How We're Navigating the New Working From Home
It seems every blog post is trying to help you maintain productivity while you navigate the change to work from home. For those of you who are new to this type of working, it’s not normally like this.
This isn’t working from home, this is staying home and trying to work during a global crisis.
Sure, putting on real pants might help. It’s also a little reductive to think that a pair of pants will make the difference when you’re juggling work commitments with constant childcare and very real anxiety about your family’s health and the state of the world.
There’s been a slew of listicles offering tips for how to work in this new world of social distancing and statewide shelter-in-place orders.
Here’s what’s actually been working for our team during this adjustment period — feel free to read it in whatever pants you feel good in.
Consolidate Important Coronavirus Updates
Slack is a great tool, but we found our different channels were a little overrun with updates because things are changing so quickly. We’re all trying to share helpful information while limiting the stuff that stirs anxiety. So does the latest update go in the #announcements channel or the #general channel?
This week, we consolidated everything into a #coronavirus specific Slack channel. And the first thing most of us did was put that channel on mute. We’re doing what we can to stay informed and stay home, we don’t need push notifications for every update.
If your team uses other channels to communicate these updates, see what you can do to limit the stream of information so that it’s one single channel.
Make a Must Do List Instead of a To Do List
Make a must-do list and stay on track. This must-do list should be about adding value where it matters most and be kept to one or two things. Priorities will continue to feel like they’re on quicksand right now, so if you can think through the value behind what you’re doing, you can stay one step ahead.
In an ideal world, you might get through five important tasks in a day, but in these crazy times with the whole family at home, maybe one or two must do tasks is what you need to move the needle.
Supplement your Must Do List with a Want To Do List of personal or professional things — when you’re tired of whatever you’ve been doing, choose something off the Want To Dos to get your momentum back.
Schedule Team Check-Ins With No Shop Talk
Every Tuesday and Thursday we have a virtual coffee date, or “voffee,” where the team gets together for 30 minutes to discuss a topic or play a quick game. There’s no work talk and no virus updates. The world around us is crazy, so this is reserved space.
We set the activity or discussion in advance so it’s something we can look forward to in the middle of our workday to shake things up (here’s a great list of ideas from one of our new favorite tools, Miro). Participation isn’t required — not everyone is a joiner — but you’d be surprised who does make the time for it.
During last week’s voffee, we all shared one concert we attended with a designated team member who then read them aloud so we could guess who attended which concert. We’ve seen some pretty amazing shows — U2, The Who, Lady Gaga, Beastie Boys, Childish Gambino. You’d also never guess who on our team saw Lil Jon perform live.
Schedule Something to Look Forward To Personally
It feels a bit like structure and routine went out the window. Without birthday parties, playdates, and dinners with friends, there’s only conference calls and webinars on the calendar. Fight back by purposefully planning things you can look forward to doing with whoever you are sheltering in place with.
Whether that’s a lunchtime walk in the sunshine with your dog or baking chocolate chip cookies with the kids (this recipe is an excellent one!), purposefully deciding what will bring optimism to your day can help inject it with more. After all, this won’t last forever. A little optimism is important in these tough times.
Embrace the Interruptions by Loved Ones and Pets
Life just got more complicated for all of us. For those of us fortunate enough to work remotely, work and life are now operating out of the same space, making it impossible to keep everything balanced and separate. That’s why we’re embracing those funny moments when a cat jumps into a conference call and partners drop in to crack a joke. We’re all in this together.
With that said, be kind to yourselves and others. We’re all doing our best to figure out this strange new world we live in. If you think someone might be having a hard time, check in on them. And if sweatpants are what you feel best in right now, by all means, wear them.