How to Make It Look Like You're Working From Home (When You're Actually ⛱️🍻🚵‍♂️ 🛌)

If you are reading this, you've likely embraced the digital nomad lifestyle and are a remote worker. Perhaps you're work remotely from a warm country halfway across the world and have decided that the beach is calling you today, or maybe you are working from an unforgiving timezone and just need a few extra hours of sleep.

Whatever your reason, this brief guide will teach you how to make it look like you're engaged in work from home when you are actually doing remotely anything but working.

Tip 1: Always Keep Slack Active

The biggest tip you need to hear that unites all of us remote workers is learning how to keep Slack active (or whatever messaging app you use), ensuring your slack active status doesn't give away your absence.

So let's go into a few cases and ways to keep Slack always active.

Note: these tricks are all made for those that use Apple products

Case 1 (Easy): I want to go to the beach for the day and just need my Slack to stay active

If you are trying to figure out the easiest way of how to look busy at work while doing nothing, this solution is the simplest and most fool-proof, and all it requires is having Slack installed on your iPhone to keep slack always active.

1) Make sure your phone does not auto-lock

The first order of business is to adjust the screen timeout settings to turn off the screen lock on an iPhone.

Be careful with this trick, as if you are not careful with your phone screen, and it gets stolen in this unlocked state, all of your data will be accessible. I would recommend turning on auto-lock after each time you do this trick.

You can follow the steps in the screenshots on your iPhone to disable the lock screen:

Head to Display & Brightness in your settings

Scroll down to Auto-Lock

Select Never

2) Open Slack

Now just open the Slack app and leave it open for the duration of how long you need to be online. By doing so, you'll ensure that Slack always stays active on your phone, without the need for scrolling or any other interaction.

If you do leave the app, you will no longer be set as active, so try not to use your mobile app so much while you're enjoying the beach 😉. Alternatively, have another cheap phone handy that is solely for this purpose, and you can just leave at home.

Case 2 (More Difficult): I am working from a weird timezone and need Slack to auto-open, so I can sleep a few hours longer. Discover how to keep Slack always active on desktop, even when working across time zones.

Let's say you work remotely and your job is in Europe, but you are in Mexico, escaping the brutal winters. You are working on European timezones, but do not want to wake up in the middle of the night to get online. You want to sleep a few more hours and have Slack auto-open and stay active.

Well you could just set an alarm at an ungodly hour and do the trick from Case 1 and then fall back to sleep, but if you'd rather not disturb your sleep, here's how to keep Slack active all the time by preparing the night before you lie in:

1) Download the Amphetamine app and turn it on

Amphetamine, a cleverly named desktop app, can keep Slack active on your Mac for whatever specified amount of time you need. You can download it from the App Store.

After it is downloaded, and you go through the installation instructions and have opened it, you should have it up in the top toolbar.

Click the little pill and choose 'Indefinitely' to keep your screen on indefinitely (overnight in your case).

2) Create a Calendar event to open Slack automatically

Now you need to open that probably underused desktop Calendar app native to Apple products and use it for its greatest power: to automatically launch an app based on a time you give it.

1. From Calendar in Mac OS X, create a new event.

You will want this to be at the time you are supposed to start work (i.e. European 9 am in the example above)

2. Select the time on the right panel to open the Alerts menu

You can also change the time of the event here. Usually it automatically makes it one hour, but that is a bit irrelevant when opening up an app, so feel free to keep it to an hour's length.

3. Set 'repeat' to 'Every Day' if you want to make this happen on a daily basis

4. Configure the 'alert' section to trigger the opening of Slack at this time

Select 'Open file'

Select 'other'

Choose Slack in Finder

Choose 'At time of event' and click 'OK' - This will launch Slack at the start of the event, effectively showing you how to keep your Slack status active.

Feel free to test out this flow using a time you are awake to make sure it works.

3) Keep Slack active

The problem with desktop Slack is that after 10 minutes, it will go inactive, so you need to learn how to keep Slack online by finding something to keep your cursor moving.

If you have an optical mouse with a laser, you could use an undetectable mouse jiggler to solve the issue.

Alternatively, you could use an app like Jiggler to keep your slack desktop app active, although this is a bit more possible to detect if your employer got incredibly nosy 🐽, which they probably won't be.

Tip 2: Occasionally interact on Slack

If you are really trying to make it seem like you are an overachiever and stay active on Slack, pop into your already active slack sometimes and interact.

You can do this by:

1. Adding slackmojis to public messages in channels. Everyone loves a good emoji.

2. Scheduling messages to be delivered at certain times.

Rather than needing to send messages now, schedule them throughout the day to keep your Slack status active, so that it seems like you are consistently working rather than just sipping cocktails or hiking a mountain -- which are obviously way better activities.

You can do this easily using the screenshot as guidance below:

I prefer to select random times like 11:32, as it seems more genuine.

Of course, this guide only covers keeping Slack active in the end, but it is a remote work hack many of us remote workers have to deal with when you need to know how to make it look like you’re working from home when you are actually doing something much better.

For more remote work reads, check out:

• How to Work Abroad Without My Boss Knowing
• Essential Remote Skills: Learn, Work, and Travel as a Nomad
• Offbeat Travel Destinations: A New Adventure for Nomads