Remote work — are you doing it right?
Now that you are working from home, you save time you used to spend on the commute, as a result, you should now be having anywhere from an hour to 2 hours extra every day for doing things you love to do outside work — playing an instrument, help your kid with school, painting, photography…whatever it was that you wanted to do. But, is it the reality? Do you have more leisure time? Going by what I hear from everyone I spoke to during the lockdown, it is just the opposite. The leisure time has gone down, and they are swamped with work. Instead of having a couple of hours more, they are starting earlier than they used to and continue working till much later. “We used to have time for tea breaks, have a chat at the desk of a colleague, had our lunch peacefully, but now we don’t have time for this anymore, more often than not, I am quickly grabbing my lunch during a call” is what a colleague told me.
So why it so? Why does the time seem to defy the laws of nature? Why do we have less leisure time even when we have taken away the time required for commute and, in some cases, a few other activities as well?
Before we find the answer to that, lets first see how we humans relate to things and make connections. What is the icon for an email? An envelope, right? Why? We are still thinking about the old way of sending a message.
The teams that have started working remotely due to the pandemic are still working as if they are in office. They are still trying to stick to the 9–5 workday. They still keep scheduling meetings for the entire team to discuss things that can be done easily by adopting communication tools other than a phone or a conference call. You can be unintrusive and save the time of the entire team as well.
Everyone I know is complaining about all the extra calls they have to attend. “People keep scheduling calls. The entire day is wasted in calls and I have to work at night” was a fairly common complaint.
So how can we work remotely effectively?
You can start with:
Working with a 24 hour day instead of an 8 hour day - Your team’s day doesn’t have to start at 9 and end at 5, give them the freedom to choose the time that works for them. Some have young kids studying remotely and need to help them, some have to do chores around the house during the day. Allow your team members to pick chunks of time to work when they can be more productive and free from distractions.
Skip that meeting - You don’t need to assemble the entire team every day, think about which communication you can shift to other communication channels and allow your team to have undisturbed work time. This will increase their productivity as well.
Also, watch “Why work doesn’t happen at work?” by Jason Fried — a pioneer in remote working. Don’t forget to check out the sketchnote I did of his TED talk.