about smaller scoped things I find it works really well. Managers (well less good ones) in particular are less of a fan of this model because instead of having well defined sync points they need to be continually on top of how things are changing. Both have trade-offs, I find the second one works way better but is much rarer. I experienced my most productive time as an engineer working under such a model.
  - hodgesrm 7y ago
    I'm definitely open to getting better at this so I'm glad the second model worked for you. I have run into practical problems with ad-hoc call when working across a lot of time zones (like 10 in our company). It's hard to slot in engineering ad-hoc meetings because the slots are limited to begin with and already used up with other things like talking to customers. We definitely try to avoid burning people's time. Slack has been helpful for intermittent communication.
throwaway413 7y ago
I wholeheartedly agree with this. I've been remote the past several years, and have lived in apartments the entire time. This fall was the first time I was able to find a suitable single family home for rent in my desired area. The house has a comfortable, fenced backyard with a large glass slider in the living room. One of the first things I have noticed while living here is how big of a difference it makes having access to that outside space. Being able to step outside, see the sky, take in some fresh air, and best of all to do it with relative privacy, has done wonders for my mental health. I highly recommend a house, preferably with outdoor space, versus an apartment if you are a stay-at-home remote worker and have the means.
biztos 7y ago
My solution to getting out of the house and into the World is to go to the gym four days a week, in the middle of the day. So I effectively work a split shift. With my team dispersed globally and me being in the "middle" time zone, it's actually a benefit to the work itself. Plus it keeps me sane and somewhat healthy and guarantees at least a tiny bit of social interaction. (I realize this has its own logistical challenges, but ten years into my current remote-work job it's making all the difference for me.) [Edit] Also the gym is less crowded in the middle of the day, in case that part wasn't obvious.
- tim58 7y ago
  I worked remote for 3 years and I did midday gym visits. It helped.
ubercow13 7y ago
Sometimes you have transit to the office but it’s underground. Not that it matters because it’s dark outside when you start and finish work anyway.
11235813213455 7y ago
I go out a few times per week by bike for food, stretching exercises every day, and Sundays it's 5h of bike in the hills, that's the vitamin B, hormones and health catch-up for the week

hodgesrm 7y ago

Speaking as an employment _provider_ I fully agree nomad != remote. I'm actually hesitant to employ nomads if they are likely to move without warning to time zones that aren't convenient for the rest of the team. For example, one of the things that makes distributed teams work is to have a small number of very stable meeting times that remain invariant for long periods of time. The reason is that people need to structure their lives (e.g., dinner with family) and if you change things capriciously it affects relationships with families or other things in their personal lives. Having team members suddenly move and then want meeting times changed for everyone is a real non-starter for me.

jpgvm 7y ago
I have been on remote teams with 2 different types of coordination. Meeting coordinated, which is usually centered around 1 or 2 weekly meetings when status updates and some amount of discussion of planning occurs. This model works best when a large portion of the team is on the same timezone or there is a physical office somewhere but isn't ideal for nomads or people that are permanently located in an inconvenient timezone. These meetings often come at a very high cost so if someone isn't getting value out of them then they don't feel great about them usually. The other is async/adhoc coordinated that mostly does synchronisation and planning through async means like chat, email and issue tracking. This I found works way better for travellers/nomads and people that generally don't need or want structured meetings. Especially if you mostly work on long tasks and the vast majority of your updates are "still doing the thing". If you couple this with adhoc/on-demand meetings where you grab small portions of the team to talk about smaller scoped things I find it works really well. Managers (well less good ones) in particular are less of a fan of this model because instead of having well defined sync points they need to be continually on top of how things are changing. Both have trade-offs, I find the second one works way better but is much rarer. I experienced my most productive time as an engineer working under such a model.
- hodgesrm 7y ago
  I'm definitely open to getting better at this so I'm glad the second model worked for you. I have run into practical problems with ad-hoc call when working across a lot of time zones (like 10 in our company). It's hard to slot in engineering ad-hoc meetings because the slots are limited to begin with and already used up with other things like talking to customers. We definitely try to avoid burning people's time. Slack has been helpful for intermittent communication.

throwaway413 7y ago

I wholeheartedly agree with this. I've been remote the past several years, and have lived in apartments the entire time. This fall was the first time I was able to find a suitable single family home for rent in my desired area. The house has a comfortable, fenced backyard with a large glass slider in the living room. One of the first things I have noticed while living here is how big of a difference it makes having access to that outside space. Being able to step outside, see the sky, take in some fresh air, and best of all to do it with relative privacy, has done wonders for my mental health. I highly recommend a house, preferably with outdoor space, versus an apartment if you are a stay-at-home remote worker and have the means.

biztos 7y ago

My solution to getting out of the house and into the World is to go to the gym four days a week, in the middle of the day. So I effectively work a split shift. With my team dispersed globally and me being in the "middle" time zone, it's actually a benefit to the work itself. Plus it keeps me sane and somewhat healthy and guarantees at least a tiny bit of social interaction. (I realize this has its own logistical challenges, but ten years into my current remote-work job it's making all the difference for me.) [Edit] Also the gym is less crowded in the middle of the day, in case that part wasn't obvious.

tim58 7y ago
I worked remote for 3 years and I did midday gym visits. It helped.

ubercow13 7y ago

Sometimes you have transit to the office but it’s underground. Not that it matters because it’s dark outside when you start and finish work anyway.

11235813213455 7y ago

I go out a few times per week by bike for food, stretching exercises every day, and Sundays it's 5h of bike in the hills, that's the vitamin B, hormones and health catch-up for the week