Okay, so with all the stuff that's going on in the world at the moment coronavirus COVID-19 Have you on a refer to it? I don't know why it's official term. I think I think it might as both in one of them as a virus one of them Yeah, they say it's a there's loads of coronavirus is out there flu being one type and so this particular type is a COVID-19 That's what they're calling it. Yeah, it was discovered in 2019 Yeah, and it stands for the coronavirus disease exactly.
Yeah, so that's it Okay, well, I think you know whether we call it a COVID-19 or coronavirus. I think everyone knows what we're talking about Yeah, everyone is pretty much the only news happening right now and You know, depending where you're in the world you're probably being told to work from home and isolate yourself and not going to the office and so on and So we figured we'd do a quick episode on some tips on working from home because this is gonna be fairly new to a lot of people You know myself and and you we work from home quite a lot anyway Yeah, so we've got some experience on this But you know there's gonna be people who work in retail now after you set home or you know my wife works in HR She's at home. So it's very new to a lot of people So yeah, these are just some tips on how to how to get yourself set up how to keep yourself in touch with your work colleagues And just some stuff that you can do to stop you from losing your mind really yeah Yeah, because it can be a lonely place when you're working from Amazon if you're myself Mmm. Yeah, so you want to kick off?
Just you know tell us some stuff about how you can get yourself set up to be in a work mode Yeah, I'm in an interesting environment when I am working from home. I'm in the loft and I've got everything set up here I've got a desk. I've got the skylight So I've got natural lighting in the room which works really well and I've got a desk lamp and everything You know and I think this seating sort of scenario, you know, I've got is a really nice sort of economic chair which makes the whole sort of working from home experience more comfortable for me and So you know for me comfort is like a key thing and so the chair 100% in a handles a lot of that for me and the desk In the solution. I've got it's a bespoke kind of desk that I've got it was just built with the rest of the furniture in the loft And I kind of wanted it to be a particular sort of size to handle the things I'm using so my monitor on Macbook keyboard Drawing tablet things I like to fit perfectly on it playing a space clean room.
So the comfort side of it is, you know It's it's up there. It's really good anymore consider and they'll be comfortable in this At this desk that I've got set up. Yeah, the thing is like a lot of people won't have necessarily have the luxury of a desk at home A lot of people may be working on their dining table. Maybe sitting at their lounge Yeah, my second part to this is now that my wife's working from home.
She was sat on the bed I was sitting with a laptop and you know and that's not really comfortable So she took my desk and I thought where can I set up in the house, you know to to work on my laptop and The breakfast bar in the kitchen works really nicely Lows on natural light in the kitchen and the breakfast bar is clean. It's clear So and I've got seating there as well on the side chairs that we have those are like barstalls So I've been using that for the last couple of days and that's working really well for me So those two sort of spaces in the house work really well. Yeah, I think it's important whichever sort of surface you use when there is a dining table You know a kitchen top worktop or wherever you want to find something you want to find something that is the correct height You don't want to make sure that your tables not too high not too low your arms are at rough right angle Just sort of think about how you sit on your desk at work if you are at in a desk job and Try and replicate as much of that as you can when you're back at home and like you mentioned about the natural light is very important to have a well-lit room Yeah, and then you know if you can sit in a separate room to the rest of the family That's always a bonus as well to make you a sign boy in an office Yeah, another thing you want to make try and do is try and get away from the where the TV is try to separate that So you know for some people may have to set up in the lounge But there's a way discipline will come in to play you need to try and avoid turning on Obviously, you know keep keep an eye on the news if you need to But try and stay away from you know, yeah, you can have it on and just put the putty on mute and just you know Let it run in the background and yeah, definitely and then them because it's gonna be new for a lot of people Most people will have some sort of commute in the morning working from home is quite tempting to just something staying in put your On isn't just you know roll out bed and start working yeah, but yeah, it's good to try and do some sort of fake commute And you know what it is It's so easy to fall into that because I've been doing working from for quite a while even though I've got the office space I do do it sometimes so and one day I'll generally tend to work from home And I have fallen into that trap of just putting on my joggers and my hoodie and just being really really comfortable with it Yeah, I do all the time as well Yeah, but it does help if you just put on your jeans and a teacher and you know, it kind of like be prepared Yeah, you know help you a little bit. Yeah, so your hair hair out, you know Gressed up into something reasonably office, you know, friendly That sort of thing that you would work and then you know if you do need to do a video call then you don't should be So scrambling around trying to fix your hair all of a sudden or you know thinking oh am I dressed appropriately?
You know, I don't look like a slob. So yeah, just get up, you know, stick to your normal routine wake up around the same sort of time Have your breakfast, you know, get ready as you normally work if you're going to work and instead of instead of your commute You could take a short walk around around your area You can walk in the garden or you could just do some like exercise at home, you know You can just walk around your house a little bit but try and stick to the same routine that you would have if you were going into into Where there's normal? Yeah And also once you actually start working try to stick to your actual work routine as well So take a break to the right time have a lunch break around lunch time Yeah, and try and start at nine o'clock and finish at five thirty if those are your times Whatever your times may be You know, it's very easy when you are working from home to work too much and depending on the sort of distractions You I have around you it's very easy not to work too little as well So you need to find some discipline to make sure that you're working the correct amount as you know expected by your colleagues and stuff Yeah, I've got the dog at home So every now and then you know, I've got to get up and just check on him, you know, make sure he's fed So yes three fees one in the morning one at lunch time one of the evening around six So I try and use those sort of periods from a day to just break away from work So spend a bit of time with him have a five ten minute play You know interact with him and then maybe make myself a cup of coffee or a glass of water or something to come back and focus and sprint through Some tasks. Yeah, you know, and then just you know get up off the chair I think this is really important as well because this will tie into one of our previous episodes about health and fitness as well Get up off the chair very important to get up to help the blood flow as well Just walk around you know if you're upstairs walk down the stairs walk back up little things like that will help You know because you can easily start falling asleep at your desk and start getting bored and you know But getting up and just you know moving around a little bit will help Yeah, because a lot of people would normally go for a walker lunch time some people may even go to the gym at lunch time But you know now in many places in the UK at least gyms are also closed as well restaurants bars They're all closed so even going for lunch.
There's not really any way to go. You're gonna be having at home So you probably want to just have a little ground and definitely take a break for your lunch and you know Don't eat at your desk and make it as normal routine as you can. Yeah, definitely One thing I'll see in the UK as well is that schools are closed. I don't know if this is the case everywhere But you know, I've got two kids and you know come come Monday.
They're gonna be at home as well. Yeah, so it's important to Keep them occupied as well So the kids have got work given to them by the school Yeah, but they also need someone to be watching over them to make sure they're doing that work But then you've also got your own work to do as well your own job to look into so that's gonna be a challenge for everybody I think and it's important to Plan ahead I suppose you know think of a time table possibly the night before of what the what your children are going to be doing during the day Make it clear to them You know get a time table growing up stick up on the wall or something like that and make sure that there's enough like You know activity books or you know Whatever they need any toys depending on their age and make sure that things are in the right place ready to reach for and Yeah, you can keep them occupied. Yeah as it would be in a classroom Exactly everything's organized, you know, and they know that where where things are so that would help definitely. Yeah, exactly It's not just about us.
It's about you know school. Yeah, definitely So yeah, so some of those are some of the basic things to just get get yourself in the mode of working from home If you're not used to doing it already So what's your offers? Well, you're going to need to communicate with your team Most teams will probably have this covered anyway and they'll have their own methods But what are some of the some of the apps and services and stuff that you use to give it up to evil And then I've got a few that we're going to be using that we do use anyway in our IBM so Anything that you've got? Well, I've been using the usual tool set so slack use that communicate with the clients, especially people are providing you know regular sort of Concilancy sort of work work for we communicate for slack anything work related.
It did start on what's that they do tend to a lot of these clients That we take on do tend to get in touch with me using what's that but you know that becomes too social So I want to make it really strict for them, you know for us If we're gonna have a working relationship, they need to get in touch with me via slack away from everywhere else and every other kind of conversation So slack, you know, I'm in touch with my clients on that and then we do have like video calls using zoom That's we I've got like two or three zoom sort of conference calls out for other week and that works really well and so they're the main two and then got also got Trello which I'm using to manage digital marketing campaigns so we've got like an active sort of calendar running on that on a weekly basis and Then a client knows all the tasks that are going to be accomplished by certain dates and times what's going to be posted up when it goes out So they work really well together. So they're the main sort of the main tools and using at the moment Yeah, what we're using our work is a mixture of using slack as a main communication tool And then for video calls we are used webex or use slack And then all of our sort of documentation and stuff like that is all done on the Atlassian suite So you've got confluence and and G-RAN so forth Yeah, and then you know, it's not just a case of like work communication Sometimes you just need to keep in touch with you know non-work colleagues as well because obviously this affecting everyone so you know Make use of things like WhatsApp groups Facebook groups, more different social media You know now's the time to maybe open up your DMs so people can contact you if you want if you've got your like Twitter DMs are private Now's a good time to open them up people. Yeah, and then let people know how you are so don't just don't get too isolated If no one's asking maybe just update your status every now then just let people know what you're doing and let people know that you're well Yeah, I think the other thing is with this scenario with this whole coronavirus thing that's you know taking the country in the world By by great. I think mental health is a big issue as well Like people who are perfectly fine.
We've never shown any signs of mental illness It's so easy to just fall into a hole, you know with all the negative news that we're just being bombarded with every single day And you know every hour of the day just constant. There's no getting away from it because you know, it's no sport There's no release. We can't you know, there's no football to watch. There's nothing is absolutely nothing We can actually do to get away from it.
We just completely sucked into it So if we're communicating with our friends using these apps and tools are out there You know help us to you know talk to each other to kind of lighten the mood into get away from things So I just discovered an app and my wife's friend was the one who alluded to it It's called house party and it's a video conferencing and it's got games built into it as well So you can have I don't know how many people you can have in there I think you can have probably up to maybe eight. I'm not too sure about that number But I tested it out with my mate earlier today. So you call me up on there We were just by doing a drawing game Like you could draw something on the phone on the screen and then they can see it in real time And they've got a guess what it is and it gets 30 seconds to guess It just helps to lighten the mood so there's loads of different games and they're just found like loads of other games Some of you got a pay for there's only a couple of quid but there's so much to do on this app It's called house party for those, you know, you want to try it out, but we've set up a group now We've got about 20 people on my list now friends and family so we're gonna kick this off later on today in the evening I'll start my mates and we're gonna we've decided we're gonna have a beer each and we just don't talk to each other using that Just a light in the mood and get away from everything that's going on. So they're very important man.
The mental health side definitely Yeah, these are all I think that we're doing at work is we've got a permanently open discord voicemail So okay on discord, which is like an alternative to slack It's you can have voicemails on there and you can just have them permanently connected so anyone could just drop in and out Whenever they want right and just talk to whoever's on there at the time So how would that work would that be like you have to press like a record sort of things record your voice note always it just open No, it's just basically like a internet call through discord and you just Connect to it and once you connect you're just part of the voice chat and then you can just disconnect whenever you want So sometimes you might be no one in there, but sometimes I'm like five or six people And it's just a chance to people just have a voice chat You know casual ones are dropping as if you were over here in the conversation at work It's supposed to have that sort of feel I mean, I'm not gonna use it much yet, but it's an option Another thing that we're thinking doing is a Shared Spotify playlist so if I'm just you know sort of listening to the similar sort of music and you know We can that can be a conversation point as well then Yeah, so do you know what songs we like and you get an idea of what other people what your colleagues are entry What's what music they're into? Because especially an outline of work when we're in the office everyone has headphones on so everyone's listening to music But none of us know what the other person's listen Yeah, you do wonder what this is. Yeah, because you don't want to serve the person next to you But now that we're all at home is it's okay to just play music out loud So there's a good opportunity to get to know what other people's music tastes is Oh, definitely yeah So those are some of the things that you could do just keep in touch and you know just text people phone people another good time to just We can do some like old friendships and stuff like that Just get in touch with people that you haven't spoken to in a while and just see that they're okay and yeah You've got plenty of time in your hands, so Exactly yeah, and that's been it really I mean, it's not very difficult working from home It's just it's gonna take some adjustment So yeah, these are just some basic tips that you can do and hopefully everything will work out and we'll be back to normal Pretty soon. Yeah, yeah any final words Just three main rules that just constantly going from my head to you know with the whole you know Just a clean inside of things as well just remember to you know just wash your hands You know don't touch your face and then you know catch those nieces and coughs man this we've got to keep you know So safe from you know what's coming on out there So definitely just remember those three rules as well when you're working from home, you know when you're around everyone That's it man.
Watch your hands stay at home stay away from people and just yeah Going out man just with it and yeah, we'll get through it definitely yeah definitely 100% all right anyway the coffee is off and each other What's we do you see me? Yeah? Thank you for listening to today's show be sure to subscribe in your podcast player and feel free to drop us a rating or review in Apple Puckus you can follow the show on Twitter at spec FM and you can find the show notes for today's episode and full archive of all shows over at inspect.fm