Episode 27 - How to Work from Home Effectively
Lou Quinto (00:19):
Hi, welcome to Q & A on Breakthrough Leadership. I'm Lou Quinto, and I'm Craig Anderson. Today we're going to be coming to you from remote locations because of the situation that we're in with the pandemic of the Coronavirus. And so Craig is at his office, and I'm at my office. But one of the things that we felt was important is we're looking at all the news, and everything is that most people are finding themselves in a situation where they are working remotely for the very first time in their lives. And one of the big questions that many people have is, how do I do this? And so what we're going to talk about is being as effective as a remote worker. Now up until this time, if you've never worked remotely, some people have the idea that working remotely is, you know, sitting around in your pajamas and you're going over to the computer, sending some emails and everything.
Lou Quinto (01:06):
But I think we're going to find out very shortly that is just the myth and what we're going to have to do is still be professional at our jobs. So this episode is going to help you if you are that individual who is not used to working remotely or even for those of you who may be remote workers that want to look at how to improve your efficiency and working remotely from a remote location. These tips may help you out. So the three areas that we're going to cover and being a productive remote worker is the first one is setting up shop. You're going to be at home, and you need to set up your office space just like you would be in a regular office. The second area is during this time of becoming a remote worker.
Lou Quinto (01:46):
How do I maintain good relationships with all of my workers? And this is a tough one for a lot of us because not only are we working remotely, but many of us have kids that are now being schooled remotely. And so we've got a balance between the work and between our children that are home also that need to be schooled. And so we'll give you some tips and talk about some things that you can do if you've got kids at home. So the very first area that we're going to talk about, we'll let Craig kick-off setting up shop.
Craig P. Anderson (02:16):
Sure. Well you know, as you mentioned, we're both working from our offices, and we both have been working from home offices for quite a while. So it is essential to the kind of, you know, so when I started working from home about two years ago, it was kind of important to start getting my office set up, getting organized, getting files. You're probably, if you're just moving to work from home right now for this period, probably going to have to do the same thing. Get yourself set up with a workspace here at the house. My significant other is now set up down in the kitchen. He's got a big table set up in the kitchen, and she got herself all organized there and got her computer and her monitors and isn't a working space there. Then my son suddenly comes home from college. He's got his working space set up in his bedroom. So, and then I've got my home office. So it's imperative to kind of get organized, get everything on your desk that you're going to need, and have that set workspace right. So you know where you're going to work, and you know where you're not working when you're in the house.
Lou Quinto (03:08):
Craig, let me, let me ask a quick question here is what if someone doesn't have the luxury they're in an apartment, they don't have an extra bedroom, or they don't have an office area?
Craig P. Anderson (03:20):
Well, even if it's just a, also if it's just a corner of the room, right? Maybe it's, you know, it's, you know, don't you see, you don't work from bad, you know, don't just get up in the morning and start working on your laptop for bed and then moving here and moving there. Really kind of get yourself focused on saying, all right, here's the corner. I'm working from the kitchen table, and that's what I'm working on. Maybe that's what you have to do. Or perhaps you set up a car table off in the corner of the apartment, but to kind of have that space where you know, this is where I'm working, this is where I'm not working. It helps. One of the challenges that you find yourself kind of working all the time when you work from home because you don't have that. I walked into the office, and I leave the office.
Craig P. Anderson (03:55):
Right? I mean, you've probably found that over your time. Right? So the other thing is, and you know this is always, this is the hardest thing for me is you did kind of have that situation where I get up in the morning, I have my routine. I go to my office, and at my office, I have my plan for the day, and then I have my shutdown rituals for the end of the day, and then I go home. You know, really planning out your day. I think the significant danger you have here is when you're working from home is, Oh well, I've got all day long to get that done. Next thing you know, it's four o'clock, and you know you did nothing. So it's essential. You see, I have a very, you don't have a time management system that I use where I kind of plan out my day and type of have my ideal day and where I'm focused on a given day.
Craig P. Anderson (04:32):
So that's pretty important. The other piece that's tied to that is, you know, have office hours, right? You're, you're working eight to six or nine to five. That's when you're at work and may build that into what you're doing. And then it's really just getting your office set up right? Have the files you need, know where your pens are, have everything you need so he can stay focused while you're working at the desk or at the car table. And then you know when you're away from there. So what you don't want to do is be hip deep in a task, really focused and say, Oh, I need a pen. Get up, walk around looking for that pet and then come back to your desk because you know when you break concentration like that, right. It takes several minutes to get refocused, but I think it's like 20 minutes to get refocused when you get, when you get disconnected from what you're doing.
Craig P. Anderson (05:13):
So those I think are really key. I think the only other piece I'd add is, you know, as you can see both of them and I hear on kind of a video conferencing setup, make sure you've got that teed up. I do think we're all going to give ourselves a little grace in these coming weeks when you see the dog or the kid running by in the background because we all know we're kind of not in a controlled environment we might like, but do try and get yourself set up so that you've got a good focused video conferencing site,
Lou Quinto (05:38):
Right? Yeah. Now [inaudible] one of the things do is in maintaining and setting up shop at home is as you indicated a little bit, it's really those distractions, those personal distractions, you know, Oh, well let me get the laundry going first. Or you know, Oh, let me just back him the carpets and Oh, let me go ahead and prepare dinner for tonight since I've got some extra time. And if you allow those personal interferences in your day, really take over, you'll find that all of a sudden it's four o'clock and you've got absolutely nothing done. And so keeping that mentality, and one of the things that I always did when I first started out on my own was I made sure that I got up and I took my shower and I got dressed as I would go to work as opposed to keeping my sweat suit or T shirt on.
Lou Quinto (06:23):
And so that I maintain that, that professionalism you know, during the day. And that was important. The other thing too, that I always tell people as a distraction can be constantly checking your emails. Now, I know we constantly check our emails when we're at work, but when you get at home you can probably linger a little bit more, not just on the work emails but on those personal emails as well. And so we met lists of things to do or that time management, Craig is, you talked about, I would definitely recommend and suggest to people is that they schedule time on when they're going to check their emails and you know if you've got that email notification that comes across on your computer, turn it off. If you want to just say, okay, from 10 until 12 or 10 to 10 30 I'm going to check emails and then from two to two 30 check emails.
Lou Quinto (07:10):
But if you've got that instant notification, I'm telling you anything that pops up will definitely distract you. So you need to be real careful about that. And then also communicating to, you know, the family, communicating to friends that you're working from home. I'm sure many of them are working from home also right now as well. But letting them know that during the work day, even though, and as you said, Craig, we're all in this at the beginning right now. And so we're all learning at the same place and the same pace as well. And so there's going to be that, you know, let, I'll go across the street and talk to the neighbor or, you know, we'll, we'll talk across the fence, whatever it may be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As long as you're maintaining physical division, that perfectly it. The other thing too is this is a great time to brush up on your communication skills because you've got a situation where you're going to be communicating with individuals that it's not going to be face to face in many instances.
Lou Quinto (08:05):
So your email traffic may be a lot higher. Your text messaging, your instant messaging may be higher. And so maintain that professionalism throughout. So if you're sending a professional, you know, text message or an email, make sure that you're using proper, you know, case and punctuation. You're not using the, you know, your LOL and OMGs and that, you know, keep that, try to keep those separate as, as you're moving up throughout. And then the other thing too is take breaks. You need to take breaks during the day just as you would at work as well. So schedule a 15 minute break every hour. I mean, what is, they say that the average person can't sit on his or her derriere for more than 55 minutes. So, every 55 minutes, take a 10 to 15-minute break, you know, stretch your legs, go outside given you know, some more water, whatever it is you to do.
Lou Quinto (08:55):
But these are part of the things that you need to do to maintain that mental sanity of, I'm working from home now and the two were two worlds are easily combined and when they connect and collide, you could set yourself up for not being a very productive, a remote worker. And the last one is maintaining a healthy lifestyle. When you're at home, you've got your refrigerator and your pantry and so therefore there's more food that you can get at then if you were at work, just eating out of the vending machine. So try to maintain, you know, a healthy, you know, lifestyle eating wise. If you've got a dog, take the dog for longer walks than you normally would at this time. We've all got to maintain our health and we've got to maintain our sanity at the same time. So the second one, a topic that we'll talk about is, let's talk about Greg [inaudible] creating a stronger working relationship or maintaining a stronger working relationship with our coworkers because we're not seeing them every day like we used to. How do we maintain that bond?
Craig P. Anderson (10:00):
Yeah, it's a, I think you may find yourself surprised that you're missing and coworkers, there's always that coworker that's always popping by and like, Oh man, pretty soon after a few days working from home, you'd say, man, I really wish that person would pop by. So I think there's, you know, when you're working from home, it's amazing how you can get just kind of enclosed in this space. And so you're going to find that those casual interactions are actually really important to keep your business moving. And if you're missing out on those casual interactions, you know, things are going to get dropped. So, you know, it's really important to find ways to stay connected with your coworkers. You know, like you mentioned Lou, you know, texting, texting in that professional context, but getting the messages back and forth, checking out what's going on. I'm staying connected. If you're going to take a coffee break which, you know, I guess this is the fifties of Oh yes, my coffee break.
Craig P. Anderson (10:46):
But you know, maybe it's taking a coffee break or if you're going to have lunch, maybe set up a lunch meeting with one of your, you know, just the same way Lou and I are doing it right here. Set up a lunch meeting with your colleagues so you can kind of catch up on what's going on, what's going on with business where you can a scheduled video with FaceTime. One of the things you'll notice if you start doing all your business by phone, there's a whole lot of interpersonal tips or you know, kind of the things that you'll pull through from body language. And if you're doing it over the phone, you may miss that. I used to have a boss who I'd never wanted to talk to on the phone because you could get so much more when you were in front of him, especially from his body language on how he was reacting to what you're saying.
Craig P. Anderson (11:22):
So getting these teed up on doing a video conference may be a better way to do it. And I, you know, I think it's important to kind of get into that whenever possible, especially for leaders to be seen and to be in connection with employees right now. I think if you lose that connection, you're doing everything between email and texts and you're not as the leader being in front of your people and doing that pulse check right now, that's something you're ultimately going to regret. So I think it's really important for you, for those of you who are sitting in leadership roles throughout the organization, making sure you're carving out time just for a five or 10 minute check in, have a team meeting set. You know, I've seen a lot of people talking about, you know, your how we're building this out every day. There's a 15 minute chicken for the team in the morning. We're working one on one every day or for five or 10 minutes. Really start building some things in. Because I think what a lot of people are going to find is those casual interactions are so critical when you're walking through the office and catching up and kind of having those hallway meetings, that's all going to disappear if you're not very intentional loop. My favorite word about making those happen during this time.
Lou Quinto (12:24):
Yeah. Yeah. And I'll, I'll follow up with that also is you know, during this time, and I think we covered it, Greg, in two previous episodes where we talked about managing remote employees. One of the things we talked about is that a remote employee can very easily be, felt like they're on an Island all by themselves. And you may experience that as well. And so one of the things I always, you know, say is that if you want to become a good remote employee is you need to be proactive. Check in with people on a regular basis. If you've seen someone hasn't been online or they haven't sent an email and you know, you know, in a couple of hours just, you know, check in, just Hey, how are you? And you know, how's it come in? You know, how are we doing on this project?
Lou Quinto (13:05):
And, and try to be proactive with the problems that might develop because you could be at home working remotely and you can have a problem and you may not be able to solve it, but you're embarrassed. You don't want to, you know, check in with anybody. And so you sit there wasting a whole bunch of time, hang or solve a problem that if you just reached out to somebody you would be able to solve it a lot quicker. Well, imagine that's going on with other people as well. So check in with your people. And the other thing too is particularly in this time with the Corona virus communications also need to be a little bit personal. So take time to talk about not just business things but personal things because everybody, if we're going through a lot of emotions right now, there's a lot of uncertainty that's going on and we all need someone to talk to and someone to listen to and we need someone to vent to.
Lou Quinto (13:56):
So building some time to build that relationship with your coworkers to do the same things that you normally would have done perhaps around a coffee, Potter and a break room or something like that where you're just, you're, you're just shooting it back and forth. Don't hesitate to do that at this time as well. Particularly at this time to support each other, you know, not just professionally, but personally as well. I think that's one of the things, it's, you know, like nine 11. I, you know, I was it can, can date back to nine 11 when I remember that situation. And it wasn't just making sure that we were going to continue, but that support needed to be there. So make it make it personal as well. So let's get into the third area and this is difficult area and that has to do with how do I work from home effectively if my kids are all, huh. So crate your, you said that your son is in from college, so yeah, a little bit older than we're talking, not elementary or high school, but you've got a son who's home from college.
Craig P. Anderson (14:55):
Yeah, it's a, it's an, it's a different time to kind of, you know, I was expecting him for the summer, but apparently, I'm going to have him for quite a bit longer. But you know what? I think I'm kind of fortunate to have a college aged student where you know, he doesn't need my attention at all. And so, he can kind of self-motivate and get things done he needs to do. And it's certainly a much bigger challenge for a lot of people who are now suddenly working remotely with a family. Schools are closed, they can't the student here, your kids there. So that staying focused is going to be super challenge. And I was actually talking to somebody or watching a video yesterday from somebody who has kind of put a don't come inside on their office door when they were on conference calls. Well it turns out, you know, it's great for the three kids who are old enough to read, not so much for the young one.
Craig P. Anderson (15:38):
So yeah, I think one is to really set a tone of empathy and understanding with your coworkers. Not every one of your coworkers has kids or you know, and so for those of you who don't have kids and don't have those distractions, understand that this is somewhat different. Right. So all that video we've been laughing at for a few years of that guy getting interviewed on the BBC, that is all of us now. We are all that guy potentially at any point during the day. So, you know, you're going to have to have some empathy with your coworkers about what's going on in between. So I think that's important. I think when you're actually sitting with your kids is, you know, to try and have, we won't get into, you know, the ways to deal with this coronavirus issue with your kids. There's a whole lot of smarter people than I was talking about that.
Craig P. Anderson (16:16):
But we do think as important as have those kinds of conversations with your kids about what it means for the working environment and you're trying to do and have those age appropriate discussions with them to understand, you know, mom or dad is having to do this work right now. So they need some of this time. We need you to stay focused over there. And I would also say just for folks in there with spouses or partners, you know, you're going to probably have to balance that and find ways to, you know, I think all of us leaders have to have some empathy for the fact that you've got people juggling schedules in a way they're not used to. So really focus as a leader on trying to optimize when you can get people together, but understand that you've got people with compelling or competing interests from two different employers on those calls.
Craig P. Anderson (16:55):
And I think the other piece is just, you know, somewhat similar to what you were talking about earlier, Lou was get that routine in place, right? Just because we're not in school every day, this isn't Christmas break. Right. You know, get up kind of as much. I think rituals become really important right now in rituals, in the sense of things you do on a repetitive basis. So you know, everybody in the family gets up at six and breakfast is at six 15 and you get teeth brushed and all this, you know, do everything you can to try and get that in place. You know, I've even found myself slipping with my, my gym closing, right? It was like, Hey, I can sleep in now and not work out, but that's not really going to be good when we finally all get back out into the wild. So getting those rituals and then find ways for your kids to, you know, have those activities set up and you know, find educational things and there may be a little more screen time to try and make that screen time educational and focus so you can get some of the work done yourself.
Lou Quinto (17:46):
Yeah, definitely. And if the one, one thing is in all those conversations, you know, address the fears that your children may be having when it comes to the situation because they're just as scared, if not more scared than you are may be exciting. Right now it's like a snow day. And you know, they're off from school, but it, maintaining those rituals, Craig, like you said, if you normally got everybody up at seven o'clock to get catch the bus at eight 30, then maintain those same schedules where you're eating breakfast at the same time. And so that this way they don't notice the disruption as much in their lifestyle. The other thing too is if you've got the opportunity where it's both, you know, a husband and wife, you know, or spouses that are both at home with the kids. I would definitely say one of the things you need to do is in your scheduling between the two spouses is do a divide and conquer.
Lou Quinto (18:41):
So if you see on your schedule, you have a conference call scheduled for certain time and the other spouse doesn't have that, you know, has that opportunity where they can be a little bit more flexible than that might be the situation where you're checking in on the kids to see if they've got any homework questions or, you know, are they accomplishing what they need to get done so that you're, you're setting those expectations and make sure those expectations that you're setting are realistic. Right now, I don't know if anyone can really say we've got realistic expectations. I mean, things changing by the hour. But we need to work, I think in all of us are trying to get to some level of normalcy. And so when it comes to realistic expectations, your children, if they've got schoolwork that they've got to get accomplished, certain reading, certain worksheets that need to be done, homework that needs to be done, you know, this now's a great time to teach them how to create, start creating a list of things to do and the schedule to be able to do that.
Lou Quinto (19:38):
And when you can get their schedule to match with your schedule, you'll find that a lot of the interruptions that if there aren't scheduled a will start to become minimal over a period of time because everybody knows that I've got a list of things that I've got to accomplish. And so, I think in being realistic about those things that's got to be important. So everybody needs to be on the proper schedule. So w we hope that you learned a little bit about you know, how to become a better w a remote employee times are difficult. And you know, Craig, do you have any, you know, with key takeaways? What are your key takeaways?
Craig P. Anderson (20:16):
Yeah, I think the key takeaway for me is really more for leaders. I mean, for everybody it's kind of a new and challenging, it's a weird situation, but I think leaders, it's really important for you to stay in touch, stay in front of your employees right now. You know, we didn't really touch on it much here, but there's obviously a lot of anxiety underlying all this, you know, what does this mean for my job long term? Depending on your industry, that's either more immediate or less than immediate, or maybe it's not a concern, but that's what's on your employee's minds. And employees see when things are slowing down, you know? So you can't kind of sit back and say, Oh, everything's fine, everything's fine. When your employees know, Hey, we're suddenly doing less customer work. So it's really important to get your messaging and get in front of your employees and have these regular touch points. I think the takeaway from all of this for me is from a leadership level, this is really an important time for you to not to hunker down in your home office or whatever and be remote. It's really finding ways to be actively engaged and touching base with your key employees throughout the day.
Lou Quinto (21:10):
Yeah, and my key takeaway is whether you're a leader or not I mean there are a lot of people who aren't leaders. They're just regular team members that are working remotely. And this video is as important for them as it is for, for a leader is that you, you need, you need to develop your schedule. You've got to get into a routine. I, I think when I first went out on my own, that was the most difficult thing for me to do is to get into a routine to be able to avoid distractions that needed to, things that need to be done around the house. And then all of a sudden I found out it's five o'clock. I didn't get a lot of work done and I'm working until two in the morning getting stuff done that I really should have gotten done during the day.
Lou Quinto (21:48):
And so again, maintaining that schedule, I'm going to work from eight until five or eight until four, whatever your normal schedule working his he makes sure that you are adhering to those hours and when time is up, and again, it may hurt you the first few times, but in the long run it's going to pay dividends is that at four o'clock or five o'clock when you normally go home from work, you need to close the laptop and you need to get into family life and that's the way that you'll maintain a good family life, family balance, a work balance during this whole thing. But if you don't, you're going to be working 24 hours a day and you're not going to get a lot of sleep and you're not going to be as healthy and you're not going to be an effective remote employee. So great. Wrap us up.
Craig P. Anderson (22:34):
Well, thanks for joining us for this kind of unique edition of Q and a and breakthrough leadership. It's very been very different experience for us and but we hope the information is as valuable as your tipping. You're used to finding it. So if you would like this video, share it with your friends who might be dealing with the same issues you're dealing with and very likely are, and subscribe to our channel to get other tips. We've got some great videos on managing remote workers out on the site@qaleadership.com that'll help you as a kid, more wrapped around managing a remote team and the leadership position. And also a, you know, we are also available in podcast version. You can find us at all your favorite podcasting platform. So until next time, I'm Craig Anderson
Lou Quinto (23:12):
And I'm Lou Quinto.