Episode 47 - How to Be Proactive When Working Remotely

Lou Quinto (00:19):

Hi, welcome to Q and A on Breakthrough Leadership. I'm Lou Quinto, and I'm Craig Anderson. In today's episode, we're going to take, and we've been in this COVID work from remote location situation now for almost four or five months. And initially, Craig is you. And I both know, okay, well this will be a passing fad, and it'll be a couple, two months or so. And here we are four or five months into it. And I, what we want to talk about today is how to be more proactive when working remotely. So, Craig, this will give us the opportunity to look at w like in any business, taking a process that we've been doing and asking ourselves, how can we make it more efficient, and how can we be more effective? Those are two great questions that anybody can ask. So I don't know, Craig, what you've done and we'll, hopefully, we'll find out what you've done to make yourself more proactive, or maybe why are you smiling?

Craig P. Anderson (01:18):

Oh, cause I have lots of useful tips, but I know I'm laughing in my head because I remember our conversation and say, Hey, with all this COVID and everybody working from home, we should do like one video on remote work. I think we've done maybe eight at this point. It can be our most popular stuff. I have to say. We did a remote working video in January before any of this came to fruition. So we, sir, are trendsetters. We have some responsibility for this too. I don't know that I take no responsibility. It is what it is. Okay. So anyway, what we're going to do is we're going to cover three specific areas on how to be more proactive when working remotely. The first one is looking at our workplace and making sure that our workspace is effective in helping us with what we need to do.

Lou Quinto (02:07):

The second thing that we're going to look at is we're going to talk about how we can ensure our products to make sure that whatever we're doing in a remote situation, we are always productive. And then the last one that we're going to do is we're going to go back to our list of things to do is every day, identify those essential tasks that need to be done that day, and focusing just on those tasks. So Craig, why don't you start with the workplace? Because I know that you told me you're sitting, working from a broken desk right now, to be fair. I moved in the middle of the pandemic, which was maybe not my most excellent idea, but downsize thinking, Oh, this will be great. I work from home. Everybody else goes to their office. And suddenly we had my son doing his internship and my girlfriend's here. It was many people,

Craig P. Anderson (03:00):

But the move itself, you know, setting up the office initially, it was a mess, and it was tough to focus when everything wasn't put away in order.

Lou Quinto (03:09):

But no fairness, you tend to be a little OCD. Some people thrive in messes.

Craig P. Anderson (03:15):

Yeah. We'll have that debate, like the gut debate. No one thrives in a mess. They're just deluding themselves. I believe though, a big piece of what's going on is people thought, you know, I'll set up this temporary thing. This is only temporary. When we even started talking about this in March. For the next couple of months. And here we are probably there's a whole lot of people who still haven't gone back to the office. Right? So that temporary setup,

Lou Quinto (03:37):

Because some offices are saying, or some businesses are saying that January 1st is going to be the earliest that there consider opening up offices. So we've still got another five months.

Craig P. Anderson (03:48):

So it may be time to move beyond your kitchen table is my point, is people just kind of set up as, well, this is only going be temporary. I'm going to set up here. And now this is a long-term situation for a whole lot of folks, at least from the office perspective. And you even have some of our big tech firms saying don't ever come back. So it's probably time to say, all right, I've got to create a dedicated workspace. To the extent, you have the opportunity to do it in your home. And start sending those things up. Temporary is just not temporary right now, right?

Lou Quinto (04:20):

Yeah. No, no, you, you need the, you need the supplies. You need the filing system. I mean, even after as many years as I've been doing this, you know, I'm always looking for new ways to improve my filing systems where recently, and it's funny because I, I read a time management book that the copyright was 1974. And one of the things they said was folders that are for each month and then have folders for each day of the week. And then you just continuously are moving things through. And I thought, wow, what a great idea. So I just started that. And actually, it's improved some of my efficiencies where if someone says, Hey, let's do, let's talk about this on Thursday. And it's Monday; I just moved that stuff to the Thursday file. And on Thursday morning, I opened it up and boom, there, that stuff is instead of going through, where did I put that information and everything?

Lou Quinto (05:18):

So, I think there are always ways that we can improve our efficiency. And just like you said, Craig, that we're all in this for the long haul. There are very few of us that are going back to work. And I think people need to look at this as not a temporary situation anymore, and they need to make their workplaces, and they need to make them more permanent. So the kitchen table, folks, people need to eat off the kitchen table. So take all the files. And instead of moving them every now and, you know, moving them every day when it comes to dinnertime off to the side and then putting them back on finding a dedicated place, even if it's a corner of a room of a living room or in your bedroom where it's your place. And every time you go back to that place, it's the same way that you left it.

Lou Quinto (06:06):

And no one's moved anything to have a bowl of cereal or eat dinner or lunch or something like that. So which leads us into the next area, Craig, and that is increasing or ensuring our productivity. Now, obviously, as a remote worker, we want to continually be productive because, as we all know, there have been, you know, there's been that myth out there that, well, if people are working from home, are they using? Cause I can't watch them. And one way to prove that is to be productive. So, Greg, you've been doing much coaching with your, with your executive client to help. What are you? What do you tell them to maintain their productivity in a situation where they're not in the workplace? And so it's easy to get distracted. It's easy to focus on a whole bunch of different things and nibble around the edges, so to speak, as opposed to attacking things and being productive.

Craig P. Anderson (07:02):

Sure. It's, it's interesting. You say that. I believe we talk so much about the distractions in the ad homework environment. The reality is you have just as many, if not more in the office, there's always, you know, I still think of that guy in office space kind of come around the corner, looking for the TPS reports. There are always those distractions. There's always somebody that comes in and interrupts your train of thought. We were even in the office. I remember in our space, and we'd have people put signs up, you know, working on a project or put headphones on to stop people from interacting. So you started to build those tips and tricks. There. It's the same thing I think you have to do when you're working from home. Things like the Pomodoro method, right? And as you know, which is the old tomato timer and setting and driving in 25 minutes, for instance, saying 100% focused on this task for 25 minutes, taking a break, sending it again for 25 minutes.

Craig P. Anderson (07:49):

When you get three or four of those under your belt, take an extended break. Maybe take a longer walk, start building those things out, and start getting things together. So you stay focused. There are always distractions. Whether at home or work, don't get over creative by either there's this whole wall. I need to show that I'm productive. And then you start just jamming out emails. I'll never forget the guy who loved to send emails out at midnight. I'm like, come up, man. Nobody's impressed. Mostly we're just irritated. So don't go overboard, be productive by getting things done. You and I have talked here about the way to show value in the form to, you know, we should measure people on what they achieve, not how long it took them to complete it. And that same thing applies here. Don't you think?

Lou Quinto (08:30):

Yeah, well. And in the area, when it comes to being productive is look, you know, creating a list of things to do what was old, you create an ABC list, and you know, your top priorities where your A's and then B's, and then C's and everyone worked on the CS first, cause they were comfortable and they would give you many checkmarks that you would have on your list of things to do. So at the end of the day, you were like, Ooh, look at all the checkmarks. But if you looked at them, they were all seed tasks. And to maintain productivity, I always tell people you like ABC use ABC or use high impact, moderate impact, and low impact and focus on those things that are high impact and spend your time working on those.

Lou Quinto (09:15):

Because at the end of the day, those high impact items are the ones that are going to get you closer to completing whatever tasks that you're trying to get done. But if you're working on your low impact or your C items, you're not going to be productive at all, and you're going to get frustrated. And then as you and I both know Craig because we all fall into that trap, both of us fall into that trap occasionally is that is we do a lot of see stuff and then we're staying up late at night to try to get the important stuff done for the next day and move forward. So yes, being productive, focus on those heavy tasks.

Craig P. Anderson (09:50):

Well, that's a good tee up to the next area about getting your critical tasks done every day. So let me ask you this. When you're looking at the list of things in front of you, and you're ranking a, B and C, how do you stop yourself from deluding yourself into thinking, Oh, that C task is an, a task? How do you keep yourself honest?

Lou Quinto (10:08):

W w well, there is something called integrity, but at the same time, I'm only cheating myself. So if I'm taking some CE stuff and putting them, marking them as high impact items, then I'm just, I'm just cheating myself. So, you know, you can play, you can play a game all by yourself, solitaire. And if you, instead of putting down three cards, put down two cards, what are you, you're beating the cards, you're just beating yourself. And so with, with any of that, with your daily tasks, you have to ask yourself, and I'm not going to say that for every day, you shouldn't have a separate mission or vision and created, but you know, what needs to be done. And it would help if you sat down as, as, as easy as it sounds, you know, how many people don't make a list of things to do, Greg.

Lou Quinto (10:59):

I mean, I'm dealing with people that are high up in organizations, and they still don't make a list of things to do. I genuinely believe that list of things to do. We've been taught it in time management needs to be done. And again, going back to the rules at the same time every day. So if it's at the end of your day, when you're recapping what you did that day and what needs to be continued, or if it's first thing in the morning while you're having your cup of coffee, and you're just going ahead and sorting through everything that you need to do, you need to do it at the same time, in a quiet time during the day. And before you even start, you need to go through that list and segment it. High-Impact a moderate BS, low-impact CS, and focus on the A's. I always tell people, take those, A's write them on a separate piece of paper, and throw the rest of the list of things to do. And your list of things to do that day is just so that you don't even have those BS and CS in front of you, that you can get distracted.

Craig P. Anderson (11:59):

Yeah. I have been working with some of my clients on this methodology by Michael Hyatt of looking at, you know, your year goals and then start scaling those back into quarters. You know, what quarters you're going to try and do those things in, and then you can roll it back to months. And it rolls around eventually to, you know, every week I'm sitting here saying, all right, what are the top three things I've got to get done this week that are going to move my projects forward. And then every day, what are the top three things I have to do that are going to move some of those projects on, along with all the other stuff that shows up. There are certain things that, you know, I'd love just to toss out my C list, but some of the Sila stuff is like approve payroll, so, or approve expense reports or something. Right? So you can't just toss them all out.

Lou Quinto (12:37):

Well, no, because C's eventually become a, if you let them hang long enough, I mean, they, they can become A's. So just like the examples that you gave, but if you want to focus on and be productive on your daily tasks, focus on the A's, take the BS and CS, and put them in a drawer for the time being. And when you get done with the A's, B's eventually become a CS, become BS, BS become a, so, I mean, they will show up on the list. Still, if you're focusing on the low impact items, you're not going to get anywhere fast, you're going to nibble around the edges, and you're never going to attack the whole thing.

Craig P. Anderson (13:15):

I, yeah, I, I like to work towards what are the things that are going to move my business forward or move my projects forward in a meaningful way. And also it's, I think it's good to look at energy level things like approving expense reports. Some, you know, that doesn't a high energy task, unless you're, you know, getting that pencil sharpened. So do that when you're kind of at a low energy point, but at a high energy point, when you're going to make much progress on the big projects where you've got a lot of thinking work to do. So part of that is looking at yourself and understanding where am I at right now? And the things I got to get done, and where's my energy level to get those things done. And you can kind of parse things out that way.

Lou Quinto (13:54):

Yes, absolutely. And I mean, that leads us right into our key takeaways. And I'm going to say my biggest key takeaway is we're in a situation right now that we thought was temporary. That's going to be much more permanent than it is temporary because even those individuals who, when their companies say, okay, it is time to come back. I genuinely believe that many companies are looking at expanding the remote workforce. So what you think may be temporary, permanent, may be permanent, permanent, you know, in a couple of months. So take the steps now to do that. And my key takeaway goes back and read a time or time management book because I, and I'm sure any right person has a time management book that they bought at one time in the self-help section and like most self-help, we skim through the pages and find something we like immense, keep looking through, read it from reading from beginning to, and truly

Craig P. Anderson (14:52):

Hone up on your time management skills because you're working from home. No one's standing over you, but you need to keep moving forward. And when you're by yourself, sometimes it's so easy to lose that focus of what the ultimate goal or the objective is. I agree with that. I'm not sure we want to go back to one from 1974, but maybe that works. It, it's actually interesting, and honestly, that's, if you're familiar with getting things done, the methodology for getting work done, that's one of the critical pieces of the getting things done framework is, is that daily task piece, the other part, I think, is essential around all these things about creating the workspace and making the list of things to do the danger of all of us working from home so much is your day never ends. You can be here sitting in your office until nine, 10 p.m.

Craig P. Anderson (15:42):

Cause you're just rolling through things. You're working on Saturday, and you're working on Sunday. So there's. Also, I think the danger in this to say, all right, when do I stop working? I love the idea of the guy who gets up, goes for a walk around his neighborhood, comes back to his desk. And that's the start of his day. In the end, he gets up, does a walk around the block. So he gets that mental. Does he go the other way? And maybe it's that mental idea of all right. I had me, you know, my, my drive to work and to make those breaks, no, one's going to tell you in your office, Hey, why don't you be, you know, why don't you work less? So there's also within these discipline things. We talk about my takeaway is have the discipline to say, all right, I'm done working on writing all those pieces matters.

Craig P. Anderson (16:25):

So, yeah. And it goes back to the previous video that we did on remote working, and you got to set your parameters, right? Going to work from eight to five. I'm going to work from nine to six, whatever it is. And at nine, you start six and close the computer and now get into your family life or Netflix, whatever you want to do. So anyway, take us home, Greg. All right. Well, if you know somebody in your life who's still working at your kitchen table and you can't eat your cereal every day, share this video with them like it. So when more people can find out about it and subscribe. So you always know when we launch every Thursday, we put a new episode up, but it's still great for you to get the reminder. Also, if you happen to be driving somewhere because you have somewhere to go aside from your home office, you can find us on all your favorite podcasting platforms to search for Q and a and breakthrough leadership. And you get all the value without the pain of watching us go back and forth on video. So it's an excellent opportunity for you to catch all of our episodes. We get much content out there, and always, you can find all of our videos on QA leadership.com. So until next time, I'm Craig Anderson and keep your hands squash, keep your distance. I'm Luke Quinto.