Thank Goodness for Remote Working

I’m lucky to be able to do all my work from home. I know home working is nothing new, and the benefits are well documented, but until I picked up an ongoing health issue, I hadn’t given much thought to the fairly obvious benefit that it allows me to fit work sessions in as and when I can, working around any flare-ups or recovery periods.

So much is said about work/life balance, and setting a clear divide between work time and down time. Making sure that taking your work home with you doesn’t mean your work taking over your life.

But this week, the fact that it’s always right there was really useful, as I was able to quickly dip in and get some work done when I was feeling up to it, and then stop when I needed a break. If I had been going into the office I would have had to make a choice – either force myself to work when I wasn’t well enough, or take the whole day off.

I realise that I’m in a privileged position. I work for myself. No one’s checking in on me to make sure I’m working specific set hours – as long as the work gets done on time, it doesn’t matter how or when.

So in that context, I’m grateful to have the flexibility to still be able to get work done even on days when I’m out of action for most of the time. But that’s me. I don’t necessarily think it’s a good precedent, and I wouldn’t want other people to feel they should follow my lead. My advice to everyone else is that if you are ill, you should take the time off – as long as you need to fully recover. A perfect example of do what I say, not what I do.

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WordPress 7.0 will drop support for PHP 7.2 and 7.3

From The Repository: https://www.therepository.email/wordpress-to-drop-php-7-2-and-7-3-support-with-wordpress-7-0

Fair enough really: neither has received any support since at least 2021, but worth making a note if you are still running or supporting any older WP sites.

A guide to dropping US tech

I saw this article linked in Andy Bell’s excellent newsletter The Index: https://disconnect.blog/getting-off-us-tech-a-guide/

Whatever you think about the US at the moment, it’s always good to see what other options are out there when it comes to digital services, other than the ones we all know from the usual Big Tech companies. Me, I’ve been considering ditching Gmail for Proton Mail for a while now, but haven’t quite made the leap yet.

If nothing else, thinking about this kind of thing makes you realise how many digital services we are tied to, and how difficult it is to untangle ourselves.

Along similar lines, and referenced in the article, this site highlighting purely European alternatives for digital products:

https://european-alternatives.eu

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Until next time.

– Sam