
If you’re on your own, communication with the outside world is essential to keeping your sanity. Even if you’re not alone, communication with someone other than your roommates/significant other/children/relatives is still essential.
Even outside of pandemic times, remote work lives and dies by the power of communication. Think about it: in an office, you can pop down the hall to ask your boss a question, or spark a random conversation in the break room, or just say hello in the hall.
At home, the only communication you have is the communication you initiate.
For this reason, the most successful remote teams are those who communicate deliberately. These are also the teams that are most successful in counteracting the feelings of isolation and loneliness that often accompany telework.
Don’t be afraid to communicate, even if you’re just saying hello to a work friend. When you’re communicating for professional reasons, make sure to overcommunicate–our communication is around 55% body language, which means that the absence of nonverbal cues makes it easy to misunderstand.
Free Communication Tools
The best way to encourage communication is to invest in communication tools for your team. Fortunately, there are several free tools available that can do the job nicely.
Since our communication is mostly nonverbal, a video tool is a critical investment for meetings. Skype is a classic, the benefit being that everyone knows it and more or less knows how to use it.
Zoom has also become wildly popular, particularly in the last two months. The main selling point? It offers free 40-minute conference calls with up to 100 attendees, and you don’t need a login to use it.
That said, don’t neglect the power of written communication. To recreate the effect of stream-of-consciousness office conversations, Slack is the tool to beat–think of it like Facebook Messenger for businesses. Businesses can create multiple channels based on specific focus areas. The tech team, for example, might have their own Slack channel, while the team developing your latest video marketing campaign can set up their own.
Separate Work and Home
Last but not least, you have to separate work from home. We know that sounds counterintuitive, since you’re working from home, but it’s a lot simpler than you think.
We’re not talking about leaving home to go to work, which is how most people separate work and home. We’re talking about having a specific space at home where you do work and nothing else.
This imitates the effect of going into the office by teaching your brain to associate this space with work, much like you associate your bed with sleep. It also makes it easier to switch off your work brain and unwind when you leave that space at the end of the workday.
If you have a home office, that’s a perfect choice, but even if you don’t, you can still separate work and home. All you really need is a designated workspace. Maybe that’s a spot at the dining room table.
Maybe it’s your couch. Maybe it’s a pillow fort in the attic. Whatever it is, carve out your space and designate it solely for work purposes.
We’re All in This Together
The coronavirus outbreak has challenged all of us to adapt to conditions we never imagined. As hard as it is to imagine the world returning to normal, it’s important to remember that, at the end of the day, we’re all in this together.
Even if the outside world seems far away, you can find ways to close the barriers between you and your colleagues, even if you’re not having them over for tea. If you can hold onto that togetherness, working from home will become that much easier.There is a per-industry falling rate of profit, which in the early days of industrialisation deeply concerned all observers of the economy, because the idea that another new industry would just show up to rescue the economy again every couple of months was not yet obvious.  
The first really massively successful industrial explosion took place in the cotton industry, and the first investors in cotton made profits at absolutely astronomical rates compared with the investments they made. This encouraged others to enter the industry, and these later entrants made large, but not colossal profits... and so on. And as more investors entered the industry, the total production of cotton in Manchester reached astonishing quantities, but the returns to investment became more and more modest.  
But then, railways happened! And there's a similar mania for rail, with very profitable early railways followed by an explosion of rail lines, the later of which were much less spectacularly rewarding...  
...if you were in the place in time that Marx was, it was easy to look at the grim conditions on the cotton factories, where owners tried to squeeze out just a little extra profit by either automating more of the process or just cutting wages and conditions, and see in them both the seeds of revolution and the "mature stage of development" of *every* industry. Well, if every industry matures in the same way, and every industry is bound to mature eventually, and every mature industry provides raw material for socialist revolution...  
...based on the information available to him at the time, and extrapolating from it, Marx made what was a fairly reasonable guess, that just turned out to be incorrect, at least so far. Whenever mass employment in one industry has been in serious decline, some new industry which requires large numbers of workers has turned up to take its place. However, just as the decline of cotton in the span of one or two generations didn't necessarily spell the doom of industrial society in the next generation, nor does the fact that "a new industry always comes along" has been true for the last couple of centuries guarantee it will be true for the next couple of centuries as well.11-21-2007
05:20 PM
- last edited on
02-04-2015
11:22 AM
by
linksys-communi
busting it back out and getting back to using cable modem instead of dsl. problem is, I have no idea which of the power adapters found in the box of old equipment it takes. I think it is this one that says: OEM Model No.: AD-121ANDT Input: 120 VAC 60Hz25W Output 12VDC 1A Plug-in Class 2 the 'box' of the adapter does not itself plug into the outlet. rather, a regular two pronged cord comes from the 'box' and plugs in, and on the other side of the box is a thinner wire at the end of which is the doo-hickey that plugs into the modem. is this it? if not, anyone know what the power adapter should say so I don't fry out my modem when I plug it in? thanks..It is important to set clear goals for each day. Often we need to get a lot of things done but end up not finishing even a single task. This happens since we get burdened with things and feel overwhelmed. The best way to avoid this is to set clear goals for the day. You can do this every night before going to sleep; list out the top 3 goals for tomorrow and try to achieve them first thing the next day.
While a lot of people feel multitasking is the right thing to do, they can’t be farther from the truth. New research suggests that while multitasking might be able to get several things done at the same time, it decreases the quality and efficiency of work done. It also makes the brain tired and stressed out. Stop multitasking and focus on one thing at a time. Give your best to the task at hand.
Clean your workspace and remove any clutter you find. Keep your desk tidy and only keep the things that you actually need throughout the day. Don’t keep any unwanted things as they will end up distracting you from work.
One of the things that has drastically reduced productivity in people is the frequent use of social media sites and applications. Whenever you sit down to work, block the social media sites and applications. Don’t get distracted by the notifications or messages. Focus on the work at hand; and, allocate some time every day to spend on such sites.
It is also important to take rest to increase productivity. It will help relax both the mind and body so that you can perform better. Try to take at least 6 hours of deep sleep every day. You can also take regular breaks while working to feel refreshed.  You will immediately feel refreshed and energised.
These are some of the best productivity hacks that have consistently shown great results. Try to inculcate these things in your daily routine and you will see a significant improvement in your productivity and efficiency levels.#
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require 'fileutils'

require 'ffi_yajl'

require 'chef-dk/helpers'
require 'chef-dk/policyfile/undo_record