The first and most important thing is the relationship with work
Now there are entire teams and companies on the remote, so many bugs of the remote are still invisible — they will become noticeable to those who decide to choose this format for themselves further. It's definitely hard to work remotely, because whoever you are, even as a programmer, even as a tester, even as a manager, your communications will be complicated. Yes, at first you literally get high: colleagues are far away, you can not answer messengers immediately and after thinking about your message, the boss is also somewhere there and will not call on the carpet hard and right now. It seems that it is calmer this way, the work flows steadily. The first bells seem to be misunderstandings, but soon a whole complex of problems arises that you need to learn to live with.
You blame yourself for the gaps in the work. If the shortcomings and overdue tasks in the office seem to be an empty problem — it is enough to move the task in the calendar and notify all related colleagues, including the head, then everything seems to be a tragedy at remote work. On the one hand, you are afraid that everyone will decide that you were idle instead of fulfilling your direct tasks, on the other hand, you are worried that you really failed, which means that something is happening with a professional resource, somewhere you have given up. At the same time, the reasons may be quite objective: disconnection of the Internet or electricity, overload of a parallel task, or failure of a task by a co-executor.
This guilt consumes you and your thoughts, which makes the work even worse: you begin to be afraid of mistakes and strive to avoid them. And the one who, as you know, does nothing is not mistaken. And indeed, the experience of guilt for something easily turns a person first into a cautious performer, and then into a procrastinator.
The period of complete "clogging" to work will come for everyone. The question is how long it will last and how noticeable it will be. I am a hellish, avid workaholic who works at work, on vacation, in transport, on the train — if there is no opportunity to pick at work, I think about it. But when switching to remote work, the state of the "bolt put to work" came twice, and it was unpleasant. First, you allow yourself to spin a movie in the background, then you no longer listen to the background, but launch the content on the second monitor, then you get distracted by household chores or go to the store/cafe / for a jog (only 15 minutes! which soon become two hours and 15 minutes), and then you realize that you have a full task manager of overdue tasks hanging and soon not only you will notice it.
At this moment, an unpleasant feeling comes: you need to find the strength and will to sit down at night, for a day or two non-stop, and close all these debts, but the cunning brain likes to be lazy and is not ready to get together so quickly and help the owner to close working debts. By the way, I'm not kidding about the brain — this is the most psychophysiology. Roughly speaking, without the usual rhythm of working on tasks, you get dumb pretty quickly and look for other ways out of the situation.
In no case can you give up, confess, quit, etc. The way out: put aside the panic and start methodically and carefully closing tasks, starting with the most unpleasant one — its solution will inspire you (while closing a simple and favorite work task creates a false sense of omnipotence and speed and as a result, you will run into the worst tasks with deep disappointment). As a rule, in our IT sphere, 3-4-day "breaks" in work are closed in a day of intensive work. But such marches are dangerous for health and the nervous system, so try not to delay the period of "doing nothing".
It is difficult for you to explain yourself to your colleagues. You begin to feel this after about a year. People who work in the same room, eat together, communicate, experience the boss's scolding and moments of company triumph, empathize with each other, and represent a separate socio-cultural group. You probably noticed that when you come to someone else's office or, for example, to someone else's university, you perceive the team as something very alien and sometimes even ugly (whether it's your own!). It's worse when it happens to your colleagues: they are a formed community, and you are a loner behind the brackets. Most companies diligently and ethically integrate remotes into their culture (chats, funny chatrooms for chatting, meetings, and gatherings, video calls with cats and dogs, gifts, support), but often it looks somewhat unnatural. It is much more honest to admit that remote workers are a different subculture in the company, and everyone is their own, but their work and their loyalty are valuable to the company, their work is extremely important, and their contribution is appreciated. It helps both sides a lot.
So, you need to speak the same language and in the same value system with a cohesive team. It turns out pretty bad, even if you are a joker, a talker and you have a generally good character. It is difficult to convey emotions in chats and on calls, it is difficult to talk about an idea in the heat of the moment on the phone and discuss something with enthusiasm, scribbling with a pencil on a sheet. You are forced to speak clearly and regularly, as always on the phone, you write to the chat, but you do not interrupt irony, sarcasm, surprise, admiration, or even anger. The text of your message is saturated with emotions by the one who reads it — your emotion is born and interpreted in the interlocutor's head, and there is a high risk of being misunderstood and offending someone.
This situation is depressing and you begin to avoid general calls and meetings with your online presence. They wean you off and you fall out of your seemingly social cage even further. One thing beats in my head: "Where am I climbing? I'm not there." This position also affects professional tasks — you solve them outside the context of common interests, outside the pulse of the business in which you work. Work tasks become like Olympiad tasks: you need to solve them urgently and coolly in order to win. The stage of functional execution is coming.
Coping with this situation is quite difficult. The advice is simple: do not fall out of informal communication, sometimes, if possible, visit colleagues offline and find 1-2 people at work with whom "chemistry and magic" will develop, who will understand your intonations in chats and who will be your "connector" with the interests of the company and its employees. It's not easy, but it's not impossible. A nice bonus: such people can become your good friends for many years.
You want to go to the office and at the same time do not want to leave the remote. Periodically, there comes a desire to return to the office, go to another city or country (if the company is there) and work with everyone together, enjoy office life, catch its pros and hate the cons. But everything is already so well arranged: if necessary, sleep almost until the working day, calmly listen to your favorite tracks, use your free time for personal matters, do not stand in traffic jams and leave work in 1 second. And on the other hand, you no longer understand, is this your office or your home?
It's up to you to decide: for everyone, his own arguments in favor of home or office outweigh. If the situation is hopeless and the removal is forced, just equip a mini-office at home and visually divide the workplace and the places of home comfort. It helps a lot. For example, my mini-office is an old multi-tiered computer desk that looks businesslike and serious, and an office chair helps. A real micro-cabinet, which contains only work items and books.
You need to control yourself and work on discipline. An adequate employer will not supply you with a moronic tracker of working hours or a screenshot of the screen status, because he knows what trust and loyalty are worth. This means that you need to become your toughest boss: learn how to plan, switch between tasks, not be distracted by social networks and entertainment, organize your workplace, meals, etc. You are your own sysadmin, colleague, and assistant. It's difficult, even if you're a super motivated employee. It is important to learn a few rules of home office discipline:
working hours
to strictly regulate breaks for work
do not eat on the desktop
if there is not enough willpower, programmatically close access to extraneous content
These four points are enough to correctly start organizing your working day on the remote.
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