You probably cannot even imagine it, right? But the truth is, remote work exists long before Covid-19 come to life. So, find out all the insights Luis has to share!
By now, most of you must be familiar with remote work. But the pandemic was a lot of people’s first exposure to remote work and some got lost on the way. Several employees don’t know what an actual remote work life looks like.
Watch the video to know how a non-pandemic remote work life looks like!
Luis:
What does a non-pandemic remote work life look like? Welcome ladies and gentlemen, I am Luis, and this is Virtual Coffee Chat with me, Luis. Will you join me for a sip? Mmm, lovely. Okay.
Most of you are probably familiar with remote work because you had to do it, right? In most cases, a lot of countries even mandated remote work for anyone who could do it. But since the pandemic was a lot of people’s first exposure to remote work, a lot of them don’t really know what the remote work-life, a normal remote work life looks like. I get that question because I’ve been working remotely for many years before the pandemic.
Well, here it is, what it looks like. Let me give you an example. Let me tell you a story. Now, I usually sleep pretty well. I’m a pretty good sleeper. My sleep hygiene is really good and I’m very lucky to have no problem sleeping whatsoever. Except when I do, occasionally once or twice a week, then it gets really, really, really hard to sleep. And I can sleep maybe three To four hours in a night over the course of a week or a couple of weeks.
Now, that happened to me recently. And what would usually happen when I didn’t have a remote job was I would either call in sick or I would go because I couldn’t call in sick. And I would drag myself like a zombie over the entire day, not doing my best work if I am to be honest.
Now, here’s what happens now. Here’s what happened just recently. First of all, I managed to sleep in a little bit because I didn’t have any appointments in the morning. Obviously, I did have appointments in the morning, I’d do the professional thing and attend them. But I could sleep, so I tried to sleep in a little bit. Though when I’m having my sleep crisis, I can’t even sleep in that easily.
But anyway, so that happened. And then I got up and I did some exercise and I started to work working. And instead of having to choose between a full day of shoddy work and taking a day off, I had the flexibility to work as much as I felt I could do while doing a good job. I could orient my priorities. I, obviously, I communicated with the people that work with me or with the people that I report to, saying, “I had a really bad night’s sleep, et cetera, so I’m going to be around obviously online. I’m going to be doing some stuff here and there, but don’t expect me to be as responsive as I usually am in some things that I need to deliver maybe a bit late.”
So, yeah, and then I worked exactly as much as I felt like I could work, and then I rested the bit and I did some work. And at the end of the day, the net result was much better than either of the previous options. That’s one way in what it looks like to work from home not during a pandemic, right?
The other thing is that you can usually organize your schedule. Most remote work-friendly companies are flexible. Let’s say that it’s a lovely day outside. I happened to live in a town where there’s a beach. I can walk to the beach. And let’s say that it’s a lovely day outside on a Thursday afternoon. Again, assuming I don’t have any scheduled appointments, which I’m not going to shuffle around merely for leisure, but assuming that I don’t have those, I’ll just tell people in Slack, “Hey guys, today I’m going to your shift my work schedule a little bit. I’m going to be working at night, slightly before and then a bit after dinner. And I’m not going to be around during the afternoon. Is this okay with everyone? Is everyone not relying on me this afternoon?”
And if that’s the case, look, me and my wife will pack our stuff and we’ll have a walk to the beach and we’ll spend some hours there just lunching. I’m not doing less hours of work, I’m just optimizing the hours of work that I do in regards to all the other options that I have to live a healthy and balanced life. That’s another way that working from home looks like.
Here’s a third way, perhaps the most important for you work-minded people is that, and again this depends on the business, but most companies are catching up. I can just unplug, right? If someone asks me for some copy, let’s say that the VP of the place I work for of my company asks me for some copy, it’s urgent, it needs to be done, and he really liked me to be the one to do it. Okay, well, let me see what I can do, here’s what what I’ll do. I see that I don’t have any appointments. I’ll block these four hours of time to work on that, and I’ll be offline. And then I’ll just be a guy writing some marketing copy in his living room or in his office, and there will be nothing around to distract me unless my cat starts a cat fight.
That’s pretty good. If you have the ability to talk with the people in your company, in your business, to negotiate those and no-distraction blocks of time, then you can actually execute on them, right, when you’re working from home. Something that wouldn’t happen in an office. Even if you told everyone, even if you put your headphones on and you put the do-not-disturb sign on your cubicle and you warn everyone that you are not to be disturbed for the next four hours, yeah, something would still distract you, even if it was just the ambient noise. That’s the situation.
Those are three examples of what it feels like to work from home, not during the pandemic, right. It’s pretty great, I’ll tell you. In any case, these were my little insights here in Virtual Coffee Chat with Luis. If you enjoyed them, you can find more insights, guides, news about remote work, everything that you need to know about remote work at thinkremote.com. And, of course, if you enjoy these videos, please consider subscribing, press like, and the best thing you can do is share. Sharing is caring. Thanks and see you tomorrow.
