Working From Home For The First Time
Obviously there is a lot of scrambling today for having people work from home to help reduce the spread of the Wuhan Coronavirus (COVID-19) within the US. I won't be going into anything about the virus...and would like to concentrate on work-at-home issues.
Immediate "MIND" Preparation
First, don't freak out. Don't think you are alone. And don't try to do everything or do it by yourself. Remember that there are a ton of people in the same situation.
You WILL have to learn new ways of doing some of what you did before, such as in-person meetings, informal "side" conversations and similar on-site activities. That's okay. Everyone is in the same situation and will be learning with you.
Key Is Communication
Probably one of the biggest issues that new at-home-workers have is the loss of the informal in-person communication channels. For that, ensure that you make an effort to re-create those channels using different means. For example, there are great tools that can be used to maintain communication with groups, such as Slack, Teams, Private Facebook Groups, Linked In Groups and many others. Your employer may already have some of these in place, but were under or not utilized previously. If that's the case, tap into those and start to use them. But as a group, pick one or two that you will use so...