Well, you always wanted to be your own boss. How does it feel?
Working from home (for many of us) felt like we received a crash course in working for ourselves, or at least, managing ourselves.
What’s startling is the research that shows how we (now) think about this shift to working virtual.
We feel better about our work. With less in-person distractions we’re more focused. Our work is better prioritized. And we’ve grown accustomed to the virtual changes too. The minutiae of useless meetings and tiresome tasks have plummeted and we now feel that video conferencing and instant messaging platforms (like Slack) are actually a good substitute for in-person contact.
At least, that’s what the Harvard Business Review and Pew Research (and others) have revealed about our new work-from-anywhere revolution: it’s better for everyone all around.
But it has its challenges too.
When I started working from home after years of being chained to an office, I thought I would be elated at the prospect of finally being able to focus. Instead, I was s-t-r-e-s-s-e-d. I got off-task, I was easily distracted. I self-interrupted - a lot. I struggled with work that seemed to expand like the universe. And as many of you have discovered too, it’s not a do-what-you-want-when-you-want kind of experience. In this new world of being your own boss, you have to ruthlessly self-manage. If you don’t, that 40-50 hour work-week you once knew in-office will become your 60-70 hour work-week at-home.
We started this series about the Hybrid Workforce by discussing first that the virtual workforce is here to stay and then shared the three keys you need to make the work from home revolution work for you, plus, the three missing pieces you need to maximize your remote team. Today, we’re talking about you, how you manage yourself in this new environment and how self-management is part of the new self-care: the more attention we pay to it, the more productive, successful, and healthier we will be.
Now that we’re full-force into 2021, with a recovery from this depressed economy in our sight, and with the prospect of post-pandemic feeling imminent, the 2020 notion that we’re all just “doing what we can to survive” is fleeing past us. There is an electric energy in the air. Economists are predicting a new era of prosperity and in order to meet it with our full potential, we must be ready to take it on, full force, with all our talent, passion, and discipline.
Most particularly, discipline.
Because you probably learned a lot about yourself over the past year (probably far more about yourself than you really wanted to know, TBH). You’ve learned a lot about how you work, what works for you and what doesn’t. You’ve learned that being the boss of you takes some thinking, planning, discipline, and honest self-reflection. So, in that spirit, what would you tell your 1-year younger you about working from home that she would need to succeed in the future? What lessons have you learned that have not only changed the way you work today, but lessons you need to double down on as you shape your work moving forward?
One helpful tactic might be to make a shortlist of the key lessons you’ve learned and share them with anyone around you who is struggling. Share with a friend, a colleague, your boss, an employee. Use your list (or edit my list below) as a springboard for a discussion with your team. It’s a great way to help everyone admit the hard things, so we can improve and be the best version of ourselves moving forward. Here are …
The golden rule: Call it what you want: personal productivity, self-management, personal development, but no matter how productive you are, there’s more room for improvement.
Just because you live in a culture of always-on doesn’t mean you have to always be available. Available to all means effective to none.
Be ugly. Be mean. Be nasty, rude, and downright hateful about unnecessary interruptions.
Self-interruptions are your biggest enemy.
A few Slackisms: Slack is for teams; email is for clients.
Do you really need 100 Slack notifications a day? I mean, who designed your whack-a-mole world? Oh, that’s right, you did - kill those notifications.
The number of Slack groups you join will be in inverse proportion to your personal productivity.
Turn off, off, off social media notifications and useless desktop/cellphone alerts. (Unless you’re our social media manager, “hi Aly!”). You interrupt yourself enough, you don’t need help from a few hundred of your closest friends.
Do more deep work; less shallow work. The more deep work you do the more progress you’ll make and the more you’ll get paid. For this, see #10...
Me first; you second. Use calendar blocking for big projects. The calendar is your sacred space so use it to save your non-negotiables. Every Tue-Thu from 8AM-12 I block my calendar for big projects: articles, podcasts, presentations, prep for interviews, etc. It’s giving me the space to do what’s important first vs. getting swallowed by what everyone else thinks is urgent. Protect your schedule so you can do your best work. What are your “me first” projects you need to block? Client research? Prospecting?
Use a calendar link (we use Hubspot but you could use calendly) to avoid countless emails to schedule meetings. I send out my calendar link freely to people because, by calendar blocking, I’ve already committed myself to my most important projects first.
Shower, shave, (whatever your morning routine is) and dress for work like you’re going into the office. It’s not about appearance, it’s a ritual that creates a chain-link of habits that readies your mind to work - and it works. (Sorry, sweatpants). “We are limited by where our habits lead us,” writes James Clear, Atomic Habits.
Use laziness to your productive advantage. When doing deep, intense work like a big proposal or complex project, keep your phone away from arm’s reach. Psychologists call this a commitment device. Like that Snickers bar, w-a-y over there on the counter in the kitchen that’s calling to me sweetly right now ... I’ll just stay right here, thank you. Cause I’m too lazy to move from my desk right now.
Be more honest and open with your team when you need help, stop worrying about whether “you’re bothering them.” Unless you’re bothering them. ;-)
Work avoidance is real, particularly the bigger and more problematic the project. Self-select an accountability partner for any hard tasks or big projects that might need the additional push to help keep you on track. It’s not babysitting, it’s like swimming in the ocean with a buddy: everyone needs one.
Use a time-tracking app, like toggl or Timely, to track how and where you are spending your time (it’s easy). Don’t wait for your boss to ask you to track your time, do it yourself because you’ll learn a lot about yourself. This step sounds needless but it’s the most important thing I’ve learned to do to increase my productivity.
For pro users who already track your time: use your weekly report to self-manage your return on investment: Are you seeing a return based on the number of hours you spend per project?
Use a habit tracker (I use a simple spreadsheet) for projects you complete. Like losing weight, you need to be able to monitor your weekly, monthly progress.
Be a minimalist: Minimize the number of tech tools you use to get your job done and master them. Be relentlessly efficient.
Keep to a regularly ordered day. Invite yourself to lunch. Take more breaks. Step away from the screens. Create clear lines of work and not-work. This is hard. I’m writing this article at 7pm after being at this computer since 8:30 this morning. Working into the wee hours of night does not double your effectiveness, it diminishes your strength. The struggle is not just real - it’s a relentless battle.
Quit working when your brain quits working: Walk away from a project to let it breathe. Let it cool. Often, your biggest breakthroughs on a project will be when you’ve dropped it from your deathlike grip to let it simmer on the back-burner of your mind.
Set self-goals and stay curious. Create goals for yourself (not the same goals your boss creates for you). Invest in self-education during the work day. Why during the workday? Your brain is at full capacity and if you put it off until the evening, you won’t do it. That Snickers bar will eventually persuade your sweatpanted, highly interrupted self over to the couch to collapse and binge on Netflix.
Rock climbing. Flying in a commercial plane. Driving long distances. Floating in a canoe. Long-distance running.
They each have one thing in common: When you are occupied in any of those activities you can’t be anywhere else. 100% of your energy is focused. Work can be like that if you shape it that way. "Each person allocates his or her limited attention either by focusing it intentionally like a beam of energy … or by diffusing it in desultory, random movements. The shape and content of life depends on how attention has been used (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow).
2020 is behind us. 2021 is beginning to look like the year of our greatest opportunity.
The difference in our success moving forward is how we direct our attention today, how we manage ourselves, how we manifest our own dreams by our own hands.
Today’s a great day to begin building a better version of you.
What tips would you add to our list? Let us know and we’ll include your tip and give you a shout-out in our future ebook on Building the Hybrid Workforce!