Suddenly working at home? We’ve done it for 22 years—and have advice

Enlarge / One work-from-home suggestion: snacks, supplies, a pet, and dolls. You should consider upgrading to a more ergonomic work station (better chair, better keyboard). Replacing the dolls, on the other hand, is not an option, as far as we're concerned. (Unless you swap in Babylon 5 toys, we guess.) (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty)

No matter where you live or work, the novel coronavirus means you've probably begun exploring the option of working from home instead of a centralized office. (In many cases, "option" is a gentle way of putting it.) Here at Ars Technica, our staffers have seen their phones and messaging apps blow up with countless versions of the following: "How the heck do you pull off this whole work-from-home thing?"

We're in a position to know. Ars Technica has operated as a remote workforce since it was founded in 1998, decentralized and connected entirely by Internet-fueled collaboration. If this is news to you, fear not: Senior Technology Editor Lee Hutchinson wrote a massive February explainer about how our site functions this way. That feature is one part of a recent remote-work series, and its other entries have focused largely on the business feasibility of the practice.

But that conversation's tenor is shifting rapidly in the face of coronavirus, and you might be more interested in a broader set of impressions and tips. Thus, we're here to offer ways big and small to improve your remote workplace experience, based on our staff's years of doing it successfully. These range from brief to lengthy, and they include suggestions that may seem obvious or silly to some, but sometimes in the course of working from home, the little stuff adds up in a big way.

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