Working From Home During the Pandemic (With or Without Kids)

You're listening to Syntax, the podcast with the tastiest web development treats out there. Strap yourself in and get ready. Here is Scott Tolinski and Wes Bos. Welcome

to Syntax. This is the podcast with the tastiest web development treats. We have got a banger show for you today about working from Node. And don't turn it off just yet because I know everybody's given tips on on how to work from home, but, we're going to attempt to give you our tips as to, like, how do you make the most of what's going on right now? A lot of people are working from home. A lot lots of kids at home that need to be taken care of, but you and your significant other both have jobs to do at the same time. So it's just this, like, really weird area, and and we're just gonna try to give our our thoughts. And we reached out to the Twittersphere for their own thoughts as well as to, like, how do you navigate this troublesome time and and do your best? I think that's that's really, what we can do right now is is do your best. Today, we're sponsored by Scott Tech Domain Names and Prismic. We'll talk about them partway through the episode.

With me, as always,

is mister work from home, Scott Tolinski. How are you doing today, Scott? Hey. Yeah. I'm doing good. Doing good. Well, I mean, you know, given the current situation, I'm doing good. And, you know, I think it's a I don't I don't wanna bump people too much out about any of this stuff because everybody's already bummed out enough about it. So, yeah, you know, I I I think we'll we'll try to cover this to the extent where it's going to be helpful without trying to bring you down or something like that, because that's really what's important here. You're getting enough bummer news from elsewhere. So we'll try to keep it all productive, positive, and all that stuff. And, yeah, I so in that regard, I'm doing good. I'm sipping on a tea. I'm working on some code. I have 14 failed just tests this morning. So, you know, and that's that's where I'm gonna be at.

That's good. That's good.

Alright. So let's get into it. We've got some a bunch of different topics here about, your space, your routine, your focus, your your self care. And then we've got a big big section on, like, how do you even possibly slice up your day if you have a partner and kids Yeah. Where, like, you just you just can't possibly both will be working at the exact same time because kids need to be watched and yelled at and all that sort of thing.

So let's start off with sort of the the easiest. I think the easiest wins you can have when you when you're working from home is, like, what does your space look like? How can you make the space that you are sitting in or standing in or whatever as as productive as possible so that, like, you sort of set yourself up for success? Because, like, I know myself, if I tried to do a bunch of work just sitting on the couch or something like that, I'm not nearly as in the zone as I could possibly be JS if I'm sitting at my desk. And even when I'm gone for, like, a trip or something and I come back and I just plug in my laptop to all my monitors and everything, I get the sense of, like, like, this is where I meant to be, and everything is much easier because I'm properly set up for that. So, like, what are the things you need to properly set up a a sort of a makeshift? This is not your Instagram desk boy $20,000 setup. This is you've got a table and a rickety chair. How do you make the best of it? So here's what you need, Wes. You need,

you need some cool pictures hung up on the wall behind you, maybe some of those, sound foams, sound observing foams. You need some some decent lighting. You need some RGB.

Need a keyboard that looks like an alien mothership.

Yeah. Hashtag sponsored.

Hashtag sponsored. Yeah. No. But what you really need is is I mean, I like that you said set yourself up for success because what you really need is a space that does set you up for success. And in that regards, it's a space that can be yours, feel comfortable and feel like a workspace. Like, what is your workspace at your office feel like? I know some open open office workspace plans are not the most conducive, and maybe that's what you're you're like at work. But what is your your zone feel like? Where do you feel like you're in the zone working? And maybe that's a good idea to start with for your your desk space. To me personally, it all starts with being able to shut the door. And if you don't have a door or an office to shut, put on some really good noise canceling headphones.

Getting yourself in that sort of, aural, not oral, but aural with the a, space JS really important for me personally to just have this sort of inner focus zone time where I'm not being influenced by the dog barking or Mickey Mouse on TV or whatever.

Yeah. And I honestly quite think so. Just to give you some some, idea here, we're recording this on March 24.

It'll probably be released 2 weeks from Node, so the world might have changed a lot in the next 2 weeks. But as I'm looking at it right now, it looks like people are going to be working from home for at least, I I would say, probably 3 or 4 more months. So in some cases, your your employer will allow you to spend a little bit of money on investing on some stuff. Even if it's just you, I would probably spend a little bit of money and look for some sort of room dividers.

I know you can either get just, like, even just the old twin mattress or something like that Wes you can just put this thing up and give you a little bit of spaces. I know a lot of people don't have a dedicated room that they can go to, especially I'm thinking of, like, friends that live in, like, bachelor apartments in New York. My wife, she doesn't have her own office. I mean, I have an office at our house because I work here 247,

but she's working from home right now. She doesn't have an office. So, you know, what does that space look like? Yeah. So some sort of room divider. You can get these foam ones or I don't know. You can

even just like those acoustic panels that they put up on the on the, the side of a a gym. It's it's sort of hard to buy secondhand stuff right now because people on like, my immediate thought would be to, like, just go on Facebook Marketplace, find someone who's got a bunch of old panels from a seventies office and and throw that up just for the time being. But, like, even then, that's that's a little bit dry. You're gonna have to find something, some sort of thing online or in the cottage. What I've done is I've just, we have these really heavy wool blankets. I've just hung a couple of those up around me. Oh, that's good. And that just dampens all of the sound and not all of it, but it it gives it dampens enough that you're in a little bit of a different mindset. And they make, like, sound deadening blankets

for that as Wes. If you're, like, looking to shell out cash, which I know, most people probably aren't, but if you have, like, extra money or your company is giving you money I know I've heard about that. Some companies are giving their employees some money to outfit their work from home setup so that they're more productive.

And maybe that's something to look into JS sound deadening blankets or dividers or some sort of thing to give your your space a defined feeling Sanity is your focus space when you step in there.

Yeah. Other just, like, actual tips I have there is things that work well to hold up blankets are if you go to Home Depot, whatever, they have, these just like clamps, like, hand clamps that are are spring loaded. Oh, yeah. Never thought about doing that. And heavy duty heavy duty Sanity, I've bought off of Amazon, before. Just, like, we in our cottage, we have, like, spaces where there's no blinds, and we just because if a kid needs to sleep in there, then we just throw up a tea towel or something, and then we just use magnets to to keep it up over there. How do you attach the magnets to the wall and to the blanket? You have. To there's a a couple different options.

So if there's something metal, then the magnets are a good use case.

You can also buy Ferris plates.

So, what does that mean? It means a piece of steel that is magnetic.

Unfortunately, washers aren't Ferris, so you can't just buy some washers and stick them to the wall with two way tape or something like that. So you'd have to find something that is magnetic enough. Otherwise, if you've got even just, like, a piece of trim around a window or something like that, those clamps work pretty well in in my use case because you kind of want to go something semi permanent. I wouldn't even be all that scared of just drilling into the ceiling or the wall Yeah. To do something because it's like we're going to be at this for a couple months, and it's not a big big deal to to patch a wall when things get back to normal.

Yeah. And I I agree, and that's that's sort of where I'm looking at it. But then, again, my space is definitely more of a permanent space.

I am interested in these magnets and clamps. Maybe you could throw a link in the the show notes to let people know exactly what you're talking about. That might be might be super useful.

Yeah. They're just called super strong neodymium.

They're called fishing magnets, which is kind of fun because there's this whole genre of YouTubers that tie a very powerful magnet to a, string. And Oh, my gosh. And throw it off of a bridge or something like that. They're like, oh, it's on the I found a murder weapon or something like that. Right? Gosh. There's, like, a Ford Pinto or something that come up. These damage your computer or something? I'm sure they could, but to to what like, I Wes, they're they're not that popular. Wes, it it like, don't get the, like, like, the 1,000 pound one that it, like, will pull a car. Mhmm. Just get these.

I'm just looking at the the ones that I bought. So I got a 6 pack of

40 kilogram. That's 85 pounds. Okay. I was gonna say, you gotta give it to the the freedom you needed to They're about the size of a loonie, which

I don't know. I have a loonie.

In my, in my drawer here. So, Wes, I'm Do you really? I do. Yeah. I spent some time in in Canada being a Michigander for most of my life. It was too when you went there. Right? Oh, yeah. Toonies. Yeah. Yeah. Loony's and toonies. And, like, I I learned at the bar, you gotta ask for, like, a blue, not like a Labatt blue. Like, can I get a blue? Oh, really? Yeah. They like they're always like, can I get a little Labatt? And they're like, what are you talking about? It was

in Grand Bend. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I know all about that. Yeah. That seems like an area of Canada that would drink a lot of blue. Yeah. Yeah. We were Did you get the blue flu forever? No. I did not get the blue flu. No. Blue flu is in in university and Deno school, they'd always be like, don't drink too much blue. You're gonna get the blue flu. See, yeah. Look. That's hilarious. Yeah. That's funny.

Anyways, what else do you need for your space? Keyboard and Sanity. Just some sort of external keyboard. I I am I hate hunching over my laptop. I Node, Scott, you full time drive

on your laptop. Is that true? Nope. Oh, you no. You've got an external keyboard. Yeah. You sick. Pick that Node. I got an external keyboard, and I I prefer the giant Mac trackpad JS my go to for a mouse. I don't like mice, really. I don't know why. I know a lot of people really like their their mice. They're but, you know, the trackpad for me has always been the golden because I love all my gestures. I love, gotta have my gestures, man. I'm so used to it. So even when I get a desktop computer, I always opt for the external trackpad.

Oh, yeah. I have the MX Master 2, which I hilariously bought because it was on sale and did not realize it was on sale because they're releasing the 3. Oh.

I'm just looking. Like, the the frustrating thing about everybody working from home is everything is sold out. Like, the Elgato Cam Link is totally sold out everywhere.

A lot of, like, audio cables are all sold out right now. The MX Master 3 is sold out, looks like. The 2 is still available, which is good. For those of you who don't know, the Elgato Cam Link is this neat little thing that has a USB on one end and an HDMI on the other. And as long as your DSLR or mirrorless or high end camera supports Deno output HDMI output, like Deno crap on the display, then you can use your DSLR or mirrorless, whatever, as a webcam. So if you ever see anybody with a super high resolution webcam, that's what we're doing. I record all of my videos through the Elgato Cam Link. It's a really cool device if you have a nice camera like that. Yeah. It's it's real. I just got one recently, and and it is super cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a step up. Like like, I'm not saying go out and buy this, but if you have,

you can't even buy it now. But if you do have a nice SLR, like, there's something about meeting with someone who has good video and audio that just makes you feel like you're in the room. Like, Scott and I are recording this podcast. A lot of people don't even know that we do this over Zoom.

So, yeah, that's Sunday. Like, it's the worst when you talk to people, and it's, like, echoey, and their audio audio is awful.

There's just, like, small thing. Like, maybe, like, what are some good things that you can do to make good audio and video as you're talking to people from home? But one of the the biggest cheats I have is just put a T shirt underneath your keyboard so it doesn't sound like you're Wes you're you're talking over the thing because you always have to tell people to mute themselves.

So that's an easy one. You probably have a t shirt. I yeah. That's a good idea. I don't do that. So I didn't. When I when I initially started doing video recording, I only I only had, like, a a tiny little tripod to record myself, and every vibration from my typing would follow its way back back up into the microphone. Mhmm. And just simply putting a T shirt underneath the keyboard absorbed all of those sounds.

Interesting. So my keyboard, by the way, is the Keychron k one. It's a wireless keyboard. It's semi it's a mechanical keyboard, but it's got these really low profile mechanical switches. And it feels much more like typing on the Mac laptop than it does a mechanical keyboard.

I really, really disliked this keyboard when I first bought it because it triggered key presses when you just rested your fingers on it. And they've since come out with, like, a 3rd iteration of this one, and it is awesome now. So I'm a huge fan of, of this keyboard now. So if you're looking for something like that that it feels a little bit more like the Mac keyboard, check it out. It's the the Keychron K1, and it has, fancy LEDs that change all the time. So you can look like a Instagram, desk person.

Desk boy.

What else we have here? Vercel monitors, obviously, super helpful as well. Super helpful. Yeah. You've got 1 you can throw together and, just raising up your laptop on even just a set of books, something like that. So it's just at a bit of a higher level that's gonna prevent any fatigue that you have. It may seem silly, but if you're gonna be spending 4, 6, 8 hours a day on this thing, make sure that you have good ergonomics because you don't wanna come out of this with a RSI injury or something like that. What does RSI stand for? Repetitive stress injury, RSI injury. That's like ATM machine.

Yeah. ATM machine. Right. I I got carpal tunnel from breaking. Like, there's so much, repeated stress on your wrist. I got carpal tunnel, and I had to wear those, like, nineties rollerblading wrist guards for a little while while my wrist healed. And, it was a really huge bummer because the the trackpad really aggravated it, and I really loved using my trackpad. So I had to go to, believe it or not, a Wacom tablet or Wacom, however you like to say it, was the the most ergonomic for me Wes I had carpal tunnel. It worked really well. But, luckily, those kind of injuries can heal themselves if you if you let them. So.

Last thing tip we have here for space is don't work from your bed and your couch.

It's very tempting, especially if it's like, oh, I'm working from home, but there's nothing,

especially for me, nothing less motivating than sitting on your bed. You're also mixing up spaces. Yes. Which is not good. We're all trapped inside right now. So if your bed is where you work, but it's also where you sleep at night, then you're just you're just mixing up all the spaces, and that's it's not good for your health overall. Yeah. It's not good specifically for your sleep if you start working in your bed because it trains your brain to say this is a place for work. And then when you go to lie down for sleep, your brain's still thinking that it's Wes, well, this is a workspace. So, you Node, yeah, that's definitely something to think about.

So, next section here we have is on our routines, which are also very important because, you know, you have a routine when you go to work. You wake up. You do this. You do that. You get ready. You go to work, and then you come home. You do, you know, your normal stuff. But now that we're we're working from home, it's really easy to say, hey. Screw this routine.

I'm working from home. I'm gonna sleep in. I'm gonna do this, do that, whatever. Well, I don't wanna say that our routine hasn't changed because it's certainly changed, and we have been waking up later. But luckily, that's because Landon has been sleeping in super late for some reason. So it's it's while you can get it. Yeah. While we can get it as a new parent. So we're definitely pushing it a little bit there in terms of our normal wake up time. We're not waking up at, you know, 6, 6:30, whatever. And so I think the most important thing is to at least have some sort of assemblance of a routine specifically for your self care. And it it's funny that, we talk about this in the previous episode with Courtney Wes we say, like, you know, really fixing yourself up, shaving can do wonders. And as I say this, I had to put on a hat because my hair looked crazy.

I have the worst scraggly beard ever right now. I am not

following this advice. Shaved after Kourtney told us to shave on the last episode.

I'm nicely shaven.

Yeah. I think she would prefer if I would too. So, you know, I need to to to step up in that regard for me. It it has been difficult.

And certainly with my sort of situation JS things go and things get a little bit more overwhelming, that's one of the first things to go for me. And it it really makes a negative impact in my life. So I do need to add this to my routine. By the way, speaking of this is somewhat unrelated, but somebody on Twitter heard that I was having trouble flossing, and he sent me this big message about how the mouth is the gateway

to disease and all this stuff. Oh, wow. And it it worked. I'm shook. So, I'm shook. Scared straight. And he's like he's like, honestly, he's like he's like the I think he said the apps never worked for him, but, like, knowing why you should floss

is what worked for him. And I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense, and I've been been on my game. Yeah. I think Courtney told me something about, like, an it like, extending your life by, like, 10 years or something, and I was just like, oh, I don't wanna die. So, yeah, that's when I started flossing.

I'm gonna have a a great smile and be a 120. Yeah. That's right. Yeah.

Next step we have here is clear start and stop times. We'll talk about this a little bit more because start and stop means all stuff a little bit differently right now for a lot of people.

But even if that's you're working 5 to 10 or 5:5 AM to 11 or you're working 3 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the evening just to to get your time in.

Just being clear with those times where you can like, I asked on Twitter, like, what are your tips for for making this happen? And a bunch of people just sent me a photo of their whiteboard at their house where they clearly had every hour nice and planned out. In that way, work doesn't bleed into family life and vice versa.

Yeah. That is important to to keep those boundaries.

And lastly, we have taking breaks. It's it's just so important to take breaks.

Take breaks, go for a walk. I know that some places are in, like, stay at home mode, but I'm pretty sure all of the stay at home modes allow you to take a walk around your neighborhood.

Unfortunately, everybody since everybody is at home in our neighborhood, I don't know what it's like Wes where everybody else lives. But in our neighborhood, everybody has say, oh, I can't go anywhere, so I guess I'm gonna take my dog for a walk. And and what you see is you end up getting this experience where you see somebody on the next block, and then you gotta make a choice. Alright. I'm turning here. And so our walks are no longer linear down one line, down another line. They end up being zigzags. We're just yeah. It it's totally walk Pac Man. We're just avoiding people at all costs.

Oh, that's great. We should also say, like, we understand the the privilege that we have from both having a job and being able to work from home. Like, I asked, for tips on Twitter, and I got a couple angry people being like, you're looking to have a job and all of a sudden, like, yes. We understand that, but we we also understand that there are a lot of people who will luckily get to keep their jobs through this and are trying to navigate through working from Node. And and that's what this is that that's what this episode is for. Yeah. Absolutely.

And if you are working from home right now, it might be a good time to pick up a little side project or build something that could help your your resume out, help your your your skills grow, any of those things. Now is a good time to sharpen those skills.

And if you're gonna sharpen those skills, you gotta have some place to host your domains, any projects that you're working on, and what better way to host them than on a Scott tech domain to let everybody know that your domain is, well, tech related.

I know Wes recently used the uses what was the the URL? Uses.tech? Uses.tech.

That's such a good domain.

Wes recently did this uses.tech website, which shows JS, links to what all sorts of web developers are using in our scene. And this is like the perfect use case for this kind of domain. And honestly, if I were to see this site, let's say I'm a hiring manager. Right? And somebody says, I'm looking for a developer to do a react gig, and somebody sent me uses dot tech and says, hey. I made this, as a a fun little side project. You just did this goofing around. I would say, holy cow. You're good. Let me hire you. Let's talk about this, because this looks great. It feels great. It functions great. And not to mention, it's on a Scott tech domain.

So if you need a Scott tech domain, you're gonna want to head to go.techforward/syntax2020.

If you wanna click that link, we'll have the link in the show notes, the description of this episode.

You can use the coupon code Sanity 2020 and get 90, that's right, 90% off of a 1, 5, or 10 year domain. Get 90% off a 10 year domain. That's crazy.

So head to go.techforward/syntax 2020. Check it out.

Yes. I'm I'm actually kinda, excited to see what projects come out of this, because, certainly, it's hard to work from home, but there's also, like, a lot of after work is done, you might have bunch of extra time on your hands, depending on your situation. And it's no better time to to do that side project you've always been thinking about. So grab a .tech domain name for it. Let us know what you've been working on. Tweet us and text f m as well. Yeah. We'll share it out. By By the way, Wes, I I'm looking at this users. Scott, and one thing I'm I'm just noticing on this now that I didn't notice on it before is your very subtle,

non blurry drop shadows on these little boxes.

Oh, thank you. Yeah. It's very, very subtle. You have you have to have a very expensive monitor to be able to see it. Yeah. Right. It's not passing contrast thing. So Yeah. You know what? That that site, there's so many people on it now that the try filter for someone that is, like, JavaScript or developer. Like, try filter first, something that has a lot of people in it. 266. Yeah. JavaScript. Yeah. Feel the lag.

Oh, it didn't like for me. No? It must be that 32 gigs of memory I'm rocking, my CP cube.

There's some sort of issue. Oh, I'm getting no lag, man. I'm clicking around. Node. Clicking, clicking, clicking. No lag. I I get I like, I was running rack dev tools on it, and I was getting, like, 200 milliseconds of lag Mhmm. For painting it.

And I think it's because of how many people are on the website. So I thought that would make a a good video or something like that, figuring out what's wrong and and how we can fix it, like maybe virtual scrolling or something like that. Yeah. Virtualization is probably gonna be your key.

Yeah. It's kinda cool. Like like, it obviously wasn't a problem when we first did it, but now there's, what, 335

people on the website, and it's it's too many. Right? So we need to look at solutions for fixing that. So, yeah, maybe, maybe, you'll find a neat little thing. Like, I found out with a data URI when I was loading, you know, a couple 100 series with data URIs, and that was that was earning my my CPU,

giving me some jamming. Wonder. Yeah. That that I'm sure I'll find something weird because I, like, I put, like, 20 minutes into it, and I just couldn't figure. Like, I I knew that it was only happening on large paints, so it might just be the fact that it needs to paint 335 people to the thing, but I still haven't haven't dug into it that much. So that's a good I'm Node sure if we're using Data URIs anywhere, but, yeah, it's probably something weird like that. You know? It's probably something weird. Yeah. Cool. So let's get back into it, which is going to be the next aspect, which is focus, which we talk a lot about, and we talked a little bit about in the previous episode.

And we largely have the same advice here. When you're working from home, it is really key to focus. It's key to really know what you're going to be able to do for the day because there are we'll we'll talk about things with your your partner or your family if you you have other people working at your house or living at your house or your workspace, apartment, whatever.

But it's important to know what you should and can accomplish in a day by making a detailed to do list of everything. Right? And that way, you can check things off. You can feel productive. You can know that you're you're getting work done, and you can, just really have that good visualization of all of the things that you need to do so you're not, like, off drifting, thinking about playing video games or hanging out with your family or whatever.

Yeah. Big fan of making to do lists. We've talked about this a 1000000 times over. But, honestly, you need those small little wins, especially during this time where you might not feel all that motivated to to do your work because of what's going on. So And I find myself like, I found myself sitting down yesterday, which was Monday. I had a whole week off, with our kids to figure out what's going on. And I sat down on Monday, and I just was, like, paralyzed with what do I do first. Right? Mhmm. So I just went into my app, and I just did brain dump of all the things that I'd like to get done in the day or maybe the next couple days and then reordered them. And then I just started checking it off, and I said, okay. I'm getting back into the back into the the rhythm. And at the end of the day, I looked at my list. I said, I did everything on that list. I feel a lot better about what I've got done in this day. So to do list, we've we say it all the time. It seems silly, but but absolutely get yourself set up.

The next Node here is another thing. And Wes talk about we've talked about focus so many times. It's almost so redundant at this ESLint, but eating that frog really hit it setting like a high value thing that you want to get done for the day will definitely make you feel accomplished, and you wanna feel accomplished in these times. You don't wanna feel like you're just wasting away. Because you know what? If we're being entirely honest here, one of the the biggest things that I've used to distract myself from the current situation is my work. You know? It's really just pouring myself into the code, pouring myself into the videos, the editing, and whatever.

And it it makes everything just a little bit easier because you're not thinking about, you know, the current situation.

Some other tips I have are to don't watch or check the news during work hours. If you have apps that send you notifications for news, turn that stuff off. Turn off any notifications.

Remove the news app from your home screen, whatever. Put it somewhere that's not accessible so you're not, like, mindlessly pulling up the news. Do not have the TV news on. Nothing is going to change in 1 minute that is going to be that important, and it's going to distract you. It's going to make you anxious, and it's going to largely make you less productive, which, honestly, this isn't all about being productive.

But if we're talking about getting work done, don't let that stuff creep into your life. In fact, I've, added a ton of filters to my apps lately on Reddit and Twitter and whatever. I'm adding all of the filters for any keyword of any of our current situation or political climate because, you know what, if I wanna seek that news out, I will seek that news out, and I will do so on my own time. I don't need Twitter or social media blabbing, just constant just terror at me because it's gonna make me anxious, and it's gonna make me feel bad. So I block all those terms. And if I wanna seek that stuff out, which I do, I will seek it out on my own time. Yeah. I heard a really good turn the other day. It's called doom scrolling,

where, like, I've I catch myself doing it as well. Like, after you put the kids to bed, you'd get open your phone and just start scrolling through the news or through Reddit coronavirus or whatever. And then I'm it's almost like I'm just, like, looking for more bad news or looking for how and then I'm, like, catching myself. Like, what am I doing? Like, this doesn't make me feel good. It's affecting my sleep, all that stuff.

It's important to stay up to date with what's going on, but the fact that I was just using it as, like, entertainment almost, or just, like, Wes something to fill me up. I don't don't I think that that's it. It's just distracting.

Just try to catch yourself if that's happening.

Yeah. It's it's so easy too. It's so easy, and I know it's like it's funny because Courtney's news app, like, sends her a notification.

And it says, like, why the world's ESLint, and, like, that like, no matter what she's doing, if she gets that notification, it's gonna freak her out. So, like, turn that stuff off.

And I guess this leads into the next section, which JS, self care, which is really important in these times. We're all stressed out. We're all feeling the burn. We're all feeling, you know, really bad overall, to use the, the biggest word ever.

But in me my personal viewpoint, we've been taking great steps to sort of especially recently, to make ourselves feel better. We've been playing a game, Animal Crossing, which Courtney talked about in the last episode, which seriously is just so relaxing and meditative.

My brother asked about this game. He's like, I don't know anything about this game. What do you do? I'm like, well, you you fish, and you catch bugs, and you walk around the forest, and you pull up weeds. And it's just it's it's sort of boring, but it's so cute and relaxing. And it feels so good. So, if I find things like that don't you know what? It's funny. We put on a Netflix cyberpunk futuristic show. We watched, like, 5 minutes of it, and it was just like super violence.

You know? And, typically, I'd be really into that, and I it just felt too too heavy for me. I said, we we gotta shut this off. We gotta put on something a little bit more mindless, a little bit more relaxing.

So we put on Love JS ESLint, and that was a lot of fun. So Is that that new Netflix show that everyone's talking about? Yeah. Yeah. It's a train wreck. It's one of those, you know, romance shows where they put people in a they put people in different pods, and then they, like, ask them to marry people ask each other to marry each other without ever seeing them. It's just it's it's wild. It's a little bit of a train wreck, but it's it's good mindless TV.

I'll allow it just in these times. Right.

Top chef. Things like that. Yeah. You know?

Exercise, obviously, is another, important one. Our gym gyms are obviously closed right now. Uh-huh. So one thing my wife and I did immediately, is we went out and bought a exercise bike, because Peloton? No. We're not not much of a rich a hole. Oh, I know. Yeah. Yeah.

I it's Vercel pnpm Peloton owners, but yeah. Yeah. That is fun. I it seems really cool. And I told my wife if if she can do, like, 2 years of of this, then we can get a Peloton. But, like like, we got, like, one of the best Schwinn ones, and it was it was still, like like, a fourth of the cost Yeah.

Of of what a Peloton would cost. So I Oh, minus the subscription too. You know what I said? Yeah. Like, what's GitHub subscription? Like, $30 a month? I don't even know. Yeah. Let's let's look it up. You could join the Peloton

in the corner of a room, meme where everybody, like, puts their Peloton, like, overlooking a giant window in some ritzy apartment.

It seems pretty sweet. I know. Yeah. I know. I say this as somebody who who would gladly take 1, you know.

Okey.

I'm gonna I'm gonna guess that means it's expensive. West is $49

a month? That's more than I pay for my gym membership, like, 3 times over.

Wes spend $100 a month for our gym membership in Michigan.

It was a really dope gym. Oh, yeah. We I used to pay, like, 60 a person, and then, like, another one opened up down the road that was, like, nicer. And $20 a month, I couldn't believe it.

If you are looking to get out of this with not spending a ton of money, though, there JS, this podcast I recommended as a sick pick the other day. I do want to clarify this. These guys are very sarcastic. They, like, made some comment. Like, immediately after I suggested this podcast, they, like, made some comment about hating marijuana and being super religious, and, like, hating everything. Like, it was, like, very weird, but they were being super sarcastic. And if you didn't know them and you just listened to it, you'd be like, oh, these guys are, like, very intense. Like, the joke was way overboard. And, like, I just like, oh, crap. I just suggested this thing, and people aren't gonna get the jokes. But this podcast is really good, and it's all science based. But this episode most recently talked about what you can do for workouts both cheaply and expensively working from home with, like, minimal to no equipment.

And, it's fantastic because they basically go through every single muscle group and say, all right, this is what you can do if you have no equipment. This is what you can do with a little bit of equipment.

And I think that's really great. I personally have a set of what Wes have a home gym. Right. But if I if you don't have a home gym, a squat rack and whatever, the easiest, cheapest thing you can do is buy a set of adjustable dumbbells.

Increments.

So you can do just about everything. Like, you could do a full body workout with those things Node problem, and it's 1 piece of equipment.

I saw a set of those on Marketplace the other day, and it had been posted for, like, 20 minutes. I was like, I'll take them. They wanted, like, Wes. Gone. Oh. But they're they're not cheap at all. They're, like, 100 hundreds of so it's not the cheapest thing you can do. It's not the cheapest thing you can do, but it's, like, 1 piece of equipment, and it lives. It's a tiny piece of equipment. It lives somewhere,

and you will use it forever. We've had ours, like, 4 years, and they they're they feel brand new. So A set

of 5 to 50 is $600.

Honestly No. That's not. What? Yeah. Look them up. Them that's not their normal pricing. That must be inflated like crazy.

MSRP, $800.

No. That's not right.

That's Node right. I've been looking at them ever since you you suggested them, and I always see them as being, like, silly because I saw sometimes I see them for, like, used, like, 1 for a $150.

That's not right. Like, the thing about these power blocks is that they hold their value. I've seen a set of, like, 10 year old ones go for 100 of dollars.

So you'd be able to sell them again. No problem.

That these are these are crazy. These are these prices are crazy. We did not pay that much. These must be. Nope. You got yours used. Right? No. I bought them new.

Oh.

Yeah. There's several different brands too. I know Bowflex has 1.

A bunch of different people make 1. Either way, adjustable dumbbells, however you can get them, really will go a long way for for working out.

The Bowflex, five to 52 pound,

a set is Wes. Those gotta be elevated. That's gotta be it. Maybe that's it. Maybe the Canadian you guys are getting hosed.

Bunch of hosers.

That's $300 US. Yeah. We're getting hosed. Do you know that the term hoser comes from whoever lost the hockey game had to hose down the rink? No. I didn't. Right? People call it that you're such a hoser. You're a hoser.

Do you ever see the Bob and Doug McKenzie movie, whatever that was? Doug McKenzie.

That was, like, the best movie ever. Strange Brew? No. I haven't. Oh my god. You gotta see this. Strange Brew. Bob and Doug McKenzie, a pair of fictional Canadian brothers. It's Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas.

It's so good. The movie is fantastic.

They're formed out of a t either way. Strange brew. Go watch it. Very Canadian. That's awesome. And, obviously, there's hockey involved in the Canadian movie. So

we have I've seen a lot of people doing, like, Zoom happy hours because, like, one thing you do miss working from home is that you don't have that social, like, just chit chatting with people. And it's funny. Like, I've even seen people go as far to say, we're having a Zoom meeting for half an hour, and you you may not talk about work Yeah.

Which seems silly, but, honestly, I think that, like, a lot of people need that. Just the the little chitchat back and forth, talking about what's going on in your life because you do do that in a workplace.

As someone who works from home, I love missing out on the chitchat because, I don't I don't like the chitchat, but a lot of people need it. Oh, I like the chitchat.

Honestly, I really miss being able to go to my coworkers and say, hey. I'm about to do this with my code. Is this a bad idea? And then they could be like, yeah. What what are you thinking? Why would you do that? And I, like, oh, yeah. That is dumb. Wait. They could talk you off a ledge? Yeah. I'm having a bad idea or, you Node, hey. Hey, man. Can you, I've been working on this bug for 2 hour. Oh, fixed it. Okay. You know, like, that kind of thing. I really miss that.

Next one is don't over rely on substances.

I know it's tough right now, but a couple of glasses of wine or whatever every night, that's cool. Whatever, whatever fits your fancy, but, like, I don't know. A note about addiction or overly abusing substances, I suppose. I don't wanna be preachy, but, like, man, if you have too much alcohol or you're just pounding it, that's not helping the situation or or too much of anything, too much relying on substances. I know it's so funny because, like, my anxiety makes me wanna say like, oh, don't don't do anything because I don't want my immune system to be compromised to the point where I haven't been drinking at all just because I don't want my immune system messed up. But in the same regard, they they just announced yesterday that in well, when they're recording this, they announced yesterday in Colorado that liquor stores and, marijuana shops are not essential services.

And then within, like They're not? They are not, and they needed to close.

And so within, like, moments of announcing that, there were hour long lines, like, wrapping around every liquor store and dispensary in in this in the the city, really. I mean, it was craziness. You can find pictures of it. And, like, I don't Node. Within within an hour, they they were like, okay. Sorry. We'll we'll pull that back. You can have your weed. You can have your alcohol.

And Node they all have, you know, curbside pickup, so you can go pick up those edibles on the curbside or something. So it's a interesting situation, nonetheless.

That is because they just announced what ESLint is an essential here in Ontario, and, cannabis and alcohol is essential. It is now Node. Yeah. However, if you order online, they will no longer bring it to your door because they have to check if you're 19. So you they have you have to drive to the post office and show the person their ID Mhmm. And then drive home, which seems a little counterproductive when you're trying to keep people away. But Yeah. You're right. That's I don't know. They made their decision there.

I have a couple more here.

One of them is an inside joke between me and Courtney, which is get your VD. We always call vitamin d, VD.

And, like, and, like, we'll be on a walk. It's all there. I don't know. Like, people are who are not in tune to our our lingo probably are like, what the hell? Because we'll be on our walk, and we'll be like, getting some BD.

And, we crack up about it, but, get that vitamin d. Get some sun in your backyard. Let that sun come in if you if you if you can get it. If not, I take a a small vitamin d supplement.

Don't go crazy overboard with it, but vitamin d can help your immune system right now. It can also help a lot of things. So just try to get some sun. Try to be outside a little bit. Get that vitamin d, or that VD, as we say. And, also, don't stress yourself out at night. We wanna optimize and maximize our sleep here. And it was even, like, last night. I think it was, like, last night, I I I saw Courtney's phone. Like, the light was on when we were, like, trying to go to bed, and I was just thank you. She better not be googling coronavirus stuff.

Sure enough, it, like, Wes, and it was stressing both of us out. And last night, I even talked about it when we were in bed, and it was like, why why am I doing that? So I think it's important, something we're certainly gonna try to do more of, but, like, set a boundary and say, like, after 9 o'clock, no more CV talk. Nothing. COVID did it's not it doesn't exist after this time. We don't wanna stress ourselves out before sleep. I didn't get good sleep last night, and that's not helping anything. So, I think we wanna optimize and maximize our ability to shut our brain off before before bedtime.

And if you wanna optimize and maximize your data, you're gonna check out, prismic.i0, which is a super easy way to make your website editable for the entire team. Wes, do you want to talk a little bit about Prismic?

Yes. Prisma is a headless CMS. It's got a REST API. It's got a GraphQL API.

The whole idea is you sign in, you create your data types, you relate them to each other, and that spits out a GraphQL API on the other end. And then you pull that data into your React app, your Vue app, your iPhone app. Whatever you're using, you can pull that data ESLint your app. So it works with Next. Js, Nuxt, Gatsby. They've got all kinds of really good starters.

If you wanna try it out for a project that you may be with your .tech domain Node, hey. How awesome would it be if you use both of our sponsors, in a single project Yeah. Right Node? You wanna head over to prismic.i0forward/ syntax, and they've got a nice little layout of, the different features that they have, their previews that they have, the image optimization that they have, And they have 2 different starters, 1 for React and Node for Vue. They Scott of pitted us Scott versus Wes, Vue versus React. It's a hilarious little landing page. Check it out. Prismic.i0forward/ syntax.

Thanks so much to Prismic for sponsoring.

Cool.

Yeah. Let's get into this last part, which quite honestly, I I don't have a whole lot of answers here just yet. I think a lot of people are trying to figure it out JS there's a lot of us who have kids that their childcare is Vercel. So the kids are at home with them, and then there's 2 parents. Or Our childcare wasn't even canceled. We just didn't wanna have them in childcare right now because Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's still it's still on in Colorado? Well,

as of yesterday, maybe not. But up until yesterday, yes, it was. Oh, yeah.

Or, like, maybe you're a single a single parent with now all of a sudden, your your kid is at home because you don't have a child care. Like, there's a lot of people in situations where it's just not possible for both parents to work as well as as have their kids at home. So I I reached out on Twitter and said, like like, okay. Like, how are you how are you even doing this? Because it's certainly not possible for both of you to put in a solid 8 hour a day when when the kids are at home. So, like like, first of all, props to you for for doing this. This is not hard, especially, like like, I know, like I mean, it's not easy. It's yeah, it's not did I say it's not hard? Yeah.

It is hard. You got yeah. It's not hard. Yeah. No. It's just it's hard.

This meme the other day JS, and just like that, no one ever asks to stay at home mom what they do all day. Yeah. Right. Yes. I know. So so many props to stay at home moms. Oh my god. It's really hard to to be at home with your kids all day. Like, some people are really good at it, but, certainly, people who are used to working a full day are not used to it, and you're sort of thrown into this. Yes. So these tips can vary greatly depending on your job, your significant other's job, how many kids you have, how old your kids are, whether they have, like, online school or not, but we're just gonna rattle through some of the tips that we have here. So what's been, I think, what's been working so far for myself as well as a bunch of the other people is just slicing your day up so that each person gets a set a a number of hours. So whether that's each person like, some people said, I'm been working waking up at 5 AM and working until 11.

Mhmm. And then, my significant other takes the next 5 or 6 hours from there. Or some of them do 2 hours on, 2 hours off, 2 hours on, 2 hours off, just sort of trading back and forth. Some people say, like, I get a couple hours done in the morning, and then I get a couple hours done, in the afternoon. I I think really just trying to, like, look at it and say this is gonna be Yarn, but how can we slice up our time so that, we can both get the amount of time that we need? And even if your your significant other doesn't even have a job, being home with the kids all day is is incredibly tough.

So, like, what I've been doing with my wife is just, like, just jumping in once or twice a day and giving her a 30 minute break. Totally. So she could just go do whatever.

She can do some work or go do a workout or would just be away from everybody else for a little little bit of time so you can maintain your sanity.

Yeah. Totally. And communication is so key in that point where Courtney's work is a little bit different than mine in in regards that, you know, she largely requires to be at work testing kids, and and now that's not going to happen. So she it's not that she doesn't have a ton of stuff to do because she has a lot of reports to write and all those things, but it's very different. And so the way we do it is is the beginning of the day, she'll say, I need 3 hours, 4 hours to write today, and you can have Node of that other time to work because, you know, she knows that my business is sort of a priority right now because we don't even know what the status of her job's going to be. So, we're splitting it up in those ways. And sometimes, this is an appropriate thing to give yourselves both a little break. And and sometimes uncle Mickey needs to come over for a visit, and, Landon gets to watch the Mickey Mouse for a little bit while we clean or get stuff done that we couldn't otherwise do if we were all just watching or playing with the kids 247.

So, yeah, that don't don't let your feels self feel bad if if uncle Mickey comes comes to visit.

Other people said that they are sort of having, like, focus time that's where you can schedule all of your calls, all of your deep work needs to happen. And then you can sort of have, like, half focus time Wes, if you need to have your laptop out and do a couple emails or fix a couple things while you're you're watching over the kids, and then that's a good way to do it as well. So because, like, it's it's not like you can't just slap the kids in front of the TV for an hour as well. That's certainly a fine thing to do at at this point in time. It's just that you're not gonna get that, like, Deno work. Like, I'm not gonna record a video tutorial while my kids are are watching Dora the Explorer in the background, you know, but I certainly could reply to some emails or,

do a few tweets or something like that. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. And it's all just a balance. You you gotta I don't know. We're all just doing our best at this ESLint. You know? So don't let yourself get beat up over maybe not winning the parent of the year award right now.

Uncle Micky is gonna win the parent of the year award. He is. Yeah.

We were recording that last episode with Courtney and and myself here. And since we were doing that, Brooklyn was taking a nap, and Landon was watching Mickey Mouse. But he when the episode changed, like, the episode was over, he was, like, freaking out. He was so upset.

He was like, oh, episode Node Mickey Mouse. And he Wes like, okay. We'll get Mickey Mouse back, and then we can finish the episode.

Yeah. And it's it's rough.

Other tips we have here is, just in terms of coworkers JS have empathy for your coworkers because you might not understand what's going on in their house if they can't get back to you as quick as they want or they they miss a call or whatever. So just know that everybody JS in a really a bit of a weird situation right now, and, think about that. Check-in on on people as well if you're not hearing from them as much.

Worth making sure that everybody's okay as well. Yeah. And don't check-in. Like, don't make it loaded like, hey. Why aren't you at work? Be just like, hey. How are you doing? Is everything cool? Like, check-in with them mentally. We talked about that in the last episode too. But a lot of it is just Wes are all people. We're all struggling, right now in all sorts of ways. So everybody needs to, just be great to each other, help each other out, and, you know, just be awesome people.

I like it. Alright. Let's move into some sick picks. I have actually got a very sick pick for you today, and this is probably only for people who have young children.

But my wife recently bought this thing called the SlumberPod, which was because we were supposed to go on vacation before the world fell apart, but we still are using it because super super helpful.

And what it is is it's essentially a blackout tent that you put over top of a play yard or pack and play or crib or whatever whatever those things are called. You know, those, like, little Yeah. Those things you put your kids in. And it's it's just this tent that goes over top of it and makes it completely dark in them. And that's always a problem we have when we're traveling. It's like, okay. The kid's going for a nap. Yeah. Or even at my parents' house. Alright. Let's go for a nap at my parents' house. And they have, like like, a coffee filter over the the window, and it's just, like, brightest day in there even with the blinds closed.

So we bought this thing, and you just pop it over top of their crib or whatever, and it's just super black in there, and it works amazing. Like, our our kid is having the best sleeps he's ever had. It's nice and quiet. There's a little window you can put the camera in, those little vent holes that you can open if you're concerned about that. And I couldn't it's it was expensive. It was, like, $200 or something like that. And I was like, this is silly. Why are we buying a tent for $200? We can go to the camping store and buy a tent for less than that. And, we got it on there, and he slept like a baby.

And this thing is is amazing. So, like, even if you are in a situation right now where you need to take over one of your kids' rooms and they can't have their nap because you're working in there, this would be a good thing to slap over top of a pack and play while they're in the laundry room or something like that, and it becomes super dark. That's funny.

It's it's basically like when you put up a tent over a bird cage, and the bird's like, it's nighttime.

Yes. That's exactly what it is. Yes. Oh, that's hilarious. So you're treating your children like birds. Congratulations,

Wes. Thank you.

Whatever we can do to get through this. Yeah. Right. Exactly. That's how I'm how I'm I'm running.

My sick pick JS, an escape from reality, so to say, into virtual reality. My sick pick is something I sick pick before, but I've been spending a lot of time with this in the evening right after we put the kids down. I get, like, maybe an hour or so to play some virtual reality. And, I have the Oculus Quest, which is stand alone, meaning there's no wires or anything, and it uses this really cool room scale thing. So you draw a line on the floor of your boundaries.

And when you get close to that boundary, when you're walking, it brings in, like, a grid so you can see you're approaching that boundary. So we have a decent amount of space in our living room that I just drew out. And to be honest, I actually drew out the entire 1st floor of our house. So I can walk through the 1st floor of our house in VR without running into anything, which makes it insanely cool because you get so much space. And there's this, app I've been playing lately, which is this brand new VR ping pong table tennis. I have never played table tennis. I am largely terrible at it. I've probably lost, like, 300 games at this point because I've been playing it nightly, and the physics are so stinking good. When you hit the ball, you get a haptic feedback that really feels like a ball's hitting the paddle. You're holding the paddle. You serve it. It has rules. You play online with people. So I'm playing a lot online with people all over the world, and you have voice chat and whatever, and the physics are just dead on. It really feels like you're playing table tennis. So, I was playing with this guy from Utah the other night, and, it was just so much fun to be like, hey, man. How are you doing? Oh, doing good. Oh, where are you at? Home in Colorado. I'm in Utah. How's things going? Oh, you know, whatever. We're playing table tennis and talking about the current situation and just vibing out and having fun, and I'm losing every game. And it is just so dang cool. So I'm just really into the Oculus Quest right now. So check it out if you have if you have money to drop. It's not cheap. I bought it a little while ago when it first came out, and it just gets a ton of use right now. So I'm a big fan. Awesome.

Shameless plug. I'm shamelessly plugging all of my courses. Westboss.comforward/courses.

They are likely still half off to give you something to do when you're at home, but check it out. I'd recommend my beginner JavaScript course, which is beginner javascript.com.

Cool.

And all of my courses and my subscription are 50% off. So if you are looking for some learning material on Level Up tutorials, check it out, level up tutorials.com.

You can sign up and get 50% off. Alright. Thanks for tuning in. Hopefully, you are keeping well, and we'll catch you on Monday. Peace.

Peace.

Head on over to syntax.fm for a full archive of all of our shows, and don't forget to subscribe in your podcast player or drop a review if you like this show.