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This was a bad year in all kinds of ways, but perhaps no institution suffered quite as shocking a blow as the physical office space. Tips for managing your commute or navigating office politics were understandably replaced by tips for optimizing how to work from your couch.Read more...

The dreaded “Zoombombing” is a risk for all Zoom meetings, even private rooms secured with a passcode and data encryption. All it takes is for the invite to wind up in the wrong hands, and suddenly you have someone screaming randomly in your work meeting—or worse.Read more...

One of Zoom’s best features is finally available in Google Meet: Virtual backgrounds. For now, you’ll only get it if you’re using Google Meet via a desktop browser (sorry, app users), and it’s coming online via a rollout, so you might not even able able to access it yet. The novelty of the feature is too great to let…Read more...

When workplaces around the country closed abruptly due to the coronavirus outbreak, a lot of people had to get used to working from home fast. In a best-case scenario, your employer volunteered to cover the costs of a faster internet connection, or a desk chair for your temporary home office.Read more...

Whether you’re a seasoned work-from-homer or still adjusting to it in these Pandemic Times, you’ve probably run into the whole “all hours are now potential work hours” problem. Without distinct separation between home and office, it’s hard to know when to work and when not to—especially when you’re combining work with…Read more...

Custom Zoom backgrounds prevent you from having to show off the same boring wall, messy apartment or kid-caused chaos in every meeting. And if you grew up on BBC shows like “Doctor Who,” “EastEnders,” and “BlackAdder,” you can now bring nostalgia to your conference calls with backgrounds from your favorite TV sets.Read more...

Forget trying to find the perfect desktop wallpaper. Now that everyone’s using Zoom—or one of the many Zoom alternatives—it’s all about picking the right virtual background. Swapping in one of Zoom’s built-in backgrounds might’ve elicited a chuckle back when teleconferencing was a new thing, but now that we’re all…Read more...

The world now runs on video chat and telecommuting apps, but as we’ve come to discover over the last few weeks, they can be a security risk. Recent reports of “Zoombombing” and account stuffing have raised concerns over several difference video chat apps, but it’s not just hackers and trolls you have to worry about: Y…Read more...

If you’ve been working from home during the shutdown, the past eight weeks have probably felt twice as busy and stressful as usual. After all, you’ve had the difficult task of staying productive while learning new tools, figuring out how to communicate with remote coworkers, trying to balance productivity and…Read more...

Google is cutting the price of its Google Meet video conferencing app all the way down to “free.” All you need to access it is a Google account—not a pricier G-Suite subscription, like before. (Though, as part of the launch of this Google Meet free version, G Suite subscribers also get free access to the enterprise…Read more...

Are you feeling burned out? Do you find yourself working more, not less, even while working from home? Award-winning journalist Celeste Headlee joins us on The Upgrade this week to talk about how the toxic culture of busyness is harming both our brains and our bodies, and what we can do about it. Celeste is the author…Read more...

One of the struggles of working from home—something many more of us are doing for the first time—is a constant pressure to be present. Your Slack dings, and you feel a nagging sense of guilt if you can’t contribute an answer or participate in a discussion. Conversely, it’s easy to get annoyed when people aren’t being…Read more...

Working from home necessitates reliable communication tools, and while it’s likely many of us are participating in more Zoom calls lately, paying for a premium or enterprise-level video conferencing app can be difficult for smaller companies or freelancers. There are several decent video-chatting apps available, but…Read more...

Now that many of us lucky enough to be working are working from home and hosting our meetings virtually, we’re hyper-focused on making video conference calls less terrible, starting with making sure we look good on camera. But how sure are you that you actually don’t look terrible or that there isn’t something…Read more...

Many of us are now beginning our second or third week of working from home, and it’s time to get serious about work-life balance.Read more...

The coronavirus pandemic has suddenly made video conference calls a central part of our lives. Unfortunately, webcams have the uncanny ability to reveal us at our most vulnerable and least flattering. In the video above, we share some tips on how to look and sound your best on a video call.Read more...

It has been a week. Schools across the country have shut down—some for the rest of the school year—to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. Parents have been scrambling all week to work from home or find child care or set up schedules that kind of, sort of resemble a school day. It feels like a victory to have…Read more...

I woke up this morning genuinely confused about what day it was. It was either Wednesday or Thursday, I was pretty sure about that. For as long as the week has felt, it should be Saturday, but nowadays, Saturdays are going to resemble Mondays, so does it even matter what day it is? It’s definitely Thursday (Friday?).Read more...