My Top 10 + 1 tips to work from home and use the technology work for you mindfully.
Hi, and welcome back to this humble Blog, first let me say something, this is my last post on this platform, for two reasons, first Medium charge the users and readers that follow me and read me often a monthly charge of 5€ (which look reasonable, there are writers that want to be paid for it and médium have to make business which is good for them and I respect) second because my purpose doing this are 2;
1) Help myself and learn everything I can by writing it down and «teaching» or writing what I’ve learnt trough my journey helps me to interiorize more the knowledge and fix the basics I my mind.
2) Help the more people want or need help, so charging them for that or make money with it it wasn’t my purpose.
So I will be putting my content on a new section on my site «My Blog» at https://angel-rivera.com writing my experiences for free, so you don’t have to pay for it. And maybe uploading it here just in case someone one to pay for it, and I will donate all the Money I earn writing here to https://bamadrid.org/ who I think they are doing a great job feeding homeless people or people are going trough hard times to have something to eat in these crazy times and period we are going trough. Said that let’s go to the subject of today.
Technology is the evil.
Well if you read me before I used to say that technology is not bad as they paint them, it’s just a tool, you can use it as a master to live better or you can be his slave and work for it and giant tech companies as google, Facebook, youtube, Instagram, WhatsApp or you name it, those companies just sell brands «your time and attention» so you can work for them for free «if the product is free the product is you» and just binge scrolling your free time while they make cash at making you watch ads just to resume (we can chat about that via DM or WhatsApp o in the comments below, and I can explain you the evil practice THEY USE TO MAKE MONEY WITH YOU, I’ve been working for advertising agencies or media company’s for more than 25 years and I know a bit about it). Or you can use it for your own benefit and made tech and giant technology company’s works for you, so let’s get into it deeper and go straight to the Tips.
Tip #1 Avoid as much as posible notifications.
Yes, this for me is the most critical tip on the list, and will save you a lot of time, just go to your settings (if you have Android I don’t know where the hell are, you know I hate Google) but in iOS you can go to settings, Notifications, and disable ALL, yes all, even the agenda, that will allows you to work without interruptions and trust me, nothing is more important than what you have planned to do, yo can keep your agenda notifications enabled on your desktop, so don’t forget going that important committee (we’ll talk about that later but just to have fun now, see this brilliant MEME), but trust me nothing is more important than your time, maybe your client is calling you, or emailed you, you can go later and give back all the missing calls, or batch time to respond email, only if the world is ending you should be able to respond otherwise everybody can wait 25 minutes, if not think about people waiting for COVID 19 check from government and are still alive (I don’t wanna kid with this I am really pissed off) but if that can wait everything else can wait isn’t it?
Tip #2 While you’re working keep your mobile phone far away from where you are.
Believe it or not those little «smart phones» and all the applications on it are designed to grab your attention to make money with it, so let’s control it and avoid having the cell phone in the place you’re working. Plus even if you think you’re multitask God you’re not, you can google it but every time you are distracted from the task you’re doing with a wasap, phone Call or Instagram new like on your picture in your vacations it’ll take 10 minutes for your mind to go back and remember what you were doing, so keep it away. Plus your little addicted to dopamine brain will be anxious for looking at it and see what’s going on in the world so you will be less productive and that little task that will takes you 10 minutes and the average time that people grab his phone in a day is 300 times, do the maths and calculate how long is gonna take you do the 10 minutes tasks if it takes you 10 minutes going back to it.
Tip #3 Don’t use your phone «to work».
Well this could sound radical, but don’t get me wrong, if you need to call to make your work of course use it, try to batch phone calls at a concrete time slot and do all of them continuously or if you have Alexa, Apple HomePod, Siri or whatever in you computer do the call from there, you don’t need to have your phone on your desk, I’ll keep it on my kitchen in don’t disturb mode and give back all the lost calls at the same hour late. And til now nobody has die or even me haven’t die yet so you can unless you’re a doctor attending heart attacks nothing is more important than you. Even your child gets sick at school he can wait 25 minutes, just take a break every 25 minutes and see who called you and decide if is really urgent & important give back the call.
Tip #4 Delete Facebook, Instagram, or social media apps of your mobile phone.
Yes, coming from me who use social media to do his job could sounds counterintuitive, but I don’t have the apps installed, and I have closed on my desktop and no email notifications at all, As I told you those apps are designed to sale hour time, so what I do is install them when I need to do something with them, do the thing, and delete it, it won’t take you long.
Tip #5 Sit down on a different place to work than you use to live.
If you can, try to differentiate your workplace at home from your living places, that will do 2 things for you:
- Set your mindset in a work mood when you get in, and makes you feel you’re working.
- Differentiate your free time and allows you to relax when your done.
So do yourself a favor and don’t do Zooms on your PJs in the living room or the bed even if you put the beach as a background wallpaper, for two reasons:
- Don’t look profesional and makes you look like you’re a freaking guy that has someone rapped on your garage instead a real and competent profesional.
- And second tells your brain when is on working mode and relax mode so you won’t get crazy as I was, trust me if you want but those was one of the things that lead me to depression during the lockdown in March.
Tip #6 Create a video Zoom Loop as background image to save time and be more productive.
This one is one of my favourites tricks, and cheap and easy to do, just record yourself looking at the camera of your desktop for 2 or 3 minutes, take it and edit it with iMovie or any video free editing software to make a loop most of free editing video software have that functionality. Once you have it done just upload to Zoom or you Video Call software as a Background and you’re done, but what for, easy:
Have you ever have one of those meetings when you don’t know how end up there and spend the whole hour just sitting there and thinking about doing the laundry? (Hey boss not your meetings I’m talking just like an example) or a Commitee where all the things you do is look at the screen and listening to some one else? Sound familiar to you? So just do this:
- Put the video as a background.
- Put on your Bluetooth earphones, go somewhere else to do something useful or more important.
- And if you listen your name on the earphones just answer, but most of the time you don’t ever hear your name.
I’m talking about those meetings you don’t know how you end up there or commitees you just have to listen obviously, if you have to participate that’s another question.
(*) I let you here an example of one of mines but you can do different version with different clothes, styles, and situations to fit in the meeting of course.
Tip #7 Block your corporate agenda (if you can YES YOU CAN) for periods of producing instead being on unproductive meetings.
This is what I do and it works for me so you can try it, I’ve blocked time slots to do things important because otherwise everybody can get into your agenda and screw your day with his or her priorities, period, so for example I’ve blocked some slots here and there to do presentations, write docs, or even having lunch, and at 19:00 my agenda is blocked so if you want to stress me with your urgent things you can’t, and if you really need me at lunch time or lately at the evening you have to call me and have to explain me why that’s so important and urgent and I’ll decide if it’s it or not, period, and if it’s my boss well you know dear boss I’m always ready to spend my free time talking to you about that funny proposal we have to do for Friday and is still Monday afternoon, you know I love u 😍.
Tip #8 Batch similar task on your agenda and to do list.
As I said previously even if you think you’re multitask god no you’re NOT so for me works better to batch similar tasks at my to do list to do it sequentially, so just an example I make Clients Calls on Friday morning all in a row, because they are more relaxed and in a good mood, or write presentations or proposals all together so that doesn’t interrupt my flow and if I’m in writing mode I write, calling or selling mode it just repeat and repeat, and makes my workflow more productive, for example first time in the morning my mind is more fresh so I have all the creative writing staff batched for that time. But you have to find your better moments depending on your energy, mood and biorhythm and try to adapt it, you’ll win a lot of time at least in my experience.
Tip #9 Schedule (now on COVID 19) virtual lunches, coffees or chill time with friends via Zoom.
Recently I’ve read some studies and reports on how working for home is burning people out and create a lot of social anxiety, so I’m trying to avoid that as I can, how? I lunch, have coffee, informal chats, or talking about non work things in zoom, yes sounds weird but at the office you relax sometime going to lunch with someone or go to the coffee machine to have an informal chat about something and now you’re alone home in PJs all day and that is driving people crazy, plus the serendipity that you used to have talking outside the office is lost due to covid 19 but doing this is helping me with those issues.
Tip #10 Establish a schedule at home for lunch, rest, chill out and your hobbies, exercise, playing piano, talk to your loving ones.
I wrote about this in tip #8 so I don’t want to extend myself. But you need to keep having the same life in the new normal and. It be working 18 hours a day, so depends on you but I will encourage you to do it.
One more thing – Never ever use WhatsApp for working groups!!!
Yes, it has becoming natural to use WhatsApp for working groups or project groups or whatever the heck groups, forget about it, you can use slack, Telegram, or whatever the tool you want, this will prevent you from mixing work mental mode with conversations with your spouse or family and makes a lot of confusion in your head and doesn’t let you time to relax so please keep your work communications on working communication apps and let the personal communication tools to do so.
And that’s all for today, I hope you enjoyed and if you can put some of them to work for you (YES YOU CAN, you’re the master of your agenda and not the crazy world around you) let me know via WhatsApp (I’ll give you my cellphone number via private message) DM or the comments below or write me an email to angelluis@me.com so we can chat :)
Best and mindfulness day at work today, and have fun.
