How did your first week of working from home go? These are the tips that worked for me - let me know which ones work for you. [blog.mindrocketnow.com]
In this time of global pandemic, most of us are being asked to work from home. Here in England, we’ve just finished our first week where the kids have been schooled at home, so the first week of all of us working from home at the same time. I was prepared for a disaster caused by overly overlapping personal space - but it seems to have worked out well (so far). Perhaps this is why:
1. Make sure your environment works
Near the top of my personal irritations is the consistent loss of the first 7.6 minutes of each meeting with “can you hear me?”. All too frequently, the meeting is abandoned entirely. Seeing as it took so long just to get the diaries aligned just to get this meeting slot, I inevitably fall back on email and slack messaging, with all the communication debt that incurs.
Much better is to set up your environment in advance. Start with the basics: are you sat at a desk in a room where the door closes? Do you have a good quality speaker or headset? Does your software recognise the webcam? Is your bandwidth high enough for all of the household to have conference calls (house parties) simultaneously? Have you taped shut the door of the microwave?
Do you have the right hardware? We went with iPads + bluetooth keyboards for the kids, and laptops + peripherals for the grown-ups, because that’s what we were all familiar with. Familiarity means self-troubleshooting and not yelling for Daddy for tech support.
Then there’s the software. Every participant in a call needs to use the same software, and have it installed ahead of time, then add the other participants to their app’s address book. Some free software has a limit on the number of participants in video conferences. Some free software defaults to open conferences that anyone can attend. Finally, and before your call, test your setup beforehand.
Even after all your preparedness, the call will still lose time to people sounding like a Dalek, but at least it won’t be you.
2. Commit to a routine
The psychological cues that come from a routine give you a short-cut to productivity. That’s why uniforms exist, and why you only seem to start thinking whilst lacing your shoes. It’s why the evening commute helps to bookend the day, to mentally check out. We found that we needed to replace the normal physical cues with other physical cues. And when we didn’t, the morning seemed to evaporate without anything productive to show for it. My ideal morning routine consists of setting out my daily intention, meditating for 15min, and doing some light physio for another 15min.
Speaking of mornings, it’s true for most of us that this is peak productivity time, so attack your most difficult or intricate work items then. However, you probably still need a simple first task to work through the mental gears and get into the flow - which isn’t making another cup of coffee.
However, making a cup of coffee is important for a few reasons: for breaks, for hydration (though water is clearly better), and as a reward for your good behaviour. So make plenty of coffee (or better, red bush tea). Counter-intuitively, breaks to the routine support the routine. So at lunchtime, don’t feel guilty if you watch some Netflix. Make sure you go outside for your one walk of the day, and go every day, rain or shine - the change of scenery really is as good as a rest.
Clock out at the end of the day, as you would during the evening commute. We found sitting round the kitchen table for tea and cake, or watching an episode of The Simpsons together, or going for a walk, was a clear way to end the day, and removed the temptation to keep an eye on the email.
Finally, the weekend isn’t a reason for pausing the routine. We found we still need the morning physical cues, even if the day consists of different activities. When we didn’t, me and the eldest found ourselves sleeping the morning away.
3. If one person works remotely, everyone needs to behave remotely
BP (Before Pandemic), it was very easy for the single remote worker to feel left behind. Many decisions were made in the office kitchen, information was disseminated over email, status was shared verbally. Remote team members were filled in later. Team empathy was fostered by going to the pub afterwards, by those who happened to be in the office to be rousted. Now everyone is a remote worker, the playing field is levelled, and everyone has to try harder.
Everyone logs into video calls, so everyone should adhere to VC etiquette: test your kit before the call; latency means don’t interrupt; being a small face in a grid means making bigger gestures; presentations need to use bigger fonts; showing the background of your home office tells people about the non-work you. And always share video, it’s so much more effective than audio only.
Working across time zones is hard. In my previous job, I had to schedule calls with folks from Buenos Aires, Singapore and London, and it was always the Singaporeans who seemed to need to work late. Companies like Trello institutionalise common working hours of 12-4 PM EST regardless of your actual location. But for the majority of the time, you’ll be working asynchronously, so your communications needs to support that.
I found that the quality of knowledge sharing is really put to the test in remote working. Knowledge needs to be searchable rather than gained by knowing the right Slack channel or the right person to ask; it takes too long to absorb collective memory verbally. Knowledge should be openly shared, rather than restricted in an email distribution list. Decisions should be archived effectively, not hidden in status reports.
All communications are now digital, so there’s no reason not to include everyone. But rather than broadcasting to everyone just in case (= spam), it should be the responsibility of the remote worker to subscribe to the right channels, to not be left behind by omission. It’s also the responsibility of remote workers to remain current; skim all the channels, read the status decks, attend the stand-ups, schedule 1:1 calls with managers and peers.
Digital tools make presence much easier. It’s now trivial to signal whether you’re open to informal contacts, open to meetings, or blocked for focus time, or blocked because you’re not working. On the other hand, digital tools make it easier to flood communications, so it’s important to choose the right tool when giving and organise when receiving.
4. Over-communicate
You’ll doubtless read about the importance of over-communicating, that if you think you are over-communicating, you’re probably only doing the right amount. We found aspects of over-communicating to be important, but to be treated with caution.
Our children are very clear about the difference between right-sized communication and over-communication. They like being set specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-bound school work, because it gives them the certainty of knowing when done = done. But they react badly to unfocused, unclear, repetitive communication = “boring”. They resent being asked for status as a proxy for justifying their time (which is why “how was your day?” yields a monosyllabic “fine”), but are very happy to share status when it’s truly sharing (which is why our game of “tell me just one thing” works well at the dinner table).
Over-communication amplifies the difficulties with digital tools. Non-verbal cues are missing in most digital means, so it’s important to assume positive intent both in giving and receiving. The digital cues are different; @all and @here shouldn’t be abused as they signal that what you have to say is important enough to interrupt everyone else’s train of thought/ dinner.
It seems to me that the secret of successful communication is to treat all adults like children, and all children like adults.
5. Hold yourself accountable
Personal productivity requires personal accountability. Unless you’re clear about what you will do in any one day, and more importantly what you won’t, then you’ll never be finished. Our children have timetables from their school to give them their structure. I prefer the GTD method to give me the boundaries to delineate work from home. Without it I find it too easy not to start my day because I don’t have a simple start-up task defined, and I find it too easy to continue thinking about my email when I should be listening to a family member.
Unless you hold yourself accountable and are proactive, you will be left behind. People won’t reach out to you if they don’t know you’re there. So I’ve learnt to make a little noise: ask questions in the work topic Slack channels, and contribute nonsense and gifs in the social channels.
Holding yourself accountable is the difference between receiving direction and choosing direction. For my children it’s the difference between disliking a subject because they’re not receiving teaching that they get on with, and liking a subject because they’re learning for themselves.
Bonus: 3 things not to do.
Of course things have gone wrong this week, and this is generally because the same challenges to team dynamics in the office apply to remote working.
It seems to be harder to create an environment of psychological safety when working remotely. To create this safe space, to create team empathy, don’t be all about work. Find a space (perhaps in the 7.6min of “hello, can you hear me?” at the beginning of each call) to share geographical, cultural and personal contexts. Be interested in other people. And watch out for your unconscious biases - if there’s someone who’s habitually not “on the same page” as you, think about why. My wife has virtual office drinks at 5pm on Friday (neatly circumnavigating the no booze in the workplace rule) which strikes me as an excellent idea.
Don’t try and multi-task. Just because your computer screen can show two things simultaneously, doesn’t mean you can surf the web whilst on that conference call. You can’t do useful office work if you have to babysit your toddlers. You can’t do more than triaging your email whilst waiting on hold to the doctor’s surgery. Be present and engaged when you work, because this will give you the head space to be present and engaged when you’re not working.
And because things never go according to plan, don’t be too hard on yourself if you need to change. Go with it. The rewards are well worth it.
