Welcome to the incoming class at Working From Home! We hope you have enjoyed the first couple of days of orientation.
By the end of the week, this sh!t is gonna get really REAL. So, I thought I’d pass along some of the lessons I learned in my first five months swimming in the deep end.
How Did I Get Here? I entered the WFH class in November 2019 when I joined Constellation Research after 27 years in an office. In the blink of an eye, I went from being in the middle of a culture that expected physical presence in order to be productive into one that allowed for isolation in order to be productive.
If I am being honest, it wasn’t the working part that proved to be the big adjustment…it was the AT home part. Work has muscle memory, especially for a road warrior who is used to adapting workstyle based on what hotel, conference room, airport lounge or connected aircraft you happen to be on. When I got started, I worked as if I was on the road versus not working in an office. But remote work isn’t road work…that was a hard habit to break.
5 Tips Based on My Early Failings. Some of these will sound trite, but for me, they ended up being the difference between getting into a groove versus getting into a funk.
- Shower. No, seriously. The act of showering is and of itself a pattern or routine that sparks thinking. A behavioral theorist named Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi posited that when one is placed in an environment that promotes deep thought and relaxation, creativity can quite literally incubate. This is central to his deeper concept of “Flow” or the state of concentration and engagement when one completes a task that challenges one’s skills. Flow – and the supreme satisfaction that comes from accomplishment – can’t be forced, but it can be sparked.
A shower can anchor your day. It can spark big ideas. It can make you feel human. Oh…and yes, wearing sweats and PJs all day SOUNDS awesome. But by week 2, it looses its charm. Make a goal of getting fully work-casual dressed at least once a week. It snaps your brain into a different space…and on lockdown day #13…we are ALL gonna need a snap or two.
- Set aside a space. That’s right…you have to pull a Les Nessman. Get some tape (or at least mentally get some tape) and cordon off something that you deem to be your office. There is a discipline that comes with working in an office – a social construct that limits the distraction and wayward wanderings of a mess in sweats looking for a crumb-free laptop perch.
When I first started with the couch-as-office route, comfort was clearly the perk of my new surroundings…complete with a reclining leg option, snacks a few steps away and a big TV with lots of shows begging to be binged (you know…as “white noise in the background.) Next thing I knew, I was asleep, hands still on the keyboard, Netflix asking if I wanted to keep watching. The act of walking to a space that is deemed as your official workspace is liberating, even if that space is the other corner of your couch. It pushes you to set boundaries and personal rules. You will find that if you start to respect the boundaries of your workspace, others might get the drift!
- Set “office hours”, just not from 9 to 5. Those are old numbers trying to fit into a new world. At my old office, we used to position hours as “minimum expectations” as in so we TELL you it is 8:30 to 5:30, but I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t in before 8:30 and I can’t remember leaving before 6.
But at home, you just are NOT gonna make those minimum expectations. Here’s the secret: IT IS OK. You will find the hours that work for everyone – for the business, for your family and most definitely for you. But again, boundaries are essential. It is easy to think, “Oh who’s clocking me in?” while skimming hours off the clock. Without the social construct, accountability is easy to manipulate.
- Don’t binge buy gear. You do NOT need the professional grade camera, speakers and microphone to make your Zoom calls work. Most just don’t need the pro-grade studio set up. Honestly, I get by with the camera on my computer. If you are just getting the team together and wanted to play with the virtual backgrounds so it looks like you are in space, you DO NOT need the gear upgrade.
For me, I needed a keyboard. There is something really “official” about a keyboard. It is the difference between working and working on the road. You may also want to invest in a headset with a microphone so you can stop sounding like you are IN the fishbowl in every conference call. The goal here is to sound and appear professional…not actually BE a home office film maker.
- Congrats! You are now your office’s CISO. Times of crisis always bring out the best and the worst in people. The worst has already started to come out of the woodwork. Attacks are up, scams are up, hijacking everything from the WHO logo to the Johns Hopkins Corona Virus tracker!
Every connection, every email, every file should be seen as a threat. Connect with your actual CISO or CIO to get a FULL understanding of security protocols, requirements and options. You may be required to log into corporate IT assets via a virtual private network (VPN)…you may have mandated security apps and programs already on your computer.
If you have none of those things…go get them. There are lots of great VPN service providers out there that take seconds to set up but secure your connections to ensure that your machine can’t be violated when you finally get to go to that coffee shop with the free (unsecured) WIFI. (Check out ExpressVPN, Surfshark, NordVPN, TunnelBear and for those out there into secure content viewing and, dare I say, torrent streams, you probably already run IPVanish.) Anti-virus and malware protection should be a baseline. Get both. Enable security on your browsers…everyone from Google to Apple have varying degrees of protection and privacy baked in. It takes a village!
You will hit a groove and find a balance between what social media thinks you should do (Enough with the “take the time to tackle those projects you have pushed off like cleaning the attic…this isn’t vacation…it is working people!) and what you can do given your priorities and goals at work.
Several tech firms have opened the gates to let newly minted remote teams have access to the productivity and operational tools that really help remote workers get to work. Check out the offers from folks like Zoho (ZohoRemotely is now being offered for free) and Microsoft (Microsoft Teams is now available with lifted restrictions on user limits).
My colleague Dion also hosted a terrific webcast for folks looking to pick up some real remote working tips from culture change to tech tools from collaboration to productivity platforms. Check it out here: https://www.constellationr.com/media/guide-remote-work-during-covid-19.
Working from home has been my new normal for several months now and I still feel like I’m working out the kinks to get it right. I can only imagine how people feel who got tossed into the deep end this week. Good news is that it IS possible to just start swimming…you CAN just stay afloat until you get your bearings and kick start your flow.
Oh…and most important tip I can pass along: virtual backgrounds are found by opening Zoom, clicking on the gear on the right there…look to the left column menu about halfway down and there it is…you can add you own images. Current mood: padded cell… ‘cuz my new co-worker is a toddler!
Hang in there everyone!