#88: Don't Follow This Advice On Working Remotely
😎 Thoughts on work, life & what matters
March 28th: Greetings from Las Palmas
💻 I set up some daily office hours to talk about anything work or personal, grab some time here
📖 ICYMI: Essays that you may find relevant on the new economy, rethinking meetings, virtual facilitation, reinvention & the pathless path
🧘♂️ Today @ 12pm EST: I'm helping a friend, Travis Mann, facilitate a conversation about mindfulness. His two month silent meditation retreat was ended two weeks early due to the pandemic. Come ask him anything & register here.#1 Tips you shouldn’t take on working remotely
I’ve either put these tips into practice in my own life or can confirm that other people have. People rarely talk about these practices in public because there is a certain amount of shame and embarrassment about telling people you work less.
If you want to be a “good” employee, head here instead.
Reclaim your morning: Try to get out of your morning meetings or zoom “stand-ups” as the cool tech-folk are calling them and spend your time as you wish until 10am. No more dread of getting to work and an un-nameable emptiness ruining your morning. If you are looking to inject more joy, check out Craig Kulyk’s suggestions for your morning routine, or what he calls the “morning effect”
Cancel Meetings: Many meetings are performative or holding spaces for live thinking. All of the best remote companies (and companies like Amazon) have realized this and have people spend more time writing out their thinking than sitting in a room sharing half-baked thoughts.
To help change the norm, change your own behavior. Before a meeting, write-up your comprehensive thoughts on the topic and send them to your teammates a day before in writing. Ask for feedback and if the team should consider using that approach for the next meeting. Over time, your team will realize that if people think on their own time, you can shift an hour long meeting to a 10 minute group slack chat.
Worst, case just don’t show up to the meetings or decline the invite. At a previous company I used this technique and my colleagues assumed I was “swamped.”Cap your workday at 5-6 hours: Once you’ve eliminated those meetings, you’ll probably find that since you are not confined to an office, you can probably get your work done in less time. Shift your mindset to a 5-6 workday (secretly of course, don’t want to excite your boss too much).
Nudge your colleagues and boss to asynchronous communication: Tell your team that since you are experimenting with working from home anyway you “want to try to organize your time to be even MORE productive!” Don’t tell them the details, but just suggest that maybe you experiment for 1-2 weeks without expecting to respond immediately to texts, e-mails and phone calls so you can focus on deeper, more focused work. If you have a manager who thinks their job is running a instant command response center with 24/7 e-mails and texts, its probably time to look for a new job.
Adjust your expectations of motivation: While some people find they are more productive at home, I find more find the opposite. I tell people to subtract two points from the question “how motivated are you to do this?” because of the lack of in-person emotional pressure and the ritual of being in an office. Vega Factor has some good resources about that here and why these things probably aren’t great if you want to like your job. With this lower level of motivation, trying to get rid of things you don’t want to do and creating your own work is more important than ever.
Experiment with a bimodal workday: One thing I like doing is working a couple hours when I wake up and then later from 4-7pm. Other times I work in the morning and a couple hours at night. Once you’ve gotten a little more freedom in your work, working at different hours give you back a little more energy to your day.
Move : With the extra free time you’ve unlocked you don’t need to rush to “fit in” a workout before or after work. Do it during the day and experiment with different times throughout the day. I enjoy getting out and about from 2-4pm every day since it’s usually when its the warmest and I don’t have much creative energy anyway.
Coordinate non-work with partner or kids: My wife and I have been working flexibly with non-set schedules for our entire relationship. One thing we try to do is pick times to spend together whether it is going for a bike ride during the day, meeting up for meals (pre-quarantine), or spending time together. I always try to put these things ahead of my work and then fit in work around them.
Experiment with time-blocking and time-tracking: I don’t use them regularly, but sometimes it helps to block off a couple hours on my calendar to work on a project. Another tool I like is the Toggl chrome extension, which helps you quickly track what you are working on and set 25 minute “pomodoros” to help you focus. Focusmate is another useful tool you might consider to do a working session with someone on the internet.
Invite your kids, spouse and pets to the video conference: Let’s stop pretending we’re productivity machines and not humans. It’s okay to be you. I once wore a Snuggie to the office. Come as you are.
Ask yourself uncomfortable questions: Since being self-employed, I’ve had to grapple with the uncomfortable realization that before working on my own, most of my decisions were made around work. Where I lived, when I ate, who I hung out with and when I got to see family. The question Andrew Taggart offers is “if you’re not a worker, who are you?” (see below).
Schedule a “freedom hour” to do things you really want to do: So many people I talk to have creative projects they want to work on or a secret passion (“I want to write but I don’t have the time”). Schedule a “freedom hour” on your calendar - make it private or call it something like “update TPS reports.”
Write online: I’ve been writing publicly on the web since 2014. I was scared because I was still employed but then I realized no one even noticed. It’s been the most important thing in helping me make friends, learn and find ways of making money outside of a job. Most people don’t do it because they get frustrated by the nonsense on the web. That’s the point. We need more people with self-doubt writing, not just the people that have complete faith in themselves.
Push the limits: Challenge yourself to get your work done in only four hours. Try to spend an entire day not doing any work and see how it feels. Do you really have that much work? Are you uncomfortable if you don’t have something to do? See what arises and don’t push those thoughts away
I’ve been writing quite a while about putting our lives first ahead of work. Abandoning the idea that one needs to “earn” a living and accept that we are already living. Use this opportunity to work remotely to sit down and imagine how you’d want to spend your days but just be aware you may have a hard time going back to the office…
#2 Group reflection with Andrew Taggart on Total Work and our present crisis
I had a conversation with Andrew Taggart this week on how this crisis may elevate some deep questions about our lives. Check out the podcast or video below (both slightly different flavors):
🎧👂 Google | Apple | Spotify | Overcast | Web
#3 Everyone Doing Ok?
A friend asked me this week how my finances are and if I am okay. I am doing okay and have savings to weather the storm but found it incredibly caring of him to ask such a question. I encourage people to ask their friends this question despite our impulses to never talk about money.
If you are a solo creator or gig worker and might experience a cash crunch or want to find some short-term work, please share your details here or e-mail me. I’ll highlight your work in next weeks letter and likely look to send some cash gifts to people over the coming months as well.
📚 🥙 Odds & Ends
Yuval Harrari on Tech, Privary & Authoritarianism
The second important choice we confront is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity. Both the epidemic itself and the resulting economic crisis are global problems. They can be solved effectively only by global co-operation.
Samo Burja on untapped potential
“It is no victory for free society that a small segment of the online commentariat are right when all major institutions are wrong. Their prolific tweets are evidence that society has failed to harness their capacities, leaving them misapplied and our elites adrift.
Amateur analysts kept busy at fake jobs where it is possible to tweet all day represent astronomic waste. While they proved prescient, they are structurally locked out of the information and decision loop of all U.S. government agencies.”
A Reddit Post on Work
In that sense, the irony of the modern workday is that it now contradicts its original purpose, which was to eradicate the exploitation of workers. Many of my friends come into the office at 9 am and don't leave until late into the evening because they want to impress their boss, and to answer any emails their employer sends regardless of whether or not it comes in during work hours, resulting in a new generation of people who feel somewhat disgruntled, overworked, and underpaid.”
On the war against a disease & unwinding tribal behaviors:
A 1,000 ft view on the global politics at play
Azeem Azar looks at the three “cleavages” in the current crisis:
Leviathan vs. Liberty
China vs. US
Old vs. Young
This war will be won. As will the next. But Sars-CoV-2 is not capable of caring about the details of its defeat. There will be no signing on the deck of the USS Missouri, nor misplaced hubris or the Hall of Mirrors of the Place of Versailles (or the deck of USS Abraham Lincoln).
On Homeschooling Resources
Want to Become A Micro-Supporter Of This Newsletter?
👉 If you'd like to become a recurring patron for $1 a month or more, you can join 23+ others Patreon or find other options here.
💡 My self-paced course, Reinvent, is now available.
💬 Comments are enabled for everyone. Leave your thoughts below 👇If you want to learn more about who I am or what I’m working on, find me here, say hi on twitter, or check out some of my longform writing.
If you aren’t subscribed to the e-mail, join us here: