Your Best Tips and Strategies for Working from Home

I've been fortunate enough to have worked from home for 3 years, but many of my teammates are now joining me for the first time. Some tips for success:

1. Pretend you're still in the office -- Whatever this means for you. Continue to socialize as you would, to the best of your ability -- if not in person, then through Slack, Google Hangouts, whatever your organization uses. Don't do things you normally wouldn't. You're still at work; do your best, don't slack off just because you can.

2. Have a dedicated space -- To the best of your ability, keep your workspace separate from the rest of your home life. Shut out distractions -- TV, Netflix podcasts, anything that doesn't help you keep focused. See #1 -- don't so things you wouldn't normally do at work.

3. Take breaks -- Get up and walk around for a minimum of 5 minutes every 2 hours. Get the blood pumping, keep the oxygen flowing to your brain. But also keep focused. Yoga, aerobics, meditation, whatever helps keep you active and centered.

4. Stay connected -- Don't just keep your status icon green. Stay engaged, actively seek out tasks. Keep in touch with your teammates and supervisors. It will help ward off depression and ennui. Additionally, your organization is no doubt also taking a hit; you will need to do your part faithfully to keep things humming, and communication is always the key.

In short, keep calm and carry on. This may be the new normal for a while; it has its benefits. I personally prefer working from home, and believe more organizations should support it. Be safe, be responsible, and do the needful.

I like 8 Tips for First-time Online Learners and customized it for my remote work:

- Set daily goals for work

- Prioritize the tasks

- Focus and do one thing at a time

- Be proactive on collaboration tools (such as Slack)

- Keep yourself accountable

- Actively take notes

- Use a dedicated work space

- Balance the work and breaks (pomodoro technique might help)

Thank you so much for sharing your ideas about working at home!  I am a professor/researcher and often work at home, but this ‘new normal’ is taking working at home to a new level.  Also, I am in ‘retirement mode’ and am switching gears to a new profession as a nutritionist/health coach.  I was planning on doing my coaching in groups and one-on-one, but all in person.  I now want to start getting information out to the community about how to take care of their health during this crisis by following good nutrition and exercise guidelines.  I will volunteer my services, but at almost 68 years old, I do not have the technical savvy or skills to figure this out on my own --  and sadly, I have no family members to help me.   I have the didactic materials, but I do not know how to deliver them in this format.  Any ideas?

tl;dr? separate work and home space and behavior and make sure you’re talking with your team at all times.

Most of the points have already pointed out most of it, but I’d like to chip-in as well.
To fix a problem, we need to understand the problem and where it stems from, and the reasoning behind everything we do as well, that’s why I will try to be as elaborate as I can in this comment.

Workspace / Home Separation:
If you have noticed, most of the replies have discussed this, you have to have clear boundaries between your work and your home. Both in space and behavior. It could be as simple as having a separate desk for work and used only for work, and as far as having a whole office at home, either way, you can’t use one for the other.
Someone I know used to work remote for about half a year, his desk was next to his bed, he usually just woke up and hit the ground running, he didn’t last that long. On the other hand, a friend of mine used to work remotely for years, and he was very clear about the separation, including dress code; yes he had a work dress code at home while he’s working at his workspace. If your company doesn’t allow PJs at the office, then I highly suggest you stick with that at home. It doesn’t help you be less productive (neither do PJs at work!), but that would help you make a better separation between both work and home, those little things make all the difference. 
Basically like what @txrob said: behave like you would at the office.

Communication Tools: Usually at the office communication (if done right) can come intuitively and flawlessly, which makes us take it for granted, that could change while you work from home if you’re not very aware of it and deliberately practicing it, “Deliberate Practice” is key. Use communication tools as much as you can, here’s a couple of tools many of us use and how to take advantage of them:
Discord: everyone uses Slack, it does the job and is pretty OK, but to me I always prefer Discord, it's much easier to use, more features (they had voice before Slack did) and their voice channels help with voice meetings on the go, we even setup “Meeting Room A” B and C for quick voice meetings to jump on, very convenient and quick. Best thing about Discord is that their “Paid” features only help you do more, not limit your usage like Slack does. Their community is great and they always listen to the community and work on more features all the time to make sure get the right features out first.
Trello: Well, this brings us to the whole myriad of tools to help you organize what's being done. We have the notorious Trello and their cards. It’s extremely minimalistic, no frill, no extra functions. It's simple, quick, easy to understand: You have a board, that has lanes, each lane is a state, move cards through lanes at all times and don’t stop for too long. This will help you to stay on top of things and making sure you're not slacking off or slowing down.
Jira: there is also Jira, a lot of Scrum teams love Jira, it’s full of features, configurations and it’s too much frill to me, but they added a new type of board that minimizes all that and removes all that frill so that you can get started real quick.
Monday: One tool that really surprised me was “Monday.com”, they work with the “boards” concept as well, but they offer multiple “views” inside each board, you could shift between “List”, “Kanban”, “Timeline” and more. It really helps different teams (Product, Development, Sales, etc) work on the same thing at the same time. 
Basecamp: there is also “Basecamp”, I’ve used it for a very short period of time, so I can’t really give my take on that, but I know that their team is one that could be the ultimate “Go To” when it comes to remote working.
Meet: Google’s meet helps with jumping onto meetings in less than 30 seconds, just create a meeting, get the link and send it to them. Use that whenever there is a miscommunication between anyone.
Zoom: haven’t used Zoom that much as well, but I can tell from how many people are using it so far that it’s worth giving it a try.
Miro: this one helps you document your drawings. If you’re good at communication, you’ll know that there is no better way to explain an idea or flesh it out than to draw it while you explain it (Read “On The Back of The Napkin”), if you end up one time discussing your product and end up with a drawing that you think you’ll need as reference later on or it explains things really well and you’re proud of it, document it on Miro, clean it up real well and keep it for everyone to see and use.

Communication Behaviors: now that we have a lot of tools we can work with, what should we do? Well, usually you move in between them based on what you’re doing and make sure you’re using the right one at the right time. It seems confusing at first, but it comes with Deliberate Practice.
Elaboration: never assume things. It’s really simple, if you see something you do not understand or even not 100% certain what it is or how it works, get in touch with the person you think will have the answer, and they don’t they will probably know who will. Always ask, always communicate, don’t assume things and make sure you get to the right source of information, whether that’s someone or a link to a documentation.
Socialize: your texting tool shouldn’t be just for work, you could have a “memes” channel, a “Books” channel or even a “What I’m cooking tonight” channel, basically you want to be having the same day-to-day discussions at the office, but move them to texting. Socializing like you do at the office helps you rest your mind, get new ideas and think of new ways to tackle a problem, refer back to “behaving like you would at the office”.
Basecamp came up with a really nice idea to have “Virtual water cooler discussions”, they spend some time every day (can’t remember how much time) one a video chat talking casually, what they have done the day before, what their vacation plans are. It gets the team together, they make friends and again, they socialize. Humans are not machines, we need to feel empathy and empathize with one another, and it’s easier to do that when you know the person or they’re your friends.
Miscommunication: usually you talk through texting, but when you start to feel you’re being misunderstood, you have to stop right away, and move it to voice. Voice chat will show more of your emotions through your tone, which makes a lot of difference. Example: I’m texting my friend “what is this?” and I attach a link to a card on Trello that I have no idea what it does and thought I should be aware of it, if by chance, they had been on defensive mode at the time, they will read it as “what is this?!”, something which the voice tone would have conveyed better. If that still doesn’t work, jump on a video call, facial expressions and body language does the rest. We usually go in that order for convenience, maybe the internet isn’t good enough for a video call etc. If you’re 100% there are no issues on any side, always go with video calls.
Documentation: always keep track of your progress, the notes of meetings and the status of everything. Did you just finish this task? Move it to the next lane and explain what you did and how you did it so that everyone can go back to and review.. Talked with your squad and decided a small detail should be changed in the way you write emails, document it somewhere online where everyone can go back to and review. (See the pattern?)

Self Discipline:
You have no one to look over your shoulder, or someone to judge you or feel bad if you’re playing and everyone around you is working, so you need to have a very strong sense of responsibility and practice tons of self discipline, make sure you’re tracking your break times and durations, you’re not responding to that personal email during work time, not cooking that quick instant ramen cup in 5 minutes and it wouldn’t hurt. As @txrob also said, take breaks every now and then, but make sure you’re in charge of those breaks not the other way around. If you take a 30 min. lunch break, make sure it’s just a 30 minute lunch break not an hour and a half lunch and that last episode of that show that you can get to finish this week.
It takes a lot of practice to be your own judge, jury and executioner (at first), but once you hammer that discipline into yourself, you’re good to go from there an on.
Do no confuse self discipline with work/home separation, one is setting up two different environments and keeping them separated, and the other is managing your time and actual work efficiency, basically if you’re actually working, or just coming up with “logical” reasoning to convince your consciousness that you’re doing your best.
First step in controlling procrastination is understanding the emotions behind it. You need to realize that procrastination comes when you start coming up with logical excuses/reasons to not do this thing now or that you have “more important” things to do.

with the spread of Coronavirus affecting everything from international travel to the availability of hand sanitizer, mitigating COVID-19 in the india has become a growing concern. That’s why many companies like Wipro, HP, Accenture, inventateq, infosys, IBM are mandating or recommending that as many employees as possible work remotely until the virus can be slowed. 

here are the important tips to work from home and stay productive and mentally healthy 

https://www.buzzfeed.com/natashajokic1/work-from-home-hacks

Hi,

I had a suggestion. I’m currently an international student in the US. I used to work on campus but due to the Coronavirus I don’t have a job anymore and my parents would be sending me money. Right now, the market is going down and the dollar rate is going up so the transfer rate is going to be high also, I want them to avoid going to the bank as much as possible. 

Right now I am doing a certificate course from Coursera and since I have more time right now I wanted to add one or two more classes but I can’t because I will have to ask my parents to transfer me more money. So, I had a suggestion that if you could come up with something at least for students for these few months then it would be really helpful. 

Thank you, 

Neha 

Being a teacher, I find work from home very hectic. Managing both home and work is very difficult and I admit it. But in this situation it is the only possible way. We’re using google classroom for sharing notes, giving assignments & quiz; zoom for classes; ppt sharing as videos using youtube. Along with this my doctoral work plus publication work too. As everyone are at home, household work has increased. I’m trying to be systematic and put time table. Hope it will help me.