Focused - 96: Working from Home

Episode Date: March 31, 2020

Mike and David consider keeping your focus while working from home.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks and joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hi, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? Good. You know, the world is going through this pandemic and we decided that we're going to interrupt our usual programming today to do a show about working from home. That's suddenly something a lot of people are thinking about.

And how can you do that focused? So we thought that would be a good topic for a show. Absolutely. Although the overwhelmed series definitely would be applicable too. So we'll get back to that one shortly. But I like this idea of recording an episode on working from home. I know a lot of people are doing this. I know you've been doing it for a while. I've been doing it maybe not as long as you, but we've learned a few things. And I feel like this is one of the things that people are being forced to do right now. And it can be really difficult if you don't know where to start.

So hopefully for Focus listeners, we can make the path forward. If you're not used to this, a little bit more clear. Yeah, I actually talked about this episode on this week's Mac Power Users that dropped a few days ago. So if you're coming over from Mac Power Users, welcome to Focus.

We're really happy to have you here. I'd recommend going back and listening to some of the old catalog. And just to return the favor, Mac Power Users, next week we'll be doing an episode on working from home from a technology standpoint. We're going to be focused on the best apps and online solutions. So between all of the Sparky podcasts, we're going to have all of your work from home needs covered. Sounds good. With that in mind, let's talk a little bit about working from home because there's a lot of ways you do it quite often. I mean, historically, the way you decide

to work from home is something that you do with some intentionality. You know, you make a new business or decide that, you know, you want to make the choice to work from home. The interesting thing about this episode is it comes at a time when a lot of people have not made the choice to work at home, and yet they are working at home. And that is a completely, you know, different kettle of fish. Yep, exactly. So there's a lot of stuff in the back catalog where we talked about working from home and making the leap to being independent, which is kind of what I think a lot of people used to think of when they thought working from home.

But now we all find ourselves in this position where if we are still working, we're forced to do it from home. So how do we do this without any sort of preparation just being thrown into the fire, basically? How do we figure out how to be productive? Yeah, and a different angle, this is one we've never covered on this show, is that there's a lot of people working from home that are parts of very large companies. And, you know, my wife works for Disney, and that's a big company. But suddenly, her whole department is working from home. And that's a whole different set of challenges as well.

And you can do this. And I know a lot of people are kind of nervous about it or unhappy about it. In fact, most of the people I talk to who have been forced to work at home in the last few weeks are unhappy about it. Which is funny for me, because I'm thinking, man, I love it so much. I'm like, man, aren't you just loving this? And they're like, no, I like going to my office and, you know, having coffee with my coworkers and sitting down in meetings. So not everybody thinks the way I do, but the, but, you know, so, you know, there's a lot of people listening to the show with that mindset where this isn't something they particularly want to do.

But honestly, you can do this and you can master it. And the goal of today's show is to kind of give you a focused perspective on how to work from home. As Mike was saying, I worked in an office for 22 years. I put on my necktie and went to the office every day. Now I've been home for five years. We just talked about that last week's episode. However, I would add to that. Now I've been working from home for two weeks with where I am not the only person working from home. My house has turned into a place of business. We have a high school student doing full-time online learning. We have a college

student doing full-time online learning plus a job we have one disney administration person doing working from home and then we have one nerd slash lawyer slash whatever it is that i do uh and we're all working in a i think it's like a 1500 square foot home so suddenly working from home can also mean that you work with other you have co-workers. Right. Plus a furry one that we talked about last time. Oh yeah. Plus a puppy. 1500 square. Yeah. 1500 square feet. It's kind of hard for me to wrap my head around that because I'm in the Midwest and I know real estate markets are very different, but we kind of chose our, the house that we have currently because it's got a big open basement, which part of it is finished off. Part of it is not. The other part of that is basically the playroom, but it's got a big open basement, which part of it is finished off. Part of it is not. The

other part of that is basically the playroom. But it's kind of critical, especially now for my wife and I to be able to say, okay, everybody just go in the basement and play for a while. Yeah. Can't do that when you don't have the space to do that and force constraints. One of the things we'll talk about in the episode is my studio now doubles as a bedroom for someone. So it's, uh, you know, this is stuff we have to deal with. And, uh, unfortunately, California, we have great weather, but our houses are small.

Well, not all of them are small, but mine is small. Um, but either way, uh, Mike, just talk a little, why don't we, you know, how long have you been working at home and when did you make the transition? Well, I started working from home, generally speaking, probably about five or six years ago. I don't remember exactly when it was because I was doing some side stuff for places like Asian Efficiency and the suite setup before I went full time with Asian Efficiency. That was kind of when I

officially started working from home. But I use the term working from home loosely because it was almost never from home. It was usually from a coffee shop, which right now is not an option. So it's been a little bit of a transition for me. It's been about a year and a half since I have had an office space at home that has been suited to working from home. And I'm pretty privileged in that, that I have this separate office space where I can close the door and record a podcast like this. I know not everybody is able to do that sort of thing, but that was really the tipping point for me to being able to work from home. So working from home as everybody else is thinking about it right now where you cannot leave your house, probably about a year and a half. But even that, like I have a membership at a co-working space, I would go work from a

coffee shop still. I like getting out of the house. And so this has been a little bit rough for me knowing that this is the only place that I can go to get things done. I used to use CPG. Gray and Mike Hurley talked about this on an old episode of Cortex, where Gray would kind of like go from different spots around the city and just changing the context was kind of gave him a mental reset, then he could start working on something again. And I kind of embraced that ideal. And that's been taken away from me now. So got to figure out my own, own new normal here. But officially to formally answer your question, I've had this space where I've been working from home for about a year and a half. I agree a hundred percent. I mean, that is one of the challenges I'm facing. And this episode really is, I'd like to think is for everybody who's

working from home. They feel they want to, and people are kind of forced to, but that creates a new limitation. Like I, I love to get on my bike and go to the park and to the Starbucks and to other places to do work occasionally. And that's not an option for me right now. So I guess we, we just have to deal, learn to deal with that. And, and that's all the more reason to try and figure out a way to bring kind of a focused mentality to this. And, you know, hitting the greatest hits of focus. I think that habits and rituals, uh, when you suddenly find yourself, uh, repotted for your work, even though you've got the same job, but you're working from a

different location, this I think should be fundamental on your mind is, okay, no longer do I get up and do the same thing, you know, get dressed, go to the parking structure, go in, grab my coffee, because all this has changed. So your habits are changing whether you like it or not. So why don't you bring some intentionality to this game? Absolutely. And that was a moment of clarity that I had early on in this. Wisconsin, where I am, we've kind of had these different waves where officially now non-essential businesses are closed. So everybody is staying home. But it was about a week. Every couple of days, they took it a little bit further. You could see this coming. And when I saw that stuff starting to happen, I realized that I could get upset about the things that were being taken away from me, the freedoms that I had and relied on to do

my work. Or I could just learn to roll with the punches, recognize that this is the new normal. And it was very therapeutic for me when I started to realize that I have an opportunity now to rewrite a lot of the habits and the routines that we have. And yes, things are different, and we don't have all of the options that we used to have. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's more of an opportunity, and that word maybe gets overused, but I really do think there is a positive side to this. Like, one of the things that we've started to do, I have this curriculum. It's like a Bible study curriculum that I've been meaning to go through

with my boys. So now we are all in the same place. We have all of our time together. So we started doing man school, And we do that together every other day. And that's something that wouldn't have happened a couple of weeks ago, if we just would have tried to squeeze it in as one more thing amidst the busyness of the day to day routine. I talked a little bit about this, Sean Blanca and I and the rest of the team over at the Sweet Setup did a webinar a couple of days ago ago where we talked about a lot of this stuff. And that was one of the things that I shared there too, was that you need to recognize that this isn't necessarily a bad thing. I mean, yeah, the stuff that's happening around us in the world is

not great, but you being forced to create a new normal, that's actually a good thing. A lot of the distractions and the things that have prevented you from creating the routines and the habits that maybe you've wanted to for a long time have now been removed and you've got a blank canvas to work with. I think about the concept of margin and everybody that I talk to about is like, oh, that sounds great. I know I need more margin, but I just don't know when I'm going to get it. Well, now you've got it. And what are you going to do with it? I think that's a very important mindset because not only does it help set the course for where you're going to go, but it can also help calm you down because instead of just reacting to the things that

are happening all around you, it gives you a little bit of a sense of control. Yeah, I can't control whether things are going to be open or I'm going to be able to go places, but I can control the things that I'm going to allow into my day-to-day life to a certain degree. You know, we'll talk about distractions, interruptions here in a little bit, but I think that's, that's been something that's been really helpful for me. Yeah, I think that the analogy I was using is, you know, when you go to work, making change in your routine is like turning a battleship. So often, it requires approval of other people, or even cooperation of other people, like if you, you know, and it's just really hard to initiate that kind of change or that habit or ritual change. But when you're working from home, you're like a speedboat.

You can turn on a dime. And this is a great opportunity for you. And as we release the show, a lot of you have only been home a week or two. It's not too late, right? Pay attention to what's working and what's not and start being intentional about these new habits you create while you're doing this. And I think it can really make a difference. Yeah, it can be a positive thing because we know, well, we hope that this is only a temporary thing, that this will pass at some point in the future, hopefully near future. And the things that you do

now are going to have a ripple effect when things go back to normal. If you can establish the positive habits that you want now, you will be much more likely to stick with those and those will be very helpful in getting you the type of life that you want to live once things open up again. The whole idea of forced constraints, you know, everything, all of the options that we had have been limited. But what we have to work with doesn't mean that we can't start creating the positive change that you want to see in your life. And you're not going to see it immediately. It's going to take some time. So in essence, you've got this breeding ground, basically, where you're going to reproduce certain things. And I just want to challenge people to be intentional about that. Because

what you do now is going to affect when things go back to normal. And if you're intentional about it, that can be a really good thing because now you've got all the essential ingredients you need to design the habits that you've always wanted to have. Yeah. And we've talked about this in the past on the show, but I just want to state it again. You are always making habits. It's not something that becomes static. Maybe the habit is that you sleep until 10, you don't comb your hair, and you don't start working until 2 p.m. I mean, but that is a habit that you're creating when you do it two days in a row. So if you're working from home,

habits are going to happen. Bring the intentionality game. Think about it in advance. Plan your day of the night before if you can. And then see if you can stick to it and you will feel so much better. I think you can do this. In fact, I don't think. I know you can do this. Yep. The two things you got to be aware of, I think, the essential ingredients for creating these habits is you need the time to create them, which a lot of people have now.

If you had an hour-long commute, that has been removed. And you can use that hour for something else. But then on the other side of that, you've also got the distractions. You've got the interruptions. And that's where a lot of the thought and design of your home workspace can help. And there are certain things that you cannot eliminate. And I think back to Chris Bailey in the book Hyperfocus, he's got that two by two grid. I think we talked about that when we had him on the show, like the different types of distractions and interruptions. And there's things that are fun and are not fun. And there's things that you can control and things you can't control. So if it's something like if you're

working from home with kids, like my like I am, and I didn't realize how much I needed or I relied on that space where I knew my family was going to be out of the house, so that's the time to record the podcast or hop on the call or whatever. If they're not here, they can't interrupt me. That's not an option anymore. But we can do things to limit the interruptions. There are things that we can control, systems that we can create, like we've got a hue light at the top of the basement stairs that I turn red when I'm recording and people open the door now, they see that, they know we can't go downstairs or only in an emergency or we can go downstairs and bang on dad's office door. But if they are going to do that in the middle of a call

or whatever, I really can't control that. But when it happens, I've got a couple different ways that I can react to it. I can get upset that something has happened, or I can roll with it. And what I've found working from home is for the stuff, not what we're doing right now, but if I'm writing, for example, and I'm in the zone and I get interrupted, I can what we're doing right now, but if I'm writing, for example, and I'm in the zone and I get interrupted, I can be upset that I got interrupted or I could just roll with it. We could go play ping pong or whatever my kid wanted me to do. And then I can come back and I can write. And we've taken that moment to make a moment, to make a memory, whatever. Yeah, it interrupted my work. But the truth of the matter is that it's not going to be

business as normal. We have to kind of find the new normal. And that's going to have to be okay. But the distractions and the interruptions, I guess the thing for me is not to get upset that it happened. To just roll with them to recognize there's nothing that I could have done about this. So there's no use getting all upset about it. That's just going to make it harder to get back and do my work. Let's just make the best of what we've got because we're all in here together and let's just do what we can. That's the Buddhism second arrow parable. You know, every time there's two arrows, there's the one that someone else shoots at you. And there's the one that you shoot at yourself. And this is a great time to, uh, catch yourself with that second arrow. You know, the kid interrupts you and then

you go off the handle and then that's your second arrow and you're still not getting your work done and you're just making your kid scared. Uh. So just bring some intentionality. Think about this. And man, planning is just so important now. Yep, definitely. Let's talk about space a little bit. So you've got your dedicated office space. Not everybody does, especially people who suddenly find themselves working from home unexpectedly. And I had dedicated office space.

Now I don't. Or I guess I could say I do several hours a day, but not whenever I want it. But what is the ideal situation? Like Mike said, you want a place where you can close the door so you can go in there and work in peace. But if you find yourself suddenly home, I don't think you need a big room, right? No, I don't think you do. And you probably don't even need a door to close. I think that's ideal. But if you don't have a door to close, you're in the same situation as everybody else who has to work in a shared office space. And there's things that you

can do. I remember talking to Curtis McHale and he told me that he used to have these big pink over ear headphones that he would wear in his shared office space. And most of the time that he had them on, he wasn't listening to anything. It was just a visual cue for everybody who was going to interrupt him to go away. And they come and they talk to him and he pretends he can't hear him, even though there's nothing going through the headphones. But it's a visual indicator that you absolutely cannot miss. And so you can do things like that. I know people, and I actually used to do this myself, where when I had the headphones on, the unwritten rule was, as long as the headphones are on, you can't interrupt me while I was working from the couch or wherever on something when I didn't have a space to call my own several

years ago. But having a spot to make your own is important. So it doesn't have to be a big space. Just make sure that you can partition it off some way. Some people get creative with this. I know Rosemary Orchard has shared that she's kind of in flux right now and her workspace is in a closet. Probably not ideal. You probably would prefer to have something by a window or at least get some airflow in there. But maybe if you find yourself in a shared space, consider partitioning the room, rearrange

some furniture, put the bookcase in the middle as a divider or something like that, just so you can carve out a little bit of space where you can limit at least the visual distractions. we took the time to clear out the space so I would have something that I felt comfortable in. And that is absolutely doable. I think the key term here is the ability to get work privacy when you need it. I was just thinking as you were talking, my wife and I spent the morning working together at the kitchen table. And I'm on an iPad at one end and she's on her laptop at the other end. She did a conference call. I sat there and worked quietly on some documents. And it was just fine. But then I had a client call. And because everything I do is privileged, I had to go to an empty room in the house to handle the call.

But you can work around this stuff. Yeah, you just got to recognize what the – it's not just you anymore. So it's not just what you like you have to balance that with the other people that are going to be in the space for example you're probably not bringing a bluetooth click keyboard to the kitchen table while your wife is on on the call yeah exactly and and that's for some people maybe that's maybe that's a deal breaker maybe that is a really big deal but for a lot of people it, well, I would prefer a clicky keyboard. I've got a clicky keyboard right here at my desk in my office. But I don't need it to get my work done. Maybe I feel like I'm a little bit more productive or I can crank out more words when I am at this particular keyboard. But that's a trade

off that I'm going to have to make and I'm willing to make, honestly. So figure out what are the trade offs that you're willing to make there. I'm curious, though, I want to go back to the discussion of your home office and how you handle who's using it when. Do you have a shared calendar? We've done that with the co-working space that I'm at where we have a conference room and people book that using a shared Google calendar. Or do you just tell people, hey, I need to use it from this time to this time to record a podcast, so stay out of there? Or what sort of system have you landed on? You know, it's funny you ask that because this problem was solved by my daughters. So we go to Hawaii every like three or four years and we have a timeshare. We're part of that Disney thing. And they have a

notice there called the daily EVA. It's I-W-A in Hawaiian. And it's like the news of the day. And so my daughter the other day gets her computer and says, dad, we need a daily EVA. I'm like, what do you mean? And she's like, well, we have to figure out who needs what when, because like I said, Daisy is on multiple video calls a day with her work. My kids are taking classes online and doing homework and taking tests. And I am recording podcasts and working on screencasts. So we've all got these times that we need. Oh, and we have a puppy.

So we've got all this stuff going on. And I was thinking, this is like the Schmitz family. We're having a meeting here and we're planning the day. And so we actually have on the refrigerator a schedule, and it's been working out really well. And so everybody's got times they need to be certain places, like they need an empty room to do a class, or I need the studio to record a podcast.

And it's actually, I mean, we're only a week into it, but it's been working out remarkably well for us. Nice. Yeah, I think the communication may be different for different people, but communicating who needs what when is going to be a vital piece to making this work if you have multiple people

that you're sharing your space with and sharing resources with. I think another thing that people maybe don't think about instead of just like a quiet place to take a call, if you have limited internet, you have to budget that in essence too. I know somebody nearby who I invited them. He's in my small group at my church and we've been trying to communicate via Zoom every week because we can't be in person. And I found out that he lives out in the country and they have a cap on his internet bandwidth. And with the kids being home from school, they are using all of his internet for the things that they have to do for school. So there's nothing

left over for him to join our video calls. But even if you have an unlimited bandwidth cap, I try to do something with my family where when they know that I'm going to be recording a podcast or specifically a webinar, anything video related, that they're not going to be trying to stream a movie or do a bunch of stuff that's going to tax the internet that we have. We have fairly decent internet here where it's generally not a problem, but I know that that is a system that's being taxed right now because everybody's working from home and everybody's trying to use the infrastructure that's in place where it wasn't needed to be, it wasn't needed at those time periods previously. Yeah. I think that, I mean, communication, walk through it, you know, make those plans. So much of this, I think, comes down to planning.

If you're working from home, maybe a good use of your commute time is planning. In fact, let's talk about that for a minute. You mentioned earlier, a lot of people are going to get that commute time back. Maybe it's 30 minutes if you're in California. Maybe it's an hour. What are you going to do with that time? Let's throw out some ideas. I first nominate planning. Spend the time that you would spend commuting planning your day.

I like that. I think that that is something that would provide benefit and structure throughout the rest of your day. And it doesn't have to take a long time. For me, it's literally just writing the list at the beginning of the day. Usually the night before, I'm planning out everything that is going to be happening throughout the day, but haven't had as much need for that given the current set of circumstances because it's no longer me being in a certain location to do something. It's going to be here. So it's really just managing the tasks themselves instead of the additional locations and who's got to be at piano lessons and who's got to take so

and so to soccer practice. That's not a factor anymore. Bal balanced with carving out the silence and I mentioned managing the internet and things like that. But just five minutes at the beginning of the day where you are jotting down a couple of the most important things that you want to do in a given day, that would be the place to start. And I would say keep it small. Pick three to five things. I try to limit mine to five things. And if I get done with those and I have more time and more bandwidth, more mental energy that I can go ahead and start on the next thing on the list. But by keeping it small, I'm setting myself up for success. And I think if you're new to this, especially it's important that you get a few wins under your belt.

Yeah. And I do think that, like Mike said, this planning we're talking about doesn't need to be a big deal you know you just take some time plan out what you want to do but also like the sparks household plan your availability and where you're going to do it i do think a big challenge that we have right now is it's not just working from home it's working from home with other people that are working from home and you have to take that into Yep. So let's say you've got commute time there and back. Maybe you can get the planning done in the time it would take you to drive home from work. In the morning, you'd have a commute time that you're getting back as well. If you're not getting enough sleep, sleep in a little bit. It's okay. I think that this idea that you have to wake up at five to be productive is just complete nonsense.

I think you need to get enough sleep to be productive, not wake up at five. So, you know, figure out what enough sleep is for you. And for most people, that's about eight hours, not six. And wake up on time to do that. Or maybe use that commute time in the morning to go on, do some exercise. I know that there's limited places you can even do exercise now,

but, you know, figure it out. Go on TV. There's a great game for the Nintendo Switch that comes with like a bow and arrow thing and you run. We've been doing that. That's been kind of fun. But, you know, there's a lot you could do

with that commute time. So don't just surrender. That's been kind of fun. But there's a lot you could do with that commute time. So don't just surrender it. On the topic of exercise, I'll share a couple of the things that I've adjusted in my regular routine because I was in the habit of working out and a large part of that was going to the gym six days a week. And pretty much overnight, that was taken away from me. Fortunately, it's getting warm enough here in Wisconsin that I can run and bike outside. And I have tried to do one of those two things every single day. I don't take a day off with those anymore, just because I find getting outside and getting some fresh air really just does put me in

a better mental state. I've also had some adjustable dumbbells that I've had in my basement for several years now. And they go from like five pounds to 45 pounds. So it's not going to replace the whole set of free weights that you would have access to at the gym. But I did buy before the shipping times got crazy on Amazon, I bought a simple adjustable bench. So I can lay flat on it, I can prop it up and sit on it. And I can do a lot of different exercises, maybe not exactly the way I would have done them at the gym, but I can still basically do the same workouts that I did at the gym with that set of dumbbells and a simple workout bench, which was like a hundred bucks. Yeah. I mean, I also, the hikes around me are still available. And so long as you, you know, give 10 feet to the other people, when you see them,

I don't see any problem with that. And one of the things we've been enjoying, you know, there's parts of this we've enjoyed, you know, you enjoy watching movies with your family because they're all home and I enjoy taking little hikes with my wife. So there's ways to enjoy this as well. But do think about your commute time and look at that as a gift and figure out how you're going to use it. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Agenda, date-focused note-taking, and you can download it now for free. Agenda is a note-taking app for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, with a focus on dates. It's tightly integrated with Apple's Calendar and Reminder apps, making it great for planning and tracking projects, and your notes are arranged in a unique timeline that follows the project through time. So use time as the way you plan your agenda. Agenda is perfect

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Once again, premium feature is unlocked. It stays unlocked forever. No subscriptions. So go right now to agenda.com. That's A-G-E-N-D-A.com and let them know you heard about it here on the Focus podcast. Our thanks to Agenda for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Let's go back to talking about the space considerations for a little bit here because if you're going to be working from home and you were working in an office you're going to have to stay connected and there are a couple things that i think can make your team communication a lot more effective that maybe if you're new to this you wouldn't really think about these things so like for example if you're going to be on a call one of the general rules that i have embraced

personally in noisy environments is to keep yourself on mute except when you're you're talking and that's maybe not i know some workplaces don't like that they prefer that you you not be muted not, I know some workplaces don't like that. They prefer that you not be muted. But just be considerate of the background noise that could be coming from your microphone and minimize it as much as possible. Because if you're on the other end of that, it can be very distracting. And once again, we're putting this in the current context where there are other people working from home at the same time, maybe pets, maybe the lawnmower next door. You've got to make it as easy as possible for the other side. I do not believe in the keep the mic open camp. I think you absolutely should be muting until it's your turn to talk. Yeah, I generally agree with

that. And there's some different things that you can do to minimize some of the background noise. You can get, I've actually used my AirPods Pro for this, and they do a pretty good job of blocking out a lot of the stuff in the background. I still tend to keep things on mute if there's any sort of noise that I can pick up because I don't want that to bleed through. You can get inexpensive headsets, which can greatly increase the quality and the clarity of what you're saying. And that does a pretty good job of blocking out a lot of background noise as well. If you're going to be using a non-podcaster setup, so not an XLR or an audio interface, there's an application that I discovered on the App Store a

long time ago from Brett Terpstra called Shush, which basically takes a keyboard shortcut and makes it a cough button. You can either push it to talk or you can use it to push to mute. In the other settings, you can choose which way you want to use it. I tend to use that as push to talk and then you don't have to press anything. And then I use the function key on my Mac when I need to open up my microphone and allow me to contribute. That way you don't have the indication in Skype or whatever tool you're using that your microphone is muted, but you also don't have a lot of noise bleeding through. I think I'd add to that with the video conferencing and audio calls to give some thought to the room you're going to be doing this in. Like, what are the acoustics like? If it's a boomy room,

maybe you put a temporary rug down. If you're going to shoot a video conference call, there's some real basics that can really make it easy for you. Never shoot it with a window behind you because if you have a bright light behind you, your face is going to be black, basically darked out.

And so you want kind of dark behind you, light in front of you. So you're well lit and you show up on camera. You all look like you're in the witness protection program to your coworkers. Exactly. I would also keep in mind or keep front of mind what is in the background behind you. Maybe in a worst case scenario, there's sensitive information that you don't want people to see, which you could easily forget about if you just have your computer set up against one wall,

you can forget what's on the wall behind you. So keep that in consideration before you actually turn on your video. Some applications allow you to blur the background. I wouldn't necessarily rely on that though. And if possible, turn your video camera for your computer when you're going to be joining a video call or device, point it away from any sort of common area. We kind of learned this lesson the hard way this

week because my family and my kids, we homeschooled them, but they're part of this classical conversations group. And once a week they go and they have a normal school day. But obviously, they can't do that anymore. So the school is trying to do that using Zoom. Our computer, however, is set up in this little nook inside of our kitchen, and it points directly towards the kitchen. So anytime anybody moves or has to walk through the kitchen, grab some coffee, put dishes in the sink, whatever, you see everything that's going on behind you. And some of that, you know, you just got to got to work with it. But if you have the ability, go ahead and turn your computer camera so that what is behind you, there's not a lot of movement that won't cause a lot of

distraction. Yeah, agreed. You know, just basics. And I think this also kind of goes towards that scheduling element. If you say I have a video call at this time, hopefully you can go do it in a room that has proper lighting, good acoustics, and isn't the kitchen. Yes, exactly. Yeah. When you're setting up the spaces for you to take calls and to do video calls if necessary. Do you have any tips, David, for creating like different spaces for different purposes? Yeah, I'm a big fan of context, you know, like pick spaces for different contexts. I have a writing desk and a computing desk in my studio. And I love that.

It's great because my brain kind of switches gears when I go between them. And if you are setting up for the long haul at home, maybe you should do that as well. Maybe have certain places of your home, since we can't go to Starbucks, but maybe you can associate email with one area of the house and actual, you know, writing reports with a different area or a different room. But I really like the idea of breaking those contexts up. And it's something I think you should try. I agree. I think that's a great idea. And I've kind of done that unintentionally even before this with the different devices that I have. So I have this standing desk in my office with all of my recording

gear hooked up to my Mac. And that typically stays there, especially now where I'm not taking my Mac to a, my MacBook to a coffee shop or the co-working space. This is where it lives. But I also don't have any windows in my office. I don't want to stay down here for eight hours at a time. So I will occasionally leave and try to work from somewhere else. And with the new iOS cursor support in 13.4, I have a separate Bluetooth keyboard i've got that clear look stand that mike was talking about and i can throw my ipad in there use i've got a mx master mouse that i can sync to multiple devices so i can grab my mouse my keyboard and i've got a an ios based computer basically that i can go work from the the kitchen table or the counter in the kitchen or some someplace else just for a change of scenery. Yeah, and you need to be creative with that right now

because normally we would have a lot more available to us. Like I've lost my remote workspace at Disneyland. I used to go there pretty often. That's closed. So like the backyard, we've got weather good enough now that I've got a way to work in the backyard. So if you've got a patio or someplace outdoors, you can go occasionally. I don't know, just be creative with this.

But I do think trying to do everything in one place becomes oppressive. And the change of context can loosen some of the, you know, the stoppers in your brain. Yep. So let's, we shared some tips for people who maybe don't have a dedicated workspace like an office. But if you do have the ability to create your own office, and this sort of change has kind of kickstarted that process, what are some of the things that

you should consider as you set up your office workspace for working from home? Make it yours, I think is the big rule. Everybody laughs at me. I've got this statue of Yoda on my desk, but it just kind of makes me smile and makes me happy. And I want to be happy in the place I work. But I'm also kind of a clutter, what's the opposite of a cluttered person?

I am a minimalist. I do not like a lot of stuff out. So I've set up my space in a way where there's almost nothing on the desks and I'm able, and that's the kind of the calm. I'm able to work in that. If there's a lot of stuff cluttered out, I have to get rid of it. So, you know, figure out what works for you and build it to your work style. I mean, there really isn't a perfect home office. It has to be your perfect home office. take some thought into how you're going to set up your space to minimize the friction when it's time to sit down and do the work. So that could be something like when you're done for the day,

close all your browser tabs. So when you get back tomorrow, you don't see all of these tabs staring you in the face and you're trying to figure out what was I doing with this open tab? What was the thing that I was supposed to take action on here? Put it someplace. If you really do need to follow up with it, your task manager is a great place for those little odds and ends. But kind of wipe the decks clean when you leave. And that way, when you come in the next day, you can just enter into the work that you need to do without having to try to figure out where everything is at. Yeah, agreed. I really like having the ability to control my space. And if you're working from home for the first time, just like I was talking about creating those new habits earlier, this is also an excellent time to kind of create a workspace that's ideal for you.

Because quite often when you're at work, when you go to a jobby job with an office, that's not an ideal workspace. Maybe you're sharing a room with a bunch of other people, or maybe they've got you stuck in a small cubicle. This is your opportunity to make it work better for you. Yes. Yeah, you've got, there's that word opportunity again, but you can determine the rules of engagement here. So put some thought into it. And I think ergonomics maybe play into this too, especially when you're thinking about minimizing the friction required to do the work. If your setup is uncomfortable or causing you physical pain, then that's obviously going to be a big hindrance to

getting work done. We don't need to go super deep into this stuff because it's been talked about a lot, but just some basics for people who maybe are new to this stuff. One thing I'd recommend is getting your screens as close to eye level as you can. I have a tendency to slouch and with a standing desk, if your monitors or your computer is not eye height, you will find yourself looking down. That can cause some back pain, at least for me specifically. And that's just, that's not a standing desk issue. Actually, the standing desk has helped a lot with that for me. But if you have a stationary desk, that can really be an issue. Agreed. And, you know, just give some thought, pay some attention to your body. And you may be doing this for a while. Yep. You know, the thing that I think is

one of the biggest challenges for people working at home now is the idea of boundaries. And this is something we all go through when we start working at home. And I think it's even more difficult now for a lot of us because, like me, our kids are back home that weren't because of what we're going through. So the boundary challenge becomes even greater and like i now have the opportunity to watch some movies with my kids and play board games or do whatever that i wasn't able to a few weeks ago but that uh there's also work that needs to get done and i think when you're working from home for the first time it's very easy and you'll be surprised by this the the mistake most people make is not that they spend

too much time goofing off with their family in that they don't, you know, give enough time to work. The mistake I think most people make is just the opposite. They don't know when to stop working because now that you work at home, you can work everywhere. So when do you stop? Yeah, exactly. If you, if your workspace is several feet away from where you sleep and where you eat, the temptation can be, well, I've got some time right now, I could go work on this thing. Where if you work in a separate location, you've got a little bit of a built-in barrier and boundary there because you're not going to maybe get in the car and drive to the office in order to do that one thing. But when your computer is, it only takes a couple of seconds to get to your computer and fire up your email, the compulsion to check in on those things that can drive you to do that much more frequently. So having hard set rules in place where I am only going to work from this time to this time, or I'm only going to check my email at this time,

that is even more important when everything is under one roof. Agreed. And I keep saying it over and over again, but this is another opportunity to bring planning to bear. You know, say I'm going to get up and I'm going to do my work, and maybe at 4 p.m. I'm going to stop, plan my day the next day, use that commute time. And then when I go to the room with the TV in it, or when I go to the kitchen to cook dinner,

I'm not going to think about work and don't bring in the laptop in the room and pretend like you, even though as opposed to driving home, that walk, you know, from the room you are working into the room you're not working in is your commute and leave it in the other room. Yeah. Leave work at work even when work is at home. Even when it's just the next room or five feet away. That's the good news and the bad news for a lot of people in this current situation is that the good news, you can do your work from home. The bad news is you can do your work from home. We talk on the show sometimes about tracking time or tracking moving the needle hours,

but even just the general idea of tracking time, I think it would be a good idea to track time if you're working from home for the first time for a little while. There's some great apps for it, and just run them and see what's actually happening because you're not going to really know unless you manually track the time. In addition to that, I think there's some time management advice

that people need to understand as they are tracking their time. I would say don't strive for perfection. You may have this idea that you can get eight hours of actual work done in a day, but when you are working from home, you're not going to get eight full hours of work done in a day. It's probably going to be more like three or four hours of true creative deep work like Cal Newport would define it. And maybe you can do some more admin stuff, or you can have more meetings. But if you're going to be fully engaged in your work, you're not going to have the mental resources to invest eight hours every single day. One of the things that we've talked about is the Pomodoro method as a form of time boxing.

And real briefly, for those who maybe aren't familiar with that method, it's basically you set a 25 minute timer after that you work on one thing for that 25 minutes. When it goes off, you take a five minute break and then you do another one. After you've done four rounds of that, you take a longer break and a full day is eight Pomodoros. So eight times a 30 minute cycle, 25 minutes of work plus five minute break is only four hours worth of work. But if you were able to do that, if you were able to do eight Pomodoros and actually focus on and do the work that you intended to do during those Pomodoros without being interrupted,

you would be really impressed with how productive you were at the end of the day. You'd be amazed at what you were able to get done. Yeah, agreed. And honestly, when you were going to the office every day, you weren't getting eight hours of work done there either. So it's all okay. I do think a big piece of this is though coming up with a plan and dealing with the other coworkers in the house. I have generally kind of adult children. If you have smaller children, I would think that's even even kind of a bigger challenge

of keeping small children occupied while you're trying to pull this off. It can be. With younger kids, I think the lessons about boundaries and rules are as important but need to be communicated more clearly. You cannot just say, I need to work now, leave me alone. I've found personally that the way this works with five kids from home that are home with me is to say, I need to do X right now, let me finish that, and then we'll do Y. And when they have something to look forward to, then they can control themselves and not bust in to ask me the thing that they are dying to ask me. They can wait an hour and a half while I finish recording the podcast. But if I don't give them any sort of light at the end of the tunnel, it's almost like at that point, there's nothing they can do. They just have to get it out of them. But when I say, it's almost like at that point, there's nothing they can do. They

just have to get it out of them. But when I say, here's the finish line, they're able to operate within those rules. I think it was Henry Kissinger who called that linkage when he was negotiating during the Cold War. It's like, you do this and we'll do that. So I'm glad that's working for kids too. Well, it's interesting with kids because a lot of this time management productivity stuff, it isn't super complicated. Yeah. And being forced to distill it down for your children, I think increases the likelihood that you're able to follow through with it too. Yeah.

Maybe in our heads, we just think that this stuff is more complicated than it really is. And so we don't even try to do it. But when pain is sufficient, change will come. And that's kind of where we find ourselves now. It's like, we need to find that structure. We need to figure out a way to make this work. So that can be the catalyst for a lot of positive change. I also think that just communicating with everybody is really important. You know, I've been talking throughout this episode about the situation with my family. I know everybody's different, but I do know a lot of people listening to this suddenly are not only working from home, but have other people from working from home. So, you know, communicate about what your needs are,

ask them what their needs are, be as accommodating as you can i mean it's your family so like my kids if they've got a class i'm going to plan my day around it so they can have what they need to do their class and i think that's uh if everybody pulls together can actually be a good experience and agree on the rules so one example i can think of, I forget where I read this, but there were a couple of researchers that shared a desk and they had created this system where they would work silently. And when one of them had to ask the other one a question, there was a pencil in the middle of the desk. They would pick up the pencil and move it to their co-worker's side of the desk. And that was the cue that I need to ask you something when you get a minute. And they were able then to finish what they were doing. And then they would look up and

answer the question. And I think something like that, there's no way that I can make that work for me, but I can apply that principle and say, how can I carve out this space to do this focused work and allow everybody else to know that, hey, if you need me for something, this is the way to get a hold of me and vice versa. But you need to make sure that the rules of engagement are clear and everybody understands them. And there really isn't a right or wrong way to do this. You got to figure out what will work best for you in the situation that you're in. But a little bit of intentionality and defining those rules will make things much calmer. Yeah. I mean, listen, we all hear, we all read the news. This is terrible what we're going through.

People are dying. People are dying alone. I just can't get over the thought of that. You know, these people sitting in isolation. They can't even have their family with them. And the family, they can't be with them. People are getting really sick. The economy is really having a hard time. People are losing their jobs. But I don't want to underplay how terrible a lot of this is. But I do think if you are working home, you're fortunate enough to have work to do. Take some of these tips and see if you can't make some lemonade in this giant vat of lemons. Yeah, completely agree. I would also say that even if your situation isn't great,

having a little bit of control can really put you in a better state to deal with things more appropriately. And maybe the way that you get some control is you set up your workspace the way that you want to do it. That's completely fine. Even if it's a totally temporary thing, you're not going to use it all that much. If that's the thing that provides you a little bit of normalcy and structure,

then it's worth it. I can tell you when this all first hit, all my tips for working at home were out the window because I couldn't stop reading about and watching video about what's going on. And it really took me getting back to my structure and back to my plan to try and get some work done that not only helped me get work done, which is how I can keep a roof over our heads, but also help my own sanity because I was actually going too deep into these problems. Yeah, that's a whole nother topic probably is controlling your access to the news and balancing that with the urge to know what's going on. Because some of the stuff you do want to know what's going on,

but also recognizing that there's only so much you can do with that information and recognizing the effect that it has on you, balancing that out, I think is extremely important. I've tried to limit it to once and usually it ends up being twice a day. At some point in the morning, I'll look, and then usually after work, I will look. And I'm in a much better mental place if I don't look at any point in between. Well, that's what I do too. It's two times a day by design for me. I want an update in the morning and an update in the evening, but I have to work.

for me. I want an update in the morning and an update in the evening, but I have to work. And also I have to give some quality time to my kids and my family who are all going through this together. And I want to be there for them as well. So it's something we all have to balance. But listen, we are there for you. And I hope that the stuff we've talked about today can help you get some of your work done at home. We do have additional resources. Mike and Sean over at Suite Setup did a really cool webinar on this through the Focus course. We'll have a link for that so you can watch it. I wrote a little thing at Max Barkey about working from home. Um, we, uh, we talked about this kind of these issues kind of are peppered throughout the overload series that we're working our way through.

Now, if you go back and listen to some of those episodes, I think you'd get some help. Um, what else? The suite setup has working from home roundup and that's over at suite setup.com working from home roundup with the dashes in the appropriate places. We'll put a link there. I'm actually working on that one right now. So we'll put the URL in the show notes if it changes. But it's basically a collection of a bunch of different resources that people have made available and different advice on how to work from home.

You've got an article that's listed there. You've got an article that's listed there. Matt Ragland, who we had on the show not too long ago, had a great video on journaling in the middle of uncertainty. Stuff like that is going to be there. And then the other one that I'll add, which I found really useful, is the Take Control book, Working From Home Temporarily by Glenn Fleischman, which is currently free.

It's about 60 pages. The Take Control books are always good. This one is no exception, and there's a lot of great advice in there. Yeah, well, hang in there, gang. Let us know. We've got a room you can chat with other people over at talk.macpowerusers.com. We've got a whole section in there

for the Focus podcast. So let us know what your challenges are. I'm sure there's people in there that are helping each other out every day. And let us know your thoughts as well for working from home. I know this is a little off our usual schedule, but it just felt like something we needed to do. And like I keep saying, make a plan. Don would be exactly that. Make sure that you cut yourself and everybody else some slack, because everything is different, and we're all trying to figure out the new normal. This is new for everybody, and we're all kind of all in this same boat here. want to add that thoughts, prayers, my heart goes out to everybody that's affected by this stuff. If we can do anything for you, even if it's just provide a little bit of normalcy through a podcast episode like this, I'm happy to do it. But I think of all the people that are really suffering in the middle of all of this, and we've got it pretty good. I'm very thankful for my current situation and definitely feel for everybody whose lives have

been impacted by this. Yeah. When someone, when my father died, a lot of people were giving me advice. I was a young man at the time and, and I really started to resent the advice. You know, it's tough. You just, you know, you just, you're burying your dad and everybody wants to tell you what you're supposed to think. And there was an old guy who's a family friend who had been through a lot, World War II vet and just, just a guy who had really lived his life. And he came up to me and he said, he held up his hand.

He said, what can I say? lived his life. And he came up to me and he said, he held up his hand and he said, what can I say? And as strange as it sounds, that was the most calming thing I heard. There are just no words for it. And I think that would apply to what a lot of our listeners are probably going through right now. So hang in there. Like I said, we'll all get through this together. Thanks everybody for listening. And we'll be back in a couple of weeks with more focused.