This week, a lot more folks will be working from home than usual. I’ve talked to several friends and family lately about this. Some are looking forward to it, and others are dreading it. I drove into an office for 22 years, but I’ve spent the last five years mainly working from home. Here are a few things I learned along the way.

New Workspace, New Habits

If you are working from home for the first time, realize it is one of those golden opportunities to establish new habits. Maybe you need to take that time saved from not commuting to spend an hour each morning on your most significant project. Or perhaps you finally have an opportunity to sleep in just a bit, so you aren’t tired all day. Maybe it’s time to demote email to something you do at 11AM, leaving the rest of the morning to work on your deliverables. The point is, you are going to develop a whole set of new habits, so why not do it intentionally?

Time Gained. Time Lost.

You just got some time back. You don’t need to commute. You will attend far fewer meetings. You don’t need to make the morning rounds to talk to everyone at the office. How are you going to use that? Likewise, you are going to spend time you didn’t before. Maybe you are now taking care of the dog, or you have small kids at home. Working from home will both give and take away time. Sit down and figure out the math on your own time and determine how you are going to deal with both sides of that equation. This week would be an excellent opportunity to track time to keep yourself honest. Figuring out where your time goes and how you allocate it is essential for working from home. You don’t have someone looking over your shoulder, so you have to supervise yourself. It’s liberating once you figure it out.

Be Proactive

Remember that the job is to work at home. If you want to keep paying the rent, you’ve got to deliver. Don’t sit in front of the TV and wait for your boss and co-workers to dole out work. Nobody is there keeping track of who arrives first or leaves last. They are just looking for who can move the ball forward. Be proactive. Use your new freedom to find and solve work-related problems without meetings and office politics. Prove to everyone (including yourself) that you don’t need someone looking over your shoulder.

We are in the midst of a massive work-from-home experiment. Nobody expected this to happen, but it did. If you can build your own habits, use your time wisely, and be proactive. It could change the way you work forever, whether you work from home for just a few weeks or the next few decades.

In the last few days, Apple has announced it’s reaction to Covid-19. Yesterday there was an announcement that WWDC will be online-only this year. I’ll miss not seeing my Apple community friends, but I also think this is the right move. I had to smile a bit at the announcement. There was no mention of Covid-19 and instead all talk about how awesome it will be online. Part of me wonders if this isn’t a test to see if all future WWDC’s will be online-only.

Today the other penny dropped. Apple is closing all of its retail stores outside of China until March 27. They are paying their hourly employees while things are down, moving their offices workers to remote work if possible, and they’ve donated $15M to the fight against Covid-19.

Good on Apple.

This week, MacSparky has a new sponsor, The Archive. I’ve made no secret of my love for plain text files over the years. Plain text is universal, portable, and the most likely format for your words that computers will still recognize in 100 years. The problem with plain text apps, however, is that they are just so … plain.

The Archive is the plain text app that changes that. The Archive has beautiful themes while also providing Markdown syntax highlighting. As the name implies, The Archive is a note taking app with easy storage so you can organize your notes how you want and write in a beautiful editor environment that doesn’t get in the way. And best of all, all of your data is, ultimately, plain text and absolutely portable.

In addition to storing notes, The Archive facilitates creative work with your notes through cross-connections, clickable links and hashtags. You can start feeding your storage with ideas, and then build a second brain to help with your thinking in the long term.

The Archive turns two years old this week and is being used for everything from taking college lecture notes to writing books and mapping complex fields of knowledge. The dedicated community even produced a ton of custom Keyboard Maestro macros to add even more features to the workflow. All thanks to the open nature of The Archive and the plain text storage!

So my congratulations to The Archive for its first two years and my thanks for sponsoring MacSparky this week. Go check out The Archive.