Hello HN! RemoteHabits is a small site I launched here on HN a few months ago to figure out the best ways to work remotely.
I noticed when I started remote work, I struggled with a lot of basic things like habits, disciplines, routines, finding community, etc...
I wanted to learn from other people that had already done it, without prescriptive advice like "the 10 things you MUST do with remote work"—so landed on remote interviews.
We aim to release a new interview every Monday, and are always looking for interesting remote workers to interview. If you're interested head over to https://remotehabits.com/interview-me/
Previous contract ended, it was time to find a new job. The current job was great for everything, except having to commute (both good offers I had were in-office gigs). And the current job really is good, except for the frustration of commuting. I'm at the junction of what I want to do, what I'm good at doing, and what they need someone to do, which is more than I can say for the two remote gigs I had.
With RemoteHabits I'm aiming to build a resource for people to learn how to work remotely. I've struggled with this a bit as I went from full-time -> consulting -> my own projects.
Please let me know if you have any feedback or anything that can be improved!
The idea is to capture notes/thoughts/todos quickly and send them to any service (Trello/Basecamp/Asana/etc...). For people doing deep work (programmers, designers, writers) you want to stay in flow but also be able to capture any random thought that pops in your head.
This project is a bit harder than ones I've done in the past because I'm trying to take it cross-platform (macOS first) and keep it native UI everywhere.
For the past few years I've been storing almost everything in Markdown and organizing files into yearly folders—I call it my "memex".
It ends up being pretty simple, but I end up missing some information that gets silo'd off in services like Trello.
Hey HN! Here's a small side-project I've been working on to help remote workers. I noticed when I switched to full-time indie dev, I experienced some new problems, like building discipline, habits and healthy routines.
I don't like most productivity advice, as Paul Buchheit says most advice is limited life experience + over-generalized to fit your situation.
I thought a good way around this would to just tell stories about remote workers, how they got started, what they like, what they don't like, routines they've found that are helpful, etc...
So that's what the site aims to do—interview remote workers so you can learn from their experiences.
One cool thing about the site is you can deep dive specific questions, like
the best thing is no commute, the energy overhead of a long commute is terrible. The worst thing is missing out on conversations/decisions being made at the office. My corporate office is in San Diego while I'm in Dallas, even though I'm a director and the buck stops with me in engineering, lots of sidebar conversations and decisions get made in Sand Diego face-to-face and not on conference calls and slack channels.
This is very difficult to address. I think people (in the office) need to buy in and use chat or email as communication mode number one. Either that or someone needs to come out with some better tele-presence for remote teams to interact with people in the office.
Think about what you are saying. We should forgo direct communication with people next to us, in favor of an online alternative? Even though your goal is noble (enabling remote workers) your method is unnatural.
I agree that a way to better integrate remote workers is essential. However disposing of direct communication is not the way to do it. I don't have an answer, we need a novel approach.
I've considered setting up a couple of tablets with webcams in my remote office and my office in the company. That way people can come talk to me whenever they need to.
This is great. I'm currently browsing for viable, worthwhile opportunities for myself to set my girlfriend and I on the path to getting out of the city. Need more outdoors time.
I haven't worked purely remotely before outside of a couple of light projects where I was the sole eng/dev.
I'm always keeping my eyes open for new resources. Looks like it might be helpful! Good idea, and nice job.
This is great, I've been thinking about doing something similar but not been able to make the time so it is good to see someone else doing it. There is quite a lot of information out there about tackling the logistical challenges of operating remotely esp for software development, great to hear other perspectives and industries.
