This episode of the Boagworld show is sponsored by Aurelius Labs and 2Checkout.
Related Links
- Boagworld Slack Community
- 8 Remote Working Tips for Beginners
- Alternatives to In-Person UX Workshops for Remote Working
- Remote Hour
- Boagworks Mentoring Services
- Pomodoro Technique
Transcript
Paul: This week on the Boagworld Show, we look at ways that you can be more effective working from home in light of the coronavirus. This episode of the show is brought to you by Aurelius Labs and 2Checkout.
Paul: Hello and welcome to the Boagworld Show. The show about all aspects of user experience, design, digital strategy, and working in digital. And it’s that last one that we’re going to be focusing on this particular episode as we talk about remote working, because let’s be honest, that’s what we’re all doing at the moment because of the way the world is. Joining me as always is Marcus Lillington. Hello Marcus.
Marcus: Hello Paul. How are you today? How are you Paul? How are you? Are you all right?
Paul: I am good. Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. It comes to something doesn’t it where there is a major pandemic, everybody has to social distance and change their lives in this major way except apparently me who is pretty much carrying on as I normally do. Very little has changed in my world. We’ve been homeschooling our son for as long as I can remember. I’ve been working at home for 18 years. I’ve run remote teams. You run remote teams, you work from home most of the time. I know you’ve got an office as well. So really not much has changed in our world has it really?
Marcus: Well, a friend of mine has had the virus. We’re not 100% because she wasn’t bad enough that she had to go to hospital, but couldn’t get out of bed for two days, massive temperature, cough. And another one, which apparently this is something that they didn’t say it was a symptom, is you lose your sense of smell and taste. And she still hasn’t got it back, so.
Paul: Weird.
Marcus: But she’s alright now.
Paul: Good.
Marcus: So, it’s real.
Paul: It is real. I believe it now. They’re not just making it all up. So yeah, I mean essentially what we thought we would do for this show is look at the subject of remote working because me and Marcus been doing it for so long we feel like we’re relatively well placed to talk about it. And I’ve had, it is really funny, but part of what I do is mentorship where I mentor people and I’m getting all of these phone calls all of a sudden and emails going, ah, you homework, don’t you? Ah, how do we do this? How do we get it working properly? So this seemed like a good way of kind of covering the subject and hopefully it can help.
Marcus: An excellent idea.
Paul: Yes. It’s worth saying as well that we’ve got a live audience. If you’re listening to the podcast here, we’re actually streaming this live and so there are a lot of people in the room that are here to talk about remote working. So for those of you that are here live, obviously things are looking pretty busy in the chat at the moment, so we’re going to do our best to follow that. But if you’ve got a question, if you’ve got a specific question to ask, you’ll notice in the bar at the bottom it’s got an ask the question option there. So if you could just pop in your question there, it’s also worth having a look at what other questions are there because you can vote up ones that you want us to particularly tackle. So yes, thank you very much for joining us, those of you in the room. I guess we should kick off.
Paul: I think the first thing to say before we get into some tips around homeworking is that we also run a Slack community, which I know one of the big things that lot of people are struggling with is this idea of being socially isolated. In my case, I think now everyone else has moved online, I’m more sociable now than I’ve ever been in my entire life because suddenly everybody wants to talk to you remotely, which is a very different world for me. But yeah, we spend a lot of time hanging out in the community Slack channel. We would love to have you come and join us there. You can sign up anytime by going to Boagworld.com forward slash slacking and it’s been a really nice support network. Isn’t it Marcus in there and the vibe has been lovely.
Marcus: It’s a fantastic channel. Well I don’t really know because all I have is the Headscape channel, which is the Headscape team. That’s the agency that I’m part of and the HE digital channel, which has probably hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people from all over the place. And the Boagworld channel feels like a kind of a little homely place to come in and have a chat with people. I don’t know, we’ve never really had any trouble, which is just bizarre.
Paul: Nope.
Marcus: How many people are on there now?
Paul: Oh, there’s well over a thousand. I think we’re pushing a couple of thousand. But yeah, it’s always very… A lot of people don’t actually post, they just kind of look as-
Marcus: Yeah, they look.
Paul: We occasionally get a little bit of spam, but that’s about it really.
Marcus: Yeah.
Paul: So it’s a lovely place to hang out.
Marcus: It just goes to show that it is possible in this day and age to have a kind of communication network where people don’t end up just talking about, but accusing each other of being Nazis. Because that’s what happens in the end, isn’t it?
Paul: Yeah. But have you noticed the radical shift of, actually when real shit goes down people actually do step up don’t they? And they are nice to one another. And yes, there’s been a few fights in supermarkets and stuff like that, but generally speaking people have been absolutely lovely and it’s restored my faith in humanity, which I tell ya is a fairly major achievement.
Marcus: It’ll change again when everyone gets bored or this in a week.
Paul: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. We’ll get to a tipping point, I suspect. Anyway, let’s remain positive and talk a little bit about homeworking. So yes, both me and Marcus have been homeworking for exactly the same length of time because we both started an agency together back in 2002.
Marcus: Yep.
Paul: That’s right isn’t it? Yeah.
Marcus: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Paul: So we’ve been through the experience of doing that. We did get an office with the agency that we run but even so, most people work from home a fair amount of the time. I certainly worked from home pretty much the entire time. I’d go in maybe once a month. For the last five years I’ve worked as an independent consultant, which means that I don’t have an office at all, I’m in my house and this is where I work on a daily basis.
Paul: So, let’s start doing some tips. I want to do questions, but I’m going to do a load of tips first before we get into that. The first tip I want to share with you is, I would highly recommend that you see this and you approach this period of time as if it’s permanent, right? It might not be, right? I’m sure-
Marcus: I hope it’s not Paul.
Paul: No, no. I’m not saying… I don’t mean… No, now let me clarify that.
Marcus: That’s it, I’m off.
Paul: I’m not saying that we’re going to be living in quarantine forever, but I do think what will happen, in my opinion, is that I think hopefully companies will see that homeworking is a viable option, that it’s something that actually can make you very productive. It can lead to a better work-life balance. It can have all of these benefits, and so actually with any luck you will have the option to do this even after this particular crisis has ended.
Paul: And I think if you’re an individual employee and you’re approaching this, think about whether you want to integrate this into your life over the longterm and if so, how are you going to do that? If you’re someone who runs a team of people, then I think you want to be starting to think, okay, well these processes and working methodologies and tools, we need to invest in them now. We need to invest in the infrastructure because even when this current crisis goes away, having the potential for people to work remotely offers up huge, huge potential, right? And then beyond that, there’s also the possibility that this won’t be the last pandemic we face, I’m sorry to say. And so having a system and a structure in place to support that is very much worthwhile. So, that’s that, I wanted to get that one out of the way.
Paul: Let’s now talk about the kind of practicalities of doing this, all right.
Marcus: Okay.
Paul: I’ll be interested in your thoughts on this Marcus. Because you work from home a fair amount and you’ve also got a team-
Marcus: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Paul: … do you stick… What’s your working style in a sense? Do you kind of stick to the nine to five or are you more flexible than that? How has it worked out for you?
Marcus: Do you mean just me or the team?
Paul: Both.
Marcus: Okay.
Paul: Pick one and start.
Marcus: I want to ask another question now but I can’t think of one. I am pretty, yeah, I tend to stick to the same kind of times. I like to start early and I like to finish fairly early. So I’m a kind of eight ’til five kind of person or… Because I’ve been thinking about this all day. I’ve been decorating the day. After a bit of work I’ve been thinking, what are we going to talk about on the show tonight? And actually I tend to start, the way I tend to work is I’ll start almost as soon as I open my eyes.
Paul: Yeah.
Marcus: I might get a coffee or whatever, but then I’ll sign in at seven whatever it is and I’ll sign off, and it is important to sign off and no doubt we’ll come onto that in a bit, at probably six o’clock. Which is like an 11 hour day, but I don’t work for 11 hours during that period. So I guess I am, I give myself the opportunity to, if I feel like it, I’m going to go wander off for a walk. But because we’re in a team I can’t start work at eight o’clock at night and log off at 4 AM because I have to talk to other people who are in the team. So we have to have a little bit of overlap or no, quite a lot of overlap potentially. But I think I’m similar or the rest of the team is similar in this, that we often all sign in very early and work quite late. But I think that just gives us the opportunity to kind of take half an hour out here and there if we need to.
Paul: Yeah.
Marcus: Because rather than just like bang, I’m starting at nine and I’m going to stop for an hour at lunch. You can be a bit looser, I guess is what I’m saying.
Paul: And I think, and I totally agree with that. And that was one of the things that I was really keen to communicate today in this was that, you don’t have to replicate the office outside of the office, right? So you don’t need to replicate that nine to five. You go in, you sit down, you work for eight hours, you go home. Because a lot of the advice that you read and a lot of the way that people approach it is, you need to have a clean break between personal life and work life. And some people put their shoes on, don’t they so that they feel like they’re going to work or they go out for a commute, they go for a walk and come back.
Marcus: That’s why they walk around the block. Yeah, yeah.
Paul: And I’m not saying any of those are wrong. If it works for you, then great. And I think that’s another thing that you want to communicate, is there’s no right or wrong way of doing this. You’ve got to find your own way and your own style in it. But it doesn’t need to be like work, right? It doesn’t need to work like office work. It could be different. So it’s about, for me as an individual, I’m all over the place because it’s just me, right. So today I didn’t start work until one in the afternoon, but I’ll probably do some stuff this evening, right? So it’s absolutely all over the place and I tend to work better in the evening. But it’s about availability, right?
Marcus: Yes.
Paul: It’s about being available for other people if they need you, because obviously I have clients and that kind of stuff. So I need to have my phone out, I need to be checking my email. And a lot of people feel overwhelmed by that, that you get this constant stimulus of stuff coming at you. So that you can limit to nine to five, right. So you only have your notifications on or whatever between nine to five, but that doesn’t mean that you have to work in nine to five. Does that make sense, Marcus? Am I making sense?
Marcus: Yes, totally. And I think it’s, there’s one kind of… Because you started off with some kind of major fundamental points. And I think a fundamental point here is to say that some people are better at this than others and some people like it more than others. You, for example, and Lee, who was at Headscape, you’re kind of made for working at home.
Paul: Yeah.
Marcus: Whereas I struggle if I have to do it all the time.
Paul: Yeah.
Marcus: I really struggle with online meetings-
Paul: Yeah.
Marcus: … as opposed to face-to-face ones. I think they’re much more difficult-
Paul: Yeah.
Marcus: … whereas I suspect not bothered. You’re probably like wait-
Paul: No, that’s not true actually.
Marcus: It isn’t?
Paul: In fact, I was saying to Michelle in the chat room, because she was asking about design sprints and that she’s got to run a design sprint remotely.
Marcus: That’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life.
Paul: Exactly. So actually I’m writing a post about this that’s coming out on Tuesday.
Marcus: Okay.
Paul: And I talk about how that just doesn’t work. You can’t just take something that works as a face-to-face thing and turn it into, do the same thing virtually. Because you know what it’s like. I mean it’s even like that with this podcast for crying out loud. As we came on today, you were like, can you hear me? Can I hear you? My video’s not working and all of that kind of stuff. It’s just a nightmare. You can’t work in the same way when it comes to that kind of stuff.
Marcus: Yeah.
Paul: You’ve got to find new ways of working. So I wouldn’t even try and do a design sprint, if I’m honest, not in the traditional sense of it because it’s not feasible.
Marcus: Yeah. I mean do it doing any more than two hours tops, I would say. I mean, trying to facilitate, I don’t know, 12 people. That’s probably a standard number isn’t it-
Paul: Yeah.
Marcus: … in a workshop type sprint type of thing isn’t it, it’s hard enough. I mean it knackers you out doing it for a day face-to-face.
Paul: Yeah.
Marcus: But two hours and I’m done trying to do it online. So have you got any tips, Paul?
Paul: Yeah.
Marcus: We’re here for your tips.
Paul: Yeah. Well absolutely. I mean, what I’m basically saying with these things, I say this in the article, is you kind of have to step back and ask yourself what are the benefits that you get from doing whatever the real world thing is, right? So whether it be a design sprint or customer journey mapping or whatever else, focus first on what the benefit is, right? What do you get from it, not the process of creating it, right? So, for example, if you’ve got problems in terms of… So let’s say for example, you’re talking about doing a design sprint, right? Design sprints really are all about engaging stakeholders, educating them, iterating fast on ideas, those kinds of things, aren’t they? That’s what you get from doing a design sprint and why they’re of value.
Marcus: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Paul: But that’s not the only way of getting that value. You can engage people through stakeholder interviews, one-to-one interviews. You can educate people through blog posts and newsletters. You can run surveys. There are lots of other asynchronous methods or one-to-one methods that you can adopt. Are they as good as doing a design sprint? No, probably not, right? Will they get the job done? Yes. Are they better maybe in different ways to a design sprint, probably. Right? So I think one of the things that we really need to do is to actually kind of step back and look at things from scratch and ask ourselves, what are the outcomes that we want and reevaluate the way that we get to those outcomes. That’s how I feel anyway. And that’s what I talk about in this post.
Marcus: Yep. No, that makes a lot of sense, Paul.
Paul: So I mean, even that applies not just to individual things like design sprints or whatever else. It also applies just to the way that you work as a whole. So, for example, one of the things when we work in an office, the way that we ju-
Paul: An office, the way that we judge our performance in the office, if we’re honest, is are you there from nine to five? Seriously? It is, isn’t it? It’s have you done the hours that you are contractually obliged to do?
Marcus: Harry Potter’s how many feet of homework have you done?
Paul: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So what we need to do is I think is shift our thinking when we start working from home. It’s not about that we’ve done eight hours. I was talking to someone earlier about this, she was saying, actually they were in this chat room, somebody in the chat room who said, “Oh, I’m running out of things to do because I haven’t got a commute and suddenly I’m achieving a lot more.”
Marcus: That’s a good thing, isn’t it?
Paul: Kick back and relax. If you’ve done all of the deliverables you would do in a normal day in the office and you’ve done that in four hours, go play with the kids. Or avoid them and watch something on Netflix. So it’s about getting, actually Daniel just said it in the chat room, it’s about getting the tasks done, not spending the time doing those tasks and that’s really important thing to get your head around, I think.
Marcus: However, and this is more, I agree with that entirely, 100%, but you kind of started this off or the reason why we’re having this conversation is because so many people are suddenly thrust into this situation because they have to and there’ll be lots of very nervous bosses out there, “Oh, is it all going to get done? Blah, blah, blah.” So I guess it depends on what kind of personality your boss is, but maybe you should just sort of spread your time out over the day as you normally would if you were in the office or actually try and educate them into, “I’ve done all this stuff because I’m more being more productive. I haven’t got any distractions. I’ve got all this stuff done, as much as I would normally done. I’m taking the couple of hours out or whatever.”
Paul: In this entire conversation there’s this kinds of two sides to it, isn’t it? There’s you the employee and you the manager, and you do have both and I think managers do need to realize as long as shit’s getting done, then that’s fine. It doesn’t matter how long they’re spending doing it. For either side, whichever side of the equation you are. Another real key I think to successful remote working is to over communicate That you need to be constantly talking to your colleagues, to your manager, to everybody telling them what you’re doing, when you’ve done it, how you’ve done it, letting them see your work as you’re doing it.
Paul: Put everything online, everything open to people. Because if you don’t do that, then you’re going to get into this situation of, “Is that person doing their job? Are they pulling their weight?” And all of that kind of stuff. So the more you communicate it, the better off that you generally are. And that’s where things like Notion is really good. Doing daily updates. Slack, I came across a nice little tool just this week actually called Remote Hour, which is a bit like Zoom or Skype except you can just connect to people and start talking to them much easier and you can put status updates and things like that. I’ll put a link in show notes.
Marcus: What was it called? Sorry.
Paul: It’s called Remote Hour. I haven’t actually tried it myself.
Marcus: The paid for service that we use, suddenly Notice has got really, really crappy since everybody has started working from home.
Paul: It’s not surprising is it really? So yeah, have a look at Remote Hour. I think it’s free at the moment as well. That won’t last long, but there you go. There’s something to have a look at. So it’s a remotehour.co. So, over communicate as much as you possibly can. I think that makes a huge, huge difference. I think it’s also important to know when to log off. Did you write that one in the notes or did I?
Marcus: No, it was you.
Paul: Oh, was it? Okay.
Marcus: I did just say it though.
Paul: Yes, you did. That’s why I’m thinking it came from you. It’s the balance there. For me, for a long time I was very regimented, a certain time I would down tools and log off and walk away, but it’s not just that type of logging off we’re talking about. It’s also logging off from your head. When you go into an office, there is a defined area where you think about work. When you work from home, there is not that defined area. So it tends to follow you even when you’re not actually working.
Paul: And so you’ve got to have, there are various techniques of how you deal with that and it’s very much up to you. But one of the techniques that I have is me and my wife sit down to watch a TV program at a certain time in the evening, pretty much every evening, and that breaks me from work. It forces me to break from work, so that’s quite useful to me. Other people might do it in a totally different way. You’ve got to kind of find your own style in that, which is a bit tricky.
Marcus: I think the reason, it’s again, people are different and some people struggle to turn off and for those people that do struggle to turn off, make sure you have a time when, it might be six o’clock, whatever. Now I’m going to down tools, turn your machine off. That’s a good one. Don’t just shut the lid. Actually turn it off. Somebody like me, I actually probably, I’m better just on and off all the time anyway.
Paul: So am I to be honest.
Marcus: I don’t suffer from it, I think if I ended up working all the time, then you would suffer from it. So yeah. Yeah, so that’s why it’s an important thing.
Paul: Paul has made a really good comment in the chat room, which I 100% agree with. He says, “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You get this perception that you work from nine to five in the office or whatever, but you don’t.”
Marcus: Oh no.
Paul: Most companies work on a productivity level of about 60% from employees. So that means that actually you’re far from being efficient. Most of the time you’re pissing around on social media or chatting with the person next to you or whatever else. So you will find that you should be working a lot less hours at home than you do in the office, in my opinion.
Marcus: It’s a funny one, I found and this is because I’ve done this for such a long time, because there’s this idea that you’re a lot more productive at home because-
Paul: Well people swing one way or the other, either they say you’re a lot more productive or you won’t get anything done because there’s distractions like television and the washing and whatever.
Marcus: The washing, that’s the thing that always distracts me.
Paul: Stop working to do washing, honestly.
Marcus: No, but it depends on the task. If I’ve got one of those tasks where I really would rather be doing anything else, I prefer being in the office because it’s like everyone else has gone quiet, I really ought to do something, kind of forces me to do it. Whereas if I’m at home, I go another cup of tea or Ooh, I think I’ll just walk down and look at the river. All I’m saying, I have no cure for this by the way, just note it. When you’re at home, there are a lot more distractions available to you. And there is no pressure to, let’s not say there’s less pressure to get on with it, I suppose. But I have found, on that is when you’re into something, when you’re not kind of struggling to start something or anything like that, then you’ll get way more done at home because there’s nothing around you. If you’re in the zone, as it were, then you’ll do it a lot more quickly.
Paul: So let’s look at that. How to limit those distractions and how to get control of your work day. Matt has thrown one in that I totally agree with, which is he timeboxes time. He sets himself a timer to focus on a task and then keep on it, and then after that he takes a forced break. So the most classic example of this is the Pomodoro technique. Where you work for 25 minutes, you take a five minute break, you rinse and repeat. And when the time is going, you just have to keep going. And for some people that works very well for [crosstalk 00:27:30] I love that attitude, arguing with the Tom Pomodoro technique. I’m somewhere in between so that sometimes it works for me and then other times it just is no good whatsoever.
Paul: The other technique that we have in our household is, it’s called the reverse Pomodoro. And the reverse Pomodoro is for when you really can’t be asked to do anything. And you say to yourself, “Look, I’m going to do five minutes and then take 25 minutes off.”
Marcus: That sounds much more like it, all I have to say.
Paul: The reason it works is because once you start, you want to keep going.
Marcus: Yes, exactly.
Paul: So, things like that work really well. Again, you’ve got to experiment, you’ve got to talk to other people, see what they try and then try it yourself. But discipline is a big part of it. Accountability can help as well of saying, “I’m going to deliver this by the end of the day.” So make yourself accountable to colleagues, make yourself accountable to bosses. And then also, if you don’t have a structure like that, which I don’t, make yourself accountable to people in the Slack channel or wherever else, anybody will do.
Marcus: No, sorry Paul, carry on.
Paul: No, no, no, I wasn’t, I was actually going to move on to a different point relating to staying focused. But if you want to jump in, go for it.
Marcus: Something that we must cover is what Dave mentions is we’ve mentioned not replicating the office environment, but what he’s saying is that there are certain aspects of the office environment that we do want to replicate, which is the human to human part, the communicating bits, so how do we deal with that? We must cover that.
Paul: Yes. Yeah. I think I’ve got a question on that later. So we will, because I’m going to, this is going to go on longer than normal, unfortunately Marcus, this show I think, but let’s just go with it because hopefully it’s valuable to people.
Paul: The other thing I wanted to say about distractions is that it really helps to have a dedicated workspace. Somewhere where when you sit down at that workplace, you are doing work. Now I’m very lucky because I’ve been working at home for 18 years. We bought this house in part because it had an excellent place for an office. If you’ve just been thrust into it, you’re probably not going to have that. So I’m looking now back to when I first started homeworking and so I’m thinking about my advice, don’t work at the dining room table. Or a communal space, a family space. If you have to set up a trestle table in your bedroom, that is better than sitting down and working at the dining room table. Try and find a place in the house that is not right in the thoroughfare of the house.
Paul: So, for example, when I first started working at home, I was working in the dining room, which was a dedicated space for me, but it was between the lounge and the kitchen. So everybody was walking past the whole time. We had a small baby, they could hear everything I was saying, I heard every cry of the baby, et cetera. So try and find yourself a space a little bit away. It only needs to be the smallest desk. I saw somebody who’d created that a home office underneath their stairs and they had a tiny little desk in with a laptop on and it was perfectly fine.
Marcus: Just to play kind of slight devil’s advocate on that, cause I do completely agree that having… the idea of hot desking horrifies me. I want to have my space.
Marcus: But one of our clients, she’s obviously working from home and she said, but then she hasn’t got lots of kids around or anything like that. But she was saying, I’ve deliberately pulled myself out of my little shoe box of a room that I have as an office that’s all set up as an office because it’s much more comfortable, I get a much better view, more sort of ambiance around me if I come and sit in my big kitchen. So yeah, generally speaking, I agree. But don’t lock yourself under the stairs, I don’t think. Unless you have small children.
Paul: Well, yes and no. I think there is a degree where it is good to have that space. She’s got that space, even if she doesn’t use it the whole time. There is still a place where you can go away and hide.
Paul: Let’s talk about family and small children.
Marcus: Yes.
Paul: It’s really important to lay some ground rules and I’m not just talking about laying ground rules with children. I’m talking about laying ground rules with partners, anybody that’s in the house. That you need to have a very clear signal with the family of when you’re working and when you’re not. Now that might be putting headphones on just like you would do at work. It might be sitting in a particular place in the house, whatever it is. It might be when you’ve got shoes on, or when you’re wearing a certain pullover or when you’re holding a sign saying piss off, whatever works.
Marcus: I’m working, post it on your head.
Paul: That’s fine. But just have the conversation as a family. My son had to learn very early, because I’ve worked from home his entire life. I had to explain to him, look, when dad is in the dining room, as it was at the time, that means he’s working, you need to go and talk to your mum. That was just it. That was the way that it was in our family from the very beginning. And I think you need to have those kinds of conversations if you’re going to avoid conflict further down the line.
Marcus: I’m just going to interrupt, [inaudible 00:34:16] has just said, “And in a few weeks we be able to sit outside, what lovely, lovely, lovely thought.”
Paul: Oh yes. And that actually, that brings me on perfectly, perfectly to the last point I wanted to make, is it’s very easy to focus on all the challenges of homeworking but embrace the perks. You can slack off in the middle of the day if you’re feeling tired and you can’t face it, you can go and sit outside, you can put on whatever music you want to listen to without worrying about anybody else. You can work for the entire morning wrapped in you duvet.
Marcus: As you do, Paul.
Paul: As I do, yeah. Because your kids are going to be home as well. Don’t see that as a problem. Don’t see it as, “Oh no, the kids are home. How am I going to concentrate on work?” Go with it. If the kids are really hyper and you want to go spend some time with them, do it and do you work later. I think it’s really important to kind of embrace the whole nature of it.
Paul: Anyway, I’m going to briefly stop and talk about one of our sponsors because like I said, this is produced as a podcast, so obviously we have sponsors. I’m going to talk about a sponsor, and then we’re going to get into some user questions. First sponsor I want to talk about is 2Checkout. So 2Checkout basically simplifies the whole craziness of digital commerce, which at the moment is very, I think a lot more people will be embracing digital commerce even more so than they already have. So it handles everything really, that happens from the-
Paul: So then they already have, so it handles everything really that happens from the buy button onwards. So payments, finalizing the order, suggesting alternative products in the cart, delivery notifications, all that kind of stuff. And if there is an issue with your card or something like that, they deal with all of that. And basically it’s a collection of modular platforms that you can use. So there’s a global payment one, there’s a digital commerce one. There’s a subscription billing one, one for global tax and financial services, risk management and compliance.
Paul: They’ll even do things like handle customer support, if you want to. There’s a whole range of stuff, a lot more than just the payment part of it. So yeah, check them out, see what they’re about. And if you’re doing any kind of e-commerce, they are absolutely excellent and that’s 2Checkout.com. Right, so we’ve got 12 questions waiting for us, Marcus.
Marcus: Okay.
Paul: Let’s go through them. Starting from the first, the most voted question. So this question was originally posted by Leo. I’m interested in any tips or hacks on working from home with two children under six. Bloody hell. Also, both parents should be working, any clear? No, that’s bad, don’t do that, recommendations?
Marcus: Right. Kids under six. How far under six? I think that the reason why I’m going there is if they’re young enough they’ll have naps and use that time wisely, I guess. That’s when you can put in the work, otherwise, you need to take it in turns.
Paul: Yeah, and I think the advice I would give there is, work when they’re asleep basically. I remember having to do that. I did a lot more work in the evenings because, I had a son that was awake in the day.
Paul: I think you need to maintain their routine as much as possible. Give them a sense of structure in their lives and to work around that. I mean if they’re nearer the six, I think they’re probably old enough to say, “Look, daddy’s working,” or mommy’s working or whatever, and you can have to essentially set up some kind of shift arrangement between you and your wife.
Paul: But be honest with your employer about that, right? I think it’s much better to say, look, this is the situation we’re in than it is to try and juggle it in the background because to be honest, your employer is going to have to suck it up, right? At the moment, in the world we live in, they’re going to have to suck it up. So don’t be afraid to go back to them. As long as the work gets done, they’ll be fine, right? They won’t get uptight or they shouldn’t get uptight that you’re doing it at weird hours, right?
Marcus: Yep. Agreed.
Paul: I don’t think there’s a lot else you can say about it. Are there any other tactics that I used to use? Well, I used to have a door that I locked, but that didn’t work. They just banged on the door.
Marcus: Yeah. This is the problem if you… If like you say, it depends how close… If they’re five and six, let’s say, then you know, they will happily sit and watch a film. If they’re two and three, not a chance. So, you know, it really does depend on the age.
Paul: Davis said that he also, as well as having three kids under six, he’s also running a team of 12 people. And I think in that kind of situation you’ve got to be up front with your team members. Say that you might not be as instantly available as you would normally be. They’re going to get it, they’re going to understand it and you’re going to have to trust your team. I think anyone of the big things that’s going to come out of this is as managers, we’re going to have to delegate and trust our teams more with responsibility that they step up.
Paul: Another thing Charlotte has just suggested is maybe you could club together with some other parents and take it in turns to watch them. I don’t know whether that actually causes isolation problems or not. I’m not even going to get into the medical side of things. Anyway, there you go. There’s a little bit about that. It is a huge one and there’s no easy magic answers. Well I haven’t found it yet, but then I very sensibly only have one child. That made it easier.
Paul: Okay, let’s do the next one. Christian. Hi Paul, could you spend some time talking about personal remote working as well as what to do for the leaders as a leader of a team? So I mean I think we talked quite a lot about personal remote working, but let’s talk a little bit about if you’re running a team. Marcus you do this more than I do. Is there any advice that you would give on this?
Marcus: I think, we have already covered this, but it’s about ensuring that people are available. So everyone needs to know that we’ve got on our Slack channel, we’ve got one of the channels is called movements. And it’s often 10 minute, pop into the shops, 10 minutes get some milk. And that’s really important because you would think, well actually probably no one will even notice. But it’s really quite frustrating if you’re trying to get hold of someone and no one can find them.
Marcus: So I think, but be all right with that. That’s, the other thing. It’s like, you know what, I’m fine if you need to pop out or whatever. I’ve just always communicate what you’re doing so that we know where everybody is in case we need to speak to each other. And also on a more fundamental level, we’ve done this for long time. We did this even when we had the office and we were in there more often, is ensure that there is a time say between 10 and three when everybody’s working so that you can’t have that, “Oh, well I like working between midnight and 7:00 AM,” or whatever because that doesn’t work in a team environment.
Paul: That doesn’t necessarily mean they need to be sitting at their desk actually doing work so much as they need to be available if other people need to talk to them and respond. They can’t suddenly go out to the cinema in the middle of the day. Not that that would be an issue right at the moment, but you know what I mean?
Marcus: Yeah. It’s exactly that. Yeah. I mean it’s not black and white. It’s not like going to an office when you walk through the door between nine and five because you can stop and start a lot more easily. But it’s about having a time where everybody is available and even if you’re not available, making sure you communicate that fact and for how long it’s going to be and they take the piss, like don’t go to the cinema for three hours because that is something you should do outside of work, I guess.
Paul: Yeah. Yeah. And another thing, I think it’s quite important to try and have a, what’s the word I’m looking for? A social aspect going on as well. So, for example, they had escaped Slack channel is just as likely to be full of people taking the piss out of one another or some stupid giff or that kind of stuff. That kind of thing you need to actively encourage and I think as a team leader you need to be the one that instigates that. You need to be in there being silly, messing around, keeping things light and at a time like this as well. I think you also need to be the one saying, “This is hard, isn’t it? You know, this is difficult. I’m stressed, I’m worried.” Set the example of that being human in it and remembering to be human.
Marcus: That’s all. I’ve got a quote from Lee Howell’s, at Headscapeer yesterday in our covid channel. Hang on, I’ve got to find it, “Was wondering, is man covid worse?” Which I thought was really funny.
Paul: There we go. I love the fact that you’ve got a channel dedicated to that.
Marcus: We’ve got one called Boring Car chat, Boring House chat. Various others, so we often end up talking about houses or cars or Ed and Dan do, anyway.
Paul: Right. So, they’ve now be shoved into their own chat channel.
Marcus: They have to have their own channel, exactly. This is relevant, thing just popped up, Headscape virtual brunch, I’ve just been invited to.
Paul: There you go. Yeah. Things like that are a really great idea, things as well like, even having virtual book clubs or it’s all kinds of stuff. You need to get imaginative and creative with those kinds of things.
Paul: Trust people would be another thing I would say, if you’re running a team and tell them you’re trusting them. Say, “Look, I’m not going to keep you to specific hours and you know, yes, I want you to be around for our daily standup, or whatever. But beyond that, as long as we can reach you via email and you get the work done, I’m kind of happy.”
Paul: So absolutely do empower people to do what they need to do. Invest a bit of money in the right applications and technologies to enable people. But don’t get too hung up on the tool, and don’t, if people, sometimes, I’ve been guilty of this, sometimes you go, you find a tool and you go, right, everybody’s got to use this tool now.
Marcus: Paul, re productivity, don’t join the Bike World Slack channel.
Paul: Well absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, you say, “Oh well we’re all going to use Notion now and if you’re having to bang and bang and bang and force people to use that particular application, whatever it is then it’s probably not the right application. Stay flexible, stay relaxed and, and trust yourself.
Marcus: As Andrew Davis says, “Get a comfortable chair.” Actually, that’s really relevant isn’t it? Especially if you’d like people who’ve just suddenly ended up having to work from home. Yeah. Chairs. But that’s a whole show in itself.
Marcus: It is though, because I’ve got back problem and you shouldn’t be spending any less than a thousand pounds on your chair that you work from home.
Paul: Bullshit to that.
Marcus: Yes, it’s bullshit. Exactly. I’m still sat on the one I bought in PC world 20 years ago. But it is a big comfy chair.
Paul: But there is that whole thing about, again, the reason why you need to be taking regular breaks and getting up and wandering around and making a cup of tea. All those things are actually good for you. They’re not bad for you at all. Tim points out, has just posted the wine emoji, which I think I entirely agree with that. I think, introduce day drinking into your schedule, I believe in that as well.
Paul: Anyway, let’s do another question. Right, we’ve been told to expect to spend up to two months working from home. I’m worried about the effects on my and my team’s mental health. So any tips about managing that would be great. Working from home is lonely. Yes, it can be. I think Marcus was right earlier saying that some people are more disposed to it than others.
Marcus: People that don’t like other people like Paul, basically.
Paul: Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Never having to interact with another human being. But that said, I love our Slack channel. I love going up there and having a little rant and a little rave and that’s really great. So do that. Going out, going for a walk, you know that kind of thing makes a big difference. Working outside when you get an opportunity to is really worth doing as well. Going and potentially working even somewhere else. Now you might think you can’t do that because of social distancing but as the weather improves you could go work in a park or somewhere like that for awhile. Makes a big difference.
Paul: Again, going back to what Marcus was saying about that client of his working in a different location every now and again, mixing it up makes a big difference as well.
Marcus: Yeah. You soon realize how good your desk is with all the stuff on it, on the big screen. And so we used to go sit in the garden for about half an hour. Okay. This isn’t working and came back up again. But yeah, it’s good to just break out.
Paul: And this is where, as well, it just goes back to embracing the benefits of homeworking. So if you’re struggling, if your mental wellbeing isn’t great, stop working, go do something that makes you happy and come back to it later.
Marcus: One thing that we’ve said we will, because at Headscape we used to work two days in the office, three days at home. So a lot of homeworking but not completely. And now we’re solidly homeworking, we’ve said that all meetings, even if it’s just an internal quick Skype, video camera has to be on just to kind of, so we go, “Hello,” and remind each other that we still exist. And I think that’s what this was about. It could get lonely being on your own all the time. So stick the video on and yeah, and don’t be… Nearly all meetings in the office if you’re wandering with a coffee in your hand or there’s biscuits, there’s always banter. So start those with a bit of banter. It’s all right, that’s fine. Yeah.
Marcus: Somebody said earlier about don’t put too much pressure on yourself in the Slack channel. There’s like this idea that actually no, I’m, because I’m working from home, I’ve got all this time I’m going to be the super worker that does… I’m going to do more hours than you. All that kind of thing. Have fun I suppose is what I’m trying to say because we probably do have fun when we’re together as humans in an office environment. So try and replicate that at home.
Paul: Although I have to say I disagree with Daniel. He’s saying have Skype calls from the bathtub. That may be good for your mental health, Daniel, but it probably isn’t good for the people that you’re calling. So I’m just saying. Right. Okay. So yeah, it is lonely, join the [Bowick 00:51:28] world Slack channel. Lots of friendly people there. Okay, next question.
Paul: Hi Paul, thanks so much for this, very practical, I work from home quite often, but all now doing it all the time will be challenging. Any tips to help you stay motivated when you’re not feeling that great.
Marcus: Not feeling it, when you’re not feeling it.
Paul: Not feeling it. Yeah.
Marcus: Yeah. Don’t try too hard.
Paul: Yeah, absolutely. Stop working. Go do something else. I’m constantly amazed at this, right? So I write a lot. I have to write a lot as part of my job. I will sit there staring at that flashing cursor and wringing one sentence after another out of me like getting blood from a stone and it’s painful and I can spend a whole day writing a document. While other times when I just go, “Ah, screw it, this isn’t working.” And I’d go off and watch some game of Thrones or annoy my wife or whatever brings me pleasure and then it goes round and round in my head while I’m doing whatever that other thing is. And when I come back to do it, I blast through it in a couple of hours.
Paul: So that’s the best thing you can do, is if it’s not there, if the muse is not taking you, go and do something else. You’re not a machine, you’re a human being, you know? Anyway, I don’t think there’s a lot to add to that really, is there?
Marcus: Nope.
Paul: Okay. Right. We’d love to hear what you have to say to an agency that doesn’t believe or endorse practice working from home these days. You haven’t got any choice. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are lots of company, lots of people that, companies that don’t get it, and I think a lot of it comes down to trust. And that is why this is quite a good situation, if you can possibly call this a good situation, because it’s forcing companies to try this.
Marcus: There’s very little traffic on the roads. That’s one of the pluses of the Corona virus, I can’t think of any others.
Paul: Exactly. Yeah. There aren’t many. Yeah. Well, apparently it’s made a big difference in pollution.
Paul: Yeah, well apparently it’s made a big difference in pollution as well because everybody’s just staying home. So yeah, basically I think use this as a proof of concept to them, show them that it works and again, I think it goes back to that over-communicating, keep telling them what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and how you’re get on and that kind of stuff. And it will give them confidence. Because it’s fear, right? The only reason that people don’t want you to work from home is because they’re afraid. They’re out of control if you work from home. So show them, give them that sense of control with constant communication and show them that it’s not all going to go horribly wrong.
Paul: Are you going to talk about freelancers, self employed, small businesses and how to protect themselves financially? That’s from Andy Clark. That is a really good one, Andy, and this is a difficult one because the trouble is, we’re right in the middle of it now, so it’s almost too late to protect yourself against it.
Paul: This all comes back to really two things. One is, I’ve been quite shocked at how quickly many businesses have got themselves into trouble. That it’s been, what two weeks in the U K of disruption. And you’ve already got people talking about laying off staff and closing down and all this kind of stuff. If your business is that close to the edge financially the whole time, then you’re taking too much out of your business. You need a good… And this I learned from Chris Scott, who’s the guy that we founded head scape with. And he is a very insistent of having a war chest of savings behind you. And I’m so grateful to him for that because, I know I don’t have to panic for a few months. Because my work’s dried up as well, like everybody’s has. And that’s a scary situation to be in.
Paul: But of course it’s too late now cause we’re in the middle of it. The other thing I think that’s very important in this kind of situation is to have a robust method of winning work. And again, I don’t think many small freelancers or agencies have that robust way of winning work. They don’t have a sales pipeline. They’re not actively pursuing new work on an ongoing basis. And I think they’re going to suffer from that. At least I can sit down and I’ve got a whole list of ways that I can try and find work out there. Because I’m not reliant on just waiting for that work to walk through the door. And I think, as we come out the other side of this, we need to remember this and adapt accordingly because I think it’s going to be a very tough time.
Paul: In terms of what you can do in the immediate, I think you need to reevaluate what it is you’re offering and who you’re offering it to. So I think, for example, there are some sectors you can pretty much forget at that moment. There’s no point, if you specialize in restaurant websites, forget it. So you’re going to need to pivot and you’re going to need to look at something else.
Marcus: Toilet roll manufacturers on the other hand.
Paul: Exactly. Yeah. And I think also, you can also look at your own skillset and how you present that and what you can bring to people. It might be that, okay, at the moment, websites are not in demand, but a lot of people need help getting their intranet sorted because now everybody’s working remotely and can’t just ask one another. I just made that up. I don’t know if that’s the case, but you get the idea.
Paul: If you go to my homepage at the moment on my website, you’ll see a big banner basically saying, I’ve been remote working for 18 years. I’ve homeschooled, I’ve run and advised remote teams. If you’re struggling with remote teams, get in touch and I can do mentorship. So, that’s me adapting to the current reality. And you have to do that kind of thing. You have to ask yourself, well, how can I reposition myself in the light of where things are. So it’s pivoting. Paul’s just talked about it in the chat room. You’ve got to pivot what you do.
Paul: So, yeah, but it’s difficult. It is difficult. I’m cutting anything superfluous out of my budget at the moment. So I’m stopping my pension just temporarily. Then there’s obviously, you can talk to people, like you can get rebates in terms of business rent if you’ve got that. You can talk to your landlords and various other people. But I’m not a financial expert so I can’t really advise too much on that. Marcus, you got anything to add on that one?
Marcus: I was just going to say that was fantastic. I was expecting much less Paul. No, this is really good advice. And I think if you run a business, I mean this isn’t particularly relevant to us because we all can carry on working. That’s the point of this conversation. We’re working from home. But if, I don’t know, if I had a restaurant, I’d probably just shut up shop and go to the beach for three months. I wouldn’t have any money to spend when I got there. But do know what I mean. Don’t flog a dead horse. Cut costs.
Paul: Yeah, but you say that, cut costs is definitely, but you say that about restaurants. But then I’ve seen a number of restaurants that have gone, ah ha we have got a supply chain-
Marcus: Home delivery.
Paul: Yeah we can start doing home delivery, we can start doing groceries and stuff like that. So they pivoted-
Marcus: I could have picked a different example. But-
Paul: Hotels it’s quite a difficult one.
Marcus: Yeah. Be realistic I suppose is what I’m saying.
Paul: Yeah, absolutely.
Marcus: And accepting and yeah… Move on. Next.
Paul: Yes, absolutely. Okay.
Marcus: Time for another [crosstalk 01:00:40].
Paul: Got next? Oh yes. Good. Thank you for reminding me. Yes. And then we’ll another sponsor and then we’ll do the last few questions and wrap things up. So the next sponsor is Aurelius. Aurelius actually is a very good tool for the subject of remote working because it’s actually a tool that helps you organize, manage, your user research that you’re doing. So we take loads of notes, don’t when we do user research and they end up everywhere.
Paul: And so basically Aurelius is a repository where you can bring all of that information together. You can draw out some key insights and then you can use it to communicate with colleagues and clients and your team what the findings were. So it’s a single platform for organizing, sharing and interpreting your user research, and moving you really from that kind of raw data to key insights that communicate with colleagues. It’s obviously searchable. You can share your research with other people across your team and organization. Go and find out more about them at Aurelius lab.com so that’s A. U. R. E. L. I. U. S. Lab.com. Okay, if anyone has got any advice on completely remote design sprints, I would appreciate it. I’m planning one at the moment. That’s Michelle’s question from earlier. The answer is probably don’t do it. Is where I’m currently at. Don’t try and run it as a design sprint tool.
Paul: Instead, as I said earlier, take a step back and look at what the outcomes of a design sprint are. What it is that you’re wanting to achieve from a design sprint, and then explore other ways of getting to that same goal using surveys, individual interviews, collaborative prototyping, etc.
Marcus: I have one thing to add to that, because I said it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done is, if you’re planning on doing, I don’t know, let’s say you were planning on doing two days of workshop, I would split that up into two hours a day for however long it takes. Don’t do any more than that.
Paul: Absolutely. And keep the team as small as possible as well.
Marcus: Oh, certainly yes. Because people just talk all over each other and…
Paul: It’s a nightmare.
Marcus: Drives me mad.
Paul: Absolutely is. So yeah, Michelle, I’ll be posting something out on Tuesday. So check that out. Okay. Hi Paul. We’re well equipped to work from home in the upcoming months. The productivity is good at the moment, but we won’t meet in person anytime soon. Any tips for keeping the team spirit and motivation up? I think we’ve kind of covered that a fair amount.
Marcus: Yep. We have.
Paul: Be silly. It’s about being stupid and irresponsible and doing dumb things and breaking all the rules like naughty schoolchildren. Because that’s what you can do at the moment. All the rules have been thrown out the window. So you can just be silly with people, tell them to do stupid things, let them wander off and do stuff. Just take off the constraints from them. Make it feel like… What do you want to do, I think is you want to make it feel like a snow day at school. Do you know that excitement that there is when you were at school and you were snowed out and you couldn’t go into school? And it was like hee hee! It’s got to be fun and games, and just keep it light, keep it silly and take the pressure off of people.
Paul: Any advice for people already noticing internet access issues? Slower to respond, some pages not loading at all. Yeah, this is a danger and this is where you get to feel really smug if you’re one of those people that actually optimized their website to make them not flipping massive. I’ve been banging on about this for frigging years about how pages have become so big. If you’d grown up on the internet that I grew up with, with 56k modems. You wouldn’t have a 9mb homepage to download. Long and the short of it, optimize your fricking site. Get rid of those 28 different fonts that you’re using. Optimize your images properly, use a CDN network, Blab, Blab, rant, rant, rant.
Marcus: As Chris Henderson once said, of another head scraper. He said, you might think your site’s responsive, but if it takes me 10 seconds to see it, then it isn’t.
Paul: Yeah, absolutely. And, I’m quite regularly on shitty internet as I traveled around the world in hotels and places like that. And a lot of people are and, yeah. Anyway. Nothing else to say on that. Okay. How do you determine if a potential employee manages distributed teams well?
Marcus: Sorry, I wasn’t listening. I was reading something else.
Paul: How do you determine if a potential employer, sorry, manages, distributed teams well? Ask them about how their teams work, how the teams operate, are there core hours? What tools do they use? Can I have a look at your slack channel? Things like that.
Marcus: Oh, I see, right, yeah. Sorry. I was looking to go somewhere. Yeah.
Paul: No, I think what it’s saying is, potentially if you’re considering moving to a company that does remote working. Have a look at… Dave has just said what I was about to say. Ask to chat to their team members, and talk to them about it, find out. So yeah, there’s that one. Okay. Last question. My company culture has allowed for working at home before, I enjoyed it especially when there’s loads of different work. But now working from home every day. I’m wondering for any tips for dealing with downtime when you haven’t got enough to keep people busy?
Paul: Give them time off, let them chill out, let them work on their own projects. Let them experiment. Don’t keep people busy just for the sake of it.
Marcus: Or redesign the company website.
Paul: Yeah, that’s always a good one. And this is where you need to… So we’re talking about, I asked for more questions, I followed up on this one earlier and they were saying that there’s just not enough projects. So, that’s the time when you do that strategic stuff. I don’t know whether this is an agency or an external one. But it’s where you do things like redesign your own website. It’s where you do things like create design systems, that means you’ll be more efficient later. It’s where you do things like putting your policies and procedures in place about how you operate.
Paul: You deal with your legacy code base, that’s time when you start doing your housekeeping stuff. And it’s also when you start looking at potentially pivoting and bringing different products or services to the market, in a very agile, hackathon kind of way. Could you try doing something different? It’s a time to experiment and a time to put in place good foundations. I think that’s about it. We’ve tired everybody out. Wonderful.
Paul: So Marcus, well I should explain for those of you that are in the room that haven’t listened to the podcast before, we always end with a crap joke. I don’t know why. It’s just a thing that we started doing many years ago. Marcus, what is our crap joke for the week?
Marcus: Today’s crap joke is from Laurel Barris who’s not in the room I note. Did you hear about the chameleon who couldn’t change color?
Paul: No. What about the chameleon that can’t change color?
Marcus: He had a reptile dysfunction.
Paul: That’s actually quite a good one. I quite like that one.
Marcus: There you go. See, sometimes they’re all right.
Paul: Yeah, they’re not too bad. Anyway, going back to just doing silly stuff. I think that perfectly demonstrates it.
Marcus: Sharing jobs and excellent way to do that.
Paul: It really is. We’ve got a whole channel dedicated to that and it helps so much. It really does. Okay. Thank you so much for joining us for this. Whether you’re joining live in the room, or whether you’ve joined via the podcast or the video replay. I hope you found it useful. I hope there was some tips in there and the thing I would say is, just try and enjoy it. Try and make the most of it, don’t focus on the problems of homeworking, but instead embrace the amazing freedom that it gives you to enjoy life a lot more and yeah, keep safe. And what am I supposed to say? Oh yes. Keep washing your hands or something, I don’t know. Public service announcements are not my thing. Anyway. Talk to you soon and goodbye.
