Blog | Double Fourteen

Aug 6, 2020
3 min

7 Ways to Rest for Remote Workers

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article that addressed how we're conditioned - by our current economic system - to consider rest to be an interruption to work. I wrote that we need to reclaim rest from capitalism. The problem of resting, however, can be exacerbated for remote workers who often eat, pay their bills, do homework with their kids, and work at the same table. Today I'm offering some tips for reclaiming rest if you're a remote worker. As I wrote about here, it's

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Communications Tips If You Have Other Remote Workers in Your Household

Lindsay Alissa King

Jul 27, 2020
3 min

Communications Tips If You Have Other Remote Workers in Your Household

Until the onset of the pandemic, it was much less likely for remote workers to work in proximity to family members or housemates. Now, people around the world find themselves working right alongside their partners, roommates, and other family members who are also WFH. If you’re working remotely in isolation at home or in a coffee shop among strangers, it’s often much easier to focus than if you’re surrounded by family members or friends. Working at the same table as your spou

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Rethinking the Boom-or-Bust Cycle of Stress and Relief

Lindsay Alissa King

Jul 23, 2020
3 min

Rethinking the Boom-or-Bust Cycle of Stress and Relief

Do you find yourself pushing through most work days under a burden of extreme stress, punctuated only by infrequent vacations and episodic “self care”? I know I do. I love my job, but I still find that I’m often operating under high stress most of the time. I take vacations, but I often find my myself coming back from vacations with the assumption that I’ll move right back into high-stress mode until the next holiday or until my next day off. It’s a relentless cycle of exhaus

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Want to Get Things Done Faster? Move Up Your Deadline

Lindsay Alissa King

Jul 21, 2020
2 min

Want to Get Things Done Faster? Move Up Your Deadline

I go back and forth here at Double Fourteen: I write articles that call for us to dismantle and transform our toxic work culture, and the next day I write a post with a tip for accomplishing your to do list. As I’ve said before, I don’t think that simply implementing a bunch of hacks is going to fix the deep problems with our economic and social systems. In order to make life better, we need to build a new economic system from the ground up that reflects a society that values

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Lindsay Alissa King

Jul 16, 2020
3 min

Calling for a Four-Day Work Week!

I recently wrote about restructuring work in a broad systematic way–such as moving to a four-day work week or creating a basic income program that would allow us to work fewer hours per week–could make us happier and healthier, not to mention able to be better caregivers. There’s a real political movement underway to make this vision more than a pipe dream, and I’d like to introduce you some organizations and research that can help us make a healthier work week a reality. The

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Lindsay Alissa King

Jul 14, 2020
4 min

How to Make a To-Do List with Kids

I mentioned in this post that my 10-min/2-hour work strategy looks a little bit different now that I have a child. I’m working on a post about my daily schedule, but right now I’d like to write about how I’ve modified by productivity strategy to fit the demands of being a parent. For the purposes of this strategy, I’ll note that I work a traditional 40 hours per week; however, my daily routine is not your typical 9-to-5. 3 days out of the week I work a very early morning shif

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The Workplace Under Capitalism Is Garbage

Lindsay Alissa King

Jul 10, 2020
4 min

The Workplace Under Capitalism Is Garbage

Sorry for the silence around these parts. I was taking a much-needed internet break. In the past few weeks, I’ve read a lot of articles by parents, on the brink of physical and mental collapse, who are calling for our school districts and our government at all levels to start taking real leadership in figuring out how schools can safely reopen in ways that prioritize health and education. At the very least, exhausted parents are reporting that they can no longer handle the pr

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How to Work from Home in a Small Apartment

Lindsay Alissa King

Jul 3, 2020
3 min

How to Work from Home in a Small Apartment

I’ve mentioned this before, but I live with my family of 3 in a fairly small space. (Though, having lived in multiple cities, I’d say that by East Coast standards, our apartment is practically cavernous). This is dictated by both choice and finances, and we’re very happy with the arrangement. However, every single list of work-from-home tips begin by telling you to create a “dedicated workspace.” In theory, this is a great suggestion, and it would really be wonderful if all c

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Lindsay Alissa King

Jul 1, 2020
3 min

The 10-Minute/2-Hour Strategy

Today for a tip on how to tackle multi-day projects without feeling like you “accomplished nothing” at the end of your workday! Many of my current work projects require a fair bit of writing and design work that takes a few days and sometimes longer to complete. This was even more the case when I was writing a dissertation. At that time, work tasks could take years, literally. Grad-school-era Lindsay, trying to feel like I actually accomplished things each day. When working o

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Let's Expand Remote Work to Black and Latinx Workers

Lindsay Alissa King

Jun 25, 2020
3 min

Let's Expand Remote Work to Black and Latinx Workers

The data is somewhat outdated in this article, but the overall point the writers make is not: many workers are unable or not permitted to work at home, and BIPOC workers are much less likely to be able to work from home than white workers. Those are pretty bad, if unsurprising, statistics. As has been widely reported, COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting Black people for multiple reasons. The chart above surely outlines one of them. In the long-term, beyond COVID-19, this

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Alternative Work and Childcare Arrangements

Lindsay Alissa King

Jun 23, 2020
4 min

Alternative Work and Childcare Arrangements

When I was pregnant, I met an artist, who worked from home, at a party. I was quite visibly pregnant, and this man enthusiastically began to describe the childcare arrangements he had for his son back when his son was young. He has his partner had founded a coop together in Los Angeles. While cooperative daycares are not especially uncommon, this one was different. It was staffed entirely by parents, and all parents were required to donate one day per week of their time as vo

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Exercising While Working from Home, with Kids Around

Lindsay Alissa King

Jun 17, 2020
3 min

Exercising While Working from Home, with Kids Around

In the past fifteen months, I’ve gradually been able to focus my brain and my body on tasks that once occupied a lot of my waking hours pre-baby: work, cooking, cleaning, walking, plus making room for some hobbies and volunteering. I also began to figure out a work, childcare, and regular-life schedule that works for me. One thing that I couldn’t figure out, however, was where to fit exercise in my routine. I usually work for a chunk of time in the early morning, then do some

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Building Work-from-Home Trust and Dismantling Workplace Surveillance

Lindsay Alissa King

Jun 11, 2020
3 min

Building Work-from-Home Trust and Dismantling Workplace Surveillance

I follow Firstbase CEO and founder Chris Herd on Twitter. Firstbase outfits remote workers with the physical tools they need to work from home, and Chris is an outspoken fan of remote work as a solution to many of our systemic problems, environmental to social. Chris tweeted this tweet a few days ago: I immediately zoomed in on the third line: over-communicate–something that might seem unnecessary but which I actually believe is key for working from home. Then I started think

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Work from Home Resources for Employees and Employers

Lindsay Alissa King

Jun 8, 2020
3 min

Work from Home Resources for Employees and Employers

Today I want to provide a list of advocacy and educational resources designed for individuals seeking remote or flexible work, employees considering implementing remote work policies, and for activists who are calling for expanded remote work and family leave for workers in America. I’ll be adding to this page regularly, and when I get a chance I’ll create a resources landing page. Last week I also talked about how I am going to make sure that this blog addresses the need to

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Working from Home? Treat Your Brain Like Pavlov’s Dogs

Lindsay Alissa King

Jun 5, 2020
1 min

Working from Home? Treat Your Brain Like Pavlov’s Dogs

Today’s today is a quick tip for making work from home life easier. It’s hard to work from home, especially when you have kids around, messes everywhere, and a beckoning refrigerator. This is why it’s so important, for me, to have signals that put my brain into work mode. Basically, I treat myself like Pavlov’s dogs, encouraging my brain to go into work mode under certain circumstances. This is even more critical if you, like me, don’t really have space for a “designated wor

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Lindsay Alissa King

Jun 3, 2020
3 min

Mom Guilt and Racism

Like many mothers, I spend a lot of time feeling guilty for “not being a good enough” mom. Over the past few days, I’ve been mulling over this line of thinking in relation to racism and systemic poverty in the United States. I want to take a few minutes to address the current situation as it relates to being a working mom and, in my case, a work-from-home mom. I spend a lot of time feeling guilty for working, even more for working in a career I love (and thus devote a lot of

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Lindsay Alissa King

Jun 1, 2020
4 min

Breastfeeding While Working from Home

Today, a topic that I could talk about endlessly: breastfeeding, i.e. churning out calories for a hungry baby up to twelve times as day for months on end. There is a lot of material out there about breastfeeding. Before my son was born I read some of it, and I determined that a lot of it focused on how mechanically difficult and challenging breastfeeding can be. In my own experience, that was true: for about two weeks. For the first two weeks, it was painful. Like, really pai

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It’s Going to Take People Power to Make Working from Home Work for Us.

Lindsay Alissa King

May 28, 2020
3 min

It’s Going to Take People Power to Make Working from Home Work for Us.

Yesterday The New York Times published an opinion piece by Charlie Warzel that had the headline “You are Not Working from Home.” Warzel argues that what millions of Americans are doing right now is not working from home. Rather, it’s coping, as best as possible, during a stressful situation. “Laboring under confinement,” he calls it – a valid point. But it’s his larger point that I want to discuss. He points out that tech companies that have announced that much of their workf

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Remote Work Makes Me Intentional with Relationships

Lindsay Alissa King

May 27, 2020
3 min

Remote Work Makes Me Intentional with Relationships

Thanks for visiting this site over the last twenty-four hours since I “launched” it! I’m happy to know that a bunch of you are wondering about the future of working from home, too. Before I get to the meat of this post, I want to reiterate that this blog is meant for anyone working from home, curious about working from home, or in charge of policies that affect the schedules of employees. I imagine I’ll have more content about working from home as a parent than someone who do

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