Working From Home in the Age of the Novel Coronavirus and COVID-19

We are in uncertain times, indeed. So, here are some strategies to consider when approaching working from home in the age of the novel coronavirus and COVID-19. We wish you all safety and health throughout this difficult period. (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/066 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.) Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening! If you'd like to continue discussing managing digital notebooks from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | Working From Home... Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Art Gelwicks Francis Wade Show Notes | Working From Home in the Age of the Novel Coronavirus and COVID-19 Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. https://twitter.com/TodayInSports3/status/1241683087664263168 https://twitter.com/30SECVlDEOS/status/1241835148557115394 Time Blocking Summit 2020Zoom.usMicrosoft TeamsGoogle Meet (in G Suite)Brain.fmTrelloVPN (Ray uses PrivateTunnel)Chrome Remote Desktop Raw Text Transcript Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio). Read More Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith. Augusto Pinaud 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud. Francis Wade 0:26I'm Francis Wade. Art Gelwicks 0:27 And I'm Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:28 Welcome, gentlemen. Welcome to our listeners to this episode of productivity cast. And we are in uncertain times, to say the least, we are in the midst of a global pandemic. And what we can do as a group as a team here is to help people in the best way we know possible, which is to help you all be more productive in this environment. We are all working either as an essential, professional and out there working. And so things are maybe a little bit more stressful, but for the rest of us who are working now remotely and working from home, the situation may be different or at least exaggerated in the sense that are focused in the sense that now we are working from home maybe all the time as opposed to maybe choosing to work from home on occasion. And what I wanted to do is for us to have a discussion about the the four kind of fundamental areas of working from anywhere, but primarily here today working from home, which is really mindset skills, strategies and tools, the technology that we all use to be more productive in this environment. So let's start off with a conversation about mindset. And we can we can get into the particulars of the rest as we make our way along. I wanted to start off with just a discussion about as you approach working from home, you may have been working from home for several weeks now. You may just have been forced to Start working from home, no matter where you are in the process, you need to consider environment as a as a fundamental component of how you will make yourself more productive. And so if your environment is not set up currently for you to be able to work well, then you will struggle so much more than if your environment was set up for working in as similar or maybe even better than your circumstance when you were in a an office environment or whatever type of environment you worked before. Francis Wade 2:36 I think there's a number of people, a number of managers let's start there who are quaking in their boots because they know that there's certain there's certain people who work for them certain employees, who, in their minds are unable to manage themselves. And they've been, I hate to say carrying but they've been micromanaging them. For years, and the environment that they they've specially created an environment around some folks who are not productive and not self directed by giving them nudges and giving them their own cubicle and walking by every morning and walking by again at lunchtime and walking by again at five and sending them emails every or there's that subset of employees who aren't able to cope on their own and the managers know it. And they, I suspect, are quaking in their boots because as they go home, these employees, the managers realize that the carefully crafted environment they've created to have these people be minimally productive, is no going to go away. And it's going to be replaced by nothing. And ideally, if we had more time, the manager could, let's create a new word off board, they could off board the employee one step at a time. so that they could retain their productivity, it could take a year to train someone to be productive when they don't have all of these nudges around them. I, there's some managers I've met who tell me they love the open office environment because they can keep an eye on people, which implies that the off board someone like that we need to keep an eye on, that takes a while. And you gotta set up alternative ways of somehow nudging the person towards productivity. So I think this is this is going to be devastating for some managers and some employees, in terms of them being productive, they, they come to work to be productive, and they've never had played a hand in creating an environment in which they're productive. In other words, they weren't the ones who set up their own environment, somebody did it for them. And when that person and the environment both disappear, I suspect there are some people who are just going to simply flown though Augusto Pinaud 4:59 it is You know, I, at this point after almost 15 years working from home, it is really easy to say, Well, you know, this is how my environment works. But the reality is that he took some time at the beginning of a lot of errors and failure and a lot of pressure, you know, there is going to be some pressure that are going to come with this process regarding getting things set up, understanding what needs to be set up understanding what you need, as Francis was saying, you know, you are at the office and this is what you get, and figure it out. Now that you are coming home, you may have the ability to add another component or you may have even less resources than what you had at the office. You know, we were laughing at the beginning of the pre show. As I was trying to print item print. My world is digital, and my kid is working He's, you know, he's doing homeschooling. So I needed to print some stuff. So there was some dusting that needed to be done to an old inkjet printer. Okay, well, that's going to happen to people, okay, there is not any more color lesser thing that will print those 52 pages to read. Now, you may need to read it into screen, and all those changes are coming. So it is important to keep in mind, in your mind in the top of your mind that there are two things that are going to change one how you do things, and you need to pay attention what it is in two senses. Number one is what's bothering you. Okay, out of the oldest situation, what is bothering you, there are things that you're going to be able to affect and change and there are things that you are not, so focus on the ones that you can, because if you can print on that, you know, 50 pages per second laser printer, then don't be both about it, don't be frustrated about it, there's nothing you can do until you can get back to the office. Okay, the other element is now you need to start looking how you're going to show performance. And one of the things when you are in the office is people kind of walk, see that you are working, see that you're BCC that you're on the phone. And now that you're working from home, nobody will walk into where you are. So you need to find a way to show that performance. You know, I've been recommending a couple managers get a one on one. Okay, five minutes at the end of the day, beginning of the day, five minutes at the end of the day and help people to get that show that performance Hey, we plan the day that they were going to do a B and C. At the end of the day we did ABC and D and that way you Samana your help to parts help people having that if they need that notch and second Give them at the end of the day a story of success. The third part is, if you were bothered by distractions at the office, and the distractions really break your concentration at work, if you have family, husband, wife, significant other at home family, all that distractions are going to tenfold. So you need to find quickly a way to get back into this. Years ago I recommend having a notepad so you write down when you get distracted, you know, what is what you were doing, because otherwise your day is going to go and disappear after 10 distractions. Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:44 I think you're making some really great points here, gentlemen, and I think that there's there two pieces fundamentally here. One is how you do your work and and the environment in which you do it. And I just want to put a final point on this so that we're all kind of clear here. creating an environment that supports your productivity is very different when you are working from home for all of the reasons that were just noted and many more the and it reall