In April 2020, Dominic Aldrich was at a kitchen table in Lisbon explaining to a colleague in Toronto why their standup had gone sideways for the fourth day running. The video kept freezing, two teammates had kids climbing on them, and a third was clearly still in bed. He had already been working remotely since 2014, and that pandemic year taught him the lesson at the heart of this book: doing remote work for a long time is not the same as doing it well. This is the honest, specific guide for people who are past the basics and starting to suspect they are leaving something on the table.

This is a remote work book without the digital-nomad-influencer aesthetic. Aldrich has worked remotely from twenty-three countries and one suburban office in New Jersey, and the New Jersey office is where he did his best work, because place matters less than the practices. Across twenty chapters he names the meta-skill nobody teaches (self-sufficient communication), the gear that keeps your body intact for a decade, and the people problems that actually break remote careers: loneliness, coworkers you never see, five-hour time-zone gaps, and the hybrid setup nobody has figured out. Every recommendation is concrete down to the chair brand and the exact words to use.

Inside this remote work book:

• Self-sufficient communication — Write every async message as if the reader will read it once, while tired, with no chance to ask a follow-up; the skill that took one team's throughput up nearly thirty percent without longer hours
• A home office setup that doesn't wreck your body — Named, priced gear (a $700 chair, the Uplift V2 desk, a dedicated USB mic over earbuds) and why a $40 chair you feel fine in today catches up with you in five years
• The morning routine that replaces the commute — Rebuilding the structure a commute used to provide so you stop finishing the day exhausted and unable to say why
• Working from a cafe without getting nothing done — Plus the real rules for working while traveling, instead of the four-hours-on-a-beach fantasy people sell in courses
• The remote worker's loneliness problem — Building real relationships with coworkers you never see, a chapter that lands differently in year three than year one
• Negotiating remote work with a reluctant employer — The exact language for the manager who wants you back in the office, written by someone who has used it
• Time zones, hybrid, and a career that lasts a decade — Working across five-hour gaps, the two-days-in three-at-home hybrid setup, and why the habits that carry the first five years stop working in year six

This is not a manifesto and not a pitch that remote work beats the office for everyone; Aldrich is blunt that for some people, jobs, and life stages, an office is the right answer. It is for the people who have already decided they will be doing remote work for the foreseeable future and want to clear a higher bar than not getting fired. Opinionated about specifics, humble about generalities, and free of the phrase work-life balance.

For readers of Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson's Remote: Office Not Required and Cal Newport's Slow Productivity.