Working from home - again

Due to a rise in covid cases in Singapore, we are back to compulsory working from home from today, likely for the next month. This is not easy for junior researchers, particularly PhD students. Zoom meetings are no substitute for face-to-face brainstorming of ideas in front of a whiteboard. Here are some tips to keep your research progressing through this period:

• Maintain fixed "office hours" and even dressed as you would to go in to the office before starting work. A big challenge with the PhD journey is to maintain a work-life balance and avoid your project from taking over every waking moment. This is much harder to do when working from home, since the boundaries between at work and at leisure are blurred. 
• Start your work day by writing a to-do list. You don't need to get everything done by the end of the day, but being able to tick off items as you go along provides a sense of progress even when you may be stuck on some big problem in your research.
• Don't neglect brainstorming and speculative thoughts. It's good to jot any ideas in progress you have on paper or in a latex file. Even if the ideas are not polished enough to discuss over an online meeting, you will have them in store for next time we're back in the office.
• Mix things up - don't spend all day on a single task - or you will get tired or frustrated. Make sure to keep up with the literature (e.g. daily arXiv postings), or even watch an online seminar or lecture (thanks to covid these are now readily available from many sources).
• Don't hesitate to ask your supervisors any random questions you have. The barrier seems much harder when working from home (e.g. you may need to schedule a time to discuss over zoom), but we would much prefer to answer questions immediately than to have you struggling for hours or days to get unstuck with your problem.

That's all I have for now; it is the end of the work day and time to relax :-)