The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - Work from home SUPERCUT (Interview)

Episode Date: April 22, 2020

Today we're featuring conversations from different perspectives on working from home from our JS Party, Go Time, and Brain Science podcasts here on Changelog.com. Because, hey...if you didn't know we have 6 active podcasts in our portfolio of shows. Head to changelog.com/podcasts to collect them all!

This is a wake-up call for a lot of businesses and individuals who are forced to do remote work. And so now they get a chance to sort of take a step back and say, okay, well, I never thought this was possible before. Thankfully, I get a chance to do it. Maybe I'm not enjoying it so much right now. But eventually you can start to design the kind of work you do and pull in some of those things that make it more possible to design a better work-life blend in the future that starts to fit who you are and what you want to do in your life. Being With Her ChangeLog is provided by Fastly. Learn more at Fastly.com. We move fast and fix things here at ChangeLog because of Rollbar. Check them out at Rollbar.com and we're hosted on linode cloud servers head to linode.com change log this episode is brought to you by digital ocean digital oceans developer cloud makes it simple

to launch in the cloud and scale up as you grow they have an intuitive control panel predictable pricing team accounts worldwide availability with a 99.99 uptime SLA and 24-7, 365 world-class support to back that up. DigitalOcean makes it easy to deploy, scale, store, secure, and monitor your cloud environments. Head to do.co.changelog to get started with a $100 credit. Again, everyone. This is the ChangeLog, a podcast featuring the hackers, the leaders, and the innovators in the world of software. I'm Adam Stachowiak, Editor-in-Chief here at ChangeLog. Today, we're doing something a little different.

We're sharing conversations from other podcasts at changelog.com. Because, hey, if you didn't know, we have six active podcasts in our portfolio of shows at changelog.com slash podcasts. So subscribe to them all. Today's show features three awesome conversations from different angles on working from home. First up is JS Party with Jared Santos, who's Hinton, Nick Nisi, and Kevin Ball. Second is Go Time with Matt Reier, Mark Bates, Carmen Ando, and John Calhoun. And last is Brain Science with myself, Adam Stachowiak, and Mario Reis. Here we go.

What is up, party people? It's your friends. It's Jared. It's Suze. It's Nick, and it's Cable. All say's your friends. It's Jared. It's Suze. It's Nick and it's Cable. Say hi, friends. Hi, friends. Hoi hoi.

Hello. We are calling in from a remote bunker, aka our houses, which is new and yet not new because many of us here do call in from our houses. But mid-coronavirus or maybe beginning of coronavirus, we don't know. We don't know how long this thing's going to last. But many of us out do call in from our houses, but mid-coronavirus or maybe beginning of coronavirus, we don't know. We don't know how long this thing is going to last.

But many of us out there in the world either practicing social distancing by choice or being told to do so by local authorities and our works, we thought it would be timely to talk about working from home. Because while many of us work from home, these days pretty much all of us are working from home. And that presents all kinds of challenges and benefits and there's lots of ins, lots of outs. And we thought, hey, let's do a show all about it. I should also mention our sister podcast, our rivals, those gophers over there at GoTime. Also did a work from home episode this week. We'll cross link that.

If you just can't get enough of this stuff, you can go listen go time but don't stay don't stay it's not very nice over there or you could just get both in the master feed oh i like your style k ball i'll give you your five bucks after the show for saying that ironically i've been writing more golang recently so I feel like I should be over there rather than over here today oh well uh the water is warm on both sides of the fence no I'm mixing my metaphors let's get into the content before I say more ridiculous sentences and talk about working from home we should also mention, there's another aspect to this particular time and that we're not all just working from home. We're also in like more stressful circumstances than ever. So as far as the panel here goes and our lives and how we do our work, maybe just go around quick

and share what our normal day is like and what we're up to now. I'll start, I've been working from home for my entire career. And so I have a lot of experience at this. I'm thankful that my life right now doesn't feel all that different than it usually does. So I'm probably the least affected from the isolation because I'm so used to it, but I know I'm a little rare in that way. How about you, Suze? Are you regularly a worker from Homer? I think cable is actually in the same bucket as me. I did remote work in my last job for quite a bit from both New York and from Seattle. Then I quit that job, got a new job. That job is in an office.

So I've spent the last six months commuting into an office and trying to rearrange my lifestyle around actually commuting in and trying to optimize that commute and things like that. Kind of really settled in. You know, I have a plant on my desk and everything. And then I'm back to remote. So that's been my situation. So it hasn't been enough time for me to really forget what it's like.

And because I'm naturally very introverted, it hasn't really been a huge social toll on me. In fact, it's been kind of, I've been trying to see the silver lining of it, given that it has given me a lot more time alone in a quiet situation. Okay, well. Yeah. So I worked from home for quite a while. I've been remote in different settings for different times of my career. I have been for the last, I guess, almost five months now working at a company where I go in on site. It's a short commute. It's a 10 minute bike ride. So it's been lovely. I haven't had to deal with the commute issue as much. So I mean, that is one as we get into pros and cons.

One benefit for many folks of the work from home is dropping the commute. And yeah, so in a lot of ways, the same habits and setup that I had, I've been able to just reapply. Because of that juxtaposition, I have very strong visual into why this is very different from typical work from home, particularly because our schools are canceled, childcare is canceled. I've been dealing with health issues on my parents and various other things. So there's a lot of stuff that's different this time around, and that's very visible. But yeah, luckily on the work front I had kind of a routine I could fall back into. Nick, I know you've been a remote worker for a while

but you are under extreme stress these days. You want to share? Sure, yeah. I've been working since 2011 from home and I really like it. Don't want to go back to an office, at least right now. But I don't know, maybe that's changed in the last three days. Yeah, you kind of want to outside, don't you? Yeah, I typically work like I get my kids ready for daycare and I take them. So I have a little bit of a commute to start my day off and

then I come back home and I get to work and, you know, typically work until five when they come home and then I'm done working from there. But with all of this, it's kind of changed quite dramatically because we're in the same situation as K-Ball with no childcare right now. My parents are around, but we don't want them to watch them because, you know, older populations and such with coronavirus. And my wife is now also working from home. We have a one-year-old who kind of needs 24-hour attention you know when he's awake he needs attention and needs to be watched so he doesn't do anything crazy and so uh it's been tough and i have switched my schedule now to working starting at 4 a.m and getting off around noon

12 30 ish uh and then helping with the kids in the evenings while my wife takes the afternoons and evenings to work so it's it's been quite the change from that regard. It's basically two full-time jobs now for each of us, and that's been tough. So you're off work. Technically, yeah. New shift, next shift. Right. We're going to start up, right?

The daytime shift. So one thing that's nice, at least least is we're not completely talking out of the air all of us have extensive experience working from home and have dealt with a lot of the challenges that there are benefits there are drawbacks as with anything in the world of software it depends right so i thought we'd talk about a little bit is where we work, and then how we work, and then how we not work. And maybe some of just the pros and cons, giving tips and tricks along the way or sharing our experiences. Chris Hiller. He has a great post which we'll put in the show notes called Pro Tips for Devs Working from Home, which he spoke about as, I think, a pro tip on an episode of JS Party called, you don't have to

dress up, but you do have to get dressed, I think is what it's called. Which came while you were on that episode, so I'll also link that up. Chris has a lot of good points and I think we'll probably echo some of those here today. But the first thing we want to talk about is just the where. And I think this is like one of the keys to success is to get your where right.

Because we know the where is you're at home. But the challenge is your home is your home. And so it's hard to make it your workplace. So what are some tips on how to go about doing that? Even if you can have like the corner of the room that is this is the work corner and you don't go there when you're not doing work and you do when you're working. It makes a huge difference for your mental ability to turn on and off, which is one of the big challenges from working from home is your boundaries can really blur. So number one, absolutely. Any way you can possibly create this for yourself, separate out some workspace that is not the same as all the rest of space in your home. I would agree with that. And I've had the

fortunate opportunity to build a new house. I've been working from home, like I said, my entire career. And the first part of that entire is a bit much like 95% of my career. And the first part of that, I was in the basement, which at least has separation. But I also have many children, as you all know. Back then I had four children in that house. I have six children now in this house. But a non-tip is don't be underneath children. So I had separation and I had that, you know, I could go downstairs and like downstairs was working. I come upstairs and upstairs I am living. And I think that's so necessary.

And a huge mistake to make is to just like, I think Chris wrote about it in his post, like roll over in the morning from your bed and like get your laptop out and get to work because it's just not sustainable. But in the basement was, it was hellish because it was actually harder probably on my wife than myself because her role in this endeavor was to like keep the kids from not running around, especially during podcasts.

But all the time there was just noise, there was distraction. And so I was able to actually design a separate space. Now I'm in an office above the garage and it was a great opportunity to say, okay, I'm going to have a workspace. What should it be like? Where should it be? And how much separation do I need? And I'll tell you with six children, I can lock every door and nobody can get in. And that's like necessary because it's hard enough for me to like separate work from life, but like for the kids, for them to understand, which we all just waved at Nick's daughter as she walked in the room. Like they don't get it. You know, they're just like they see their parent and they're like, Hey, and it's like, well, you just ruined my flow.

It's going to take me 20 minutes to get back where I was. Thanks, but you're cute. So I'll, I'll forgive you. Yeah. That is a challenge. If you hear kids in the background, it's a, because I have no choice right now. They can't go anywhere. I can't go anywhere, but we're all having fun together. I'm wearing Spider-Man pajamas. She was wearing Spider-Man pajamas. So, you know, we're having fun. Yeah. And once again, many folks who are being thrust right now into working from home at last minute, no ability to prepare or do anything like that. Like I've seen some pretty inventive setups setups like i saw somebody set up like a working

a standing desk where they had like a cardboard area supported by lacroix's or something like that and various other things like you can be inventive circumstances are less than ideal not you know we can't if you're working from home because of an emergency like this you can't go and build yourself a new room like Jared did, but you can think about how do you create that space and at least a little bit of mental separation as much as possible. Totally. And I think one thing that can go a long ways is a decent pair of headphones with noise canceling maybe, but being able to tune out what's going on around you a little bit, that can really help even if you're just playing white noise. For and there's a like i'll listen to spotify but for some things i can't have lyrics on um there's a great service

that i've used called focus at home or sorry focus at will um that plays music without lyrics of a variety of different things where they've done a lot of tuning to try to like set it up in such a way that it helps you focus rather than interferes with your focus which I like that better than white noise but I think it is a paid service at this point but there may be a free trial it sounds nice I actually really really despise white noise I don't know why it's just that my brain and my ears are just just absolutely hate it and anytime anyone recommends it to me it reminds me of how comforting it is to most people but I can't even stand the sound of a fan or things like that and so music to me it has to be variable enough otherwise my brain just starts getting really annoyed at the I don't know it's it's very irritating to me so music has been so comforting and I'm actually going to check that

one out even though lyrics are not as bad for me as long as I'm familiar with the song already. But I do want to check out that service. Thanks, Cable. There is a website called musicforprogramming.net, which I've been listening to for years and tried to get the person that created it onto our shows and never quite succeeded because they're very shy. But that's another great one.

It's all ambient style uh you know the kind of music you want to listen to when you're programming basically there's also an app called noisio which is like for mac os and it goes up in your menu bar and it's kind of cool you can toggle it on as soon as you would hate it because it's basically like all the kinds of white noise you might want and so you can have like the coffee shop sounds, you can have rushing water, you can have lightning, like basically everything, frogs croaking. And then you can also like turn on multiples at the same time. So you can be like, I'm in a coffee shop, but some frogs in here. It's like Rainforest Cafe or something.

Yeah, exactly. But if you're into that kind of thing, it's a nice, it was free when I used it. I think it's a free app for white noise. I mean, I like nature sounds. It's just like the manufactured white noise I don't like. Along these same veins, free code camps, online vibes are really good too. They have like a YouTube live channel that they play and that music. It's kind of just like down-tempo hip hop beats, but I really like that a lot too.

It's kind of like like down-tempo hip-hop beats, but I really like that a lot too. It's kind of like lounge music, I guess. Lounge music is definitely underrated as far as being able to chill and program. One other thing that I remember noticing a lot the most recent time prior to this, when I switched from in the office to work from home, was lighting. I was going from being in an office that was brightly lit all the time into my home office which was not and it took me a while to realize that that was my mood was substantially lower because i was just in a less well-lit space for a long period of time and i invested in getting some better lighting and even just like deliberately like i still don't have great

ambient lighting but i got like one of those little stand lights and would even just like deliberately like i still don't have great ambient lighting but i got like one of those little stand lights and would even just like shine it on me and it would make such a difference in terms of my mood through the day of just having more light around i totally agree with that and that's not something that you would really think about too much or at least i didn't it took me a season to figure it out like i was like why am i so much less like happy through the day oh shoot like it's it's this lighting yeah i moved to the basement uh moved my office when my second kid was born because he got the the good room with all of the lighting in it and uh it took me a long time to realize that maybe it was some lighting that's missing from

my life that that really would make me happier during work days. So I did get one of those, I don't know, seasonal effective light that's supposed to simulate sunshine, and it just shined it on me occasionally. I'm very sensitive to lighting, and I always have been. That's just how I am, noise and lighting. And so for me, I always get so so upset immediately and I'll notice if the lighting is off so that's almost like a gift in this particular scenario because the first thing I do like when I first moved into this apartment that I'm currently in I changed out every single light bulb to be the exact same temperature and not to be like quote-unquote bad temperature and try to

put full spectrum lighting. Like you don't necessarily have to have those happy lights because sometimes they're a bit expensive, but if you buy a full spectrum light that can actually produce, you know, something very similar to sunlight, which is very therapeutic for humans. And so for me, I already become miserable just because I'm sort of tuned into spotting like bad lighting situations. Like when I see apartments at night have that kind of greenish tinged fluorescent light, I just want to knock on their door and be like, how can you live with this? But I realized that different people are sensitive to different things, right? So I'm a huge fan of tuning lighting to make yourself just feel so much better.

But it's so hard to notice if you don't, if you haven't sort of played with that kind of thing before. So I'm really glad you brought that up. So Lane in the chat says they hear that wearing shoes helps. I'm not sure if that helps for at a standing desk. Maybe there's some context that I missed there. But yes, we do watch the chat. If you're listening live, head to the JS Party channel

in our team Slack. If you're not and you would like the JS Party channel in our Team Slack. If you're not and you would like to participate, we'd love to have live listeners. Changeable.com slash live or changeable.com slash community free. Hop into our Slack and participate. I will say that I'm a big fan and advocate for quote unquote treating yourself when it comes to the location of your work. So whether that's your desk, your monitor, your speakers, wearing some nice shoes or having a good throw rug, the lighting, the ambiance. I don't understand feng shui. I'm not feng shui. But if that's your thing, go ahead and take time and take effort and take money. Hopefully you can take your company's money if they're making you work from home

and spend it on the things that you're going to use and be surrounded by on a day-to-day basis because you are going to be there at that desk, hopefully at a sustained pace for a sustained amount of time. And it needs to be a enjoyable, inhabitable living space. It shouldn't be like a place you dread to be.

Anybody have any specific like picks or hardware or like anything in their space? I think my favorite thing that I have that I don't have when I go into an office is I have a space heater. I just got one of those and it's made such a difference. Totally. It's amazing. And I mean, I'm a warm weather type person. And so like, I tend to like being very warm and, but even things like, okay, take your shoes off, wear socks and stick your feet in front of the space heater.

It's like luxury. It's amazing. It makes it so much better. I love that. For me, I just, I like to warm up a space aesthetically and expanding on that. What I mean is just having things that doesn't make it look like your room is very clinical, you know, like because you're in your own space, you can actually be a bit more creative than perhaps you're allowed to be in an office. So even just things like a cork board, is that what you call it in America? Like a pin board. And I put little knickknacks and Polaroid photos and things up there as well as like, you know, the cheat sheet for OpenScout and things like that, that I constantly refer to. That makes me really happy. And as far as like being able to just cover walls with things, especially if you're in a rental, I have a giant tapestry, which is just like a piece of cotton with a printed design on it

that I got from Society6. And it's just pinned with two, I guess, thumbtacks. Sorry, I'm like, I'm trying to internationalize how I'm describing these items. You can localize them, no big deal. So I use thumbtacks and because they're so small and they're so high up on the wall that they're so close to the ceiling, you would never notice those little holes. And so I've been able to hang sort of a tapestry that has just immediately brightened a room without actually damaging the wall since I'm in a rental. Just little things like that. You can spend maybe, if you have the budget to spend a hundred bucks, you can do a lot

to just make the space not feel like some really boring wall you know and that's been very very helpful to me and plants too sorry plants very important so I really like having plants around my space so if you're someone who doesn't get anxious about the idea of caring for very easy to careful plants that can really lift your mood as well I will echo that bring some green into the inside world. For those of you can see my zoom, you can see my little bonsai behind me little bonsai. I like to keep take care of that. And I also have access to the out, you know, a place where I can see outside, which is nice as well. Any other furniture decor, I see in the notes standing desk, I'm an advocate for standing desk as well.

It's nice to have somewhere where you can sit down if you're a stander because all day long can get to be long. But Nick or Cable, any other? It's probably a longer term investment, but having a good office chair makes a huge difference, at least for me, in terms of not having my back messed up at the end of the day and things like that. When I was working from home for a longer period, it was a must investment. Depending on where you are right now, you may be looking at shorter or longer periods of quarantine and isolation, and it may or may not be worth that investment. So if you can get your company to pay for it, because they are rather expensive if you get a good one yes it's a very valuable investment and if you're thinking about working from home for the long term or you have been working from home and you have not invested in a good office chair

it will pay your body back so much yeah i would echo that as well. For standers, a good standing mat would be a good thing as well. The one that I have allows you, like it has little bumps in it to kind of force you to kind of move around a little bit and squirm just to not stand in a bad posture all day. You kind of have to move around, which I really like. And then I'll just be completely crazy and hold up this thing. This is an under desk elliptical. Oh my goodness. It's amazing for incredibly boring, incredibly long meetings that I sometimes have to take. Okay. So real quick, Nick, hold that up high. We're going to put into our show notes, a picture of Nick with his Spider-Man outfit, holding up his, that thing is, under desk elliptical. So you're not missing out. You'll find it in the show notes, and you definitely want to go to there. How much time does your team spend building and maintaining internal tooling? I'm talking about those behind-the-scenes apps, the ones no one else sees.

The S3 uploader you built last year for the marketing team. That quick Firebase admin panel that lets you monitor key KPIs. Maybe even the tool your data science team hacked together so they could provide custom ad spend analytics. Now, these are tools you need, so you build them. And that makes sense. But the question is, could you have built them in less time, with less effort, and less overhead and maintenance required? And the answer to that question is, yes.

That's where Retool comes in. Rohan Chopra, engineering director at DoorDash, has this to say about Retool. Quote, the tools we've been able to quickly build with Retool have allowed us to empower and scale our local operators, all while reducing the dependency on engineering, end quote. Now, the internal tooling process at DoorDash was bogged down with manual data entry, missed handoffs, and long turnaround times. And after integrating Retool, DoorDash was able to cut the engineering time required

to build tools by a factor of 10x and eliminate the error-prone manual processes that plague their workflows. They were able to empower backend engineers who wouldn't otherwise be able to build frontends from scratch, and these engineers were able to build fully functional apps in Retool in hours, not days or weeks. Your next step is to try it free at retool.com slash changelog. Again, retool.com slash changelog. Again, retool.com slash changelog. Let's do it. It's go time so one of the things when i first started it took me ages to figure it out and then i started you know talking to people more and more about it is when you go to

an office you don't get eight hours of uninterrupted work you don't you get four maybe that's on a good meeting day um you know between no i'm serious. Between people coming to your desk in interruption, you go to get a cup of coffee and you're there for 10 minutes, somebody in the hall, that hallway meeting. You'd be surprised how when you add those up over the course of the day, those add up to hours in a day. And so if you're at home and you're, you know, don't beat yourself up because you decide you're going to take the dog for a walk in the afternoon for 20 minutes to stretch your leg. You know what, you would have done that to go to the coffee machine and get and talk to, you know, Joe at an accounting about his stupid March madness that isn't happening. And you're like, I don't care, Joe, just want a cup of coffee and you're there for 20 minutes. You know, so those things are there. And, you know, especially now where we do have to make time for family, you know, they're

no different than the time we'd have to make for our coworkers socially in the office and the other things that just kind of come along with being in the office. So I don't worry anymore about taking breaks. I don't worry anymore about making bread in the afternoon or something like that. I'm thinking, I'm doing work in my head. I'm just away from my desk and that's okay. I try to do those things when I need that shift of thinking and away from my keys. I'll make the bread. I'll take the dog for the walk. I'll go to the grocery store, whatever. So I try to work those tasks into those spaces too. Yeah, that's a really good point. I think it's a very naive view and people think that you have

to just be working solid amounts, like you have to work eight hours a day, solid, uninterrupted. And I've worked in situations where it's office-based and sometimes the people around you don't necessarily understand the job as in the same way and you know they might not be as technical or just have a different perspective completely and I've had some experiences where they've really valued the sort of the amount of time you're sat looking at the screen and if you measure that as a way of deciding how productive you're being or how good an employee somebody is, it's really a mistake, I think. Focusing on actually what gets delivered and focusing on

that because that's the important thing. That shift, and especially if you work in a trusted team, that shift can make all the difference. And so things like what time you got started or how long you spent on your little break or whatever, that becomes kind of background noise, really, because it isn't that important. I think there's also probably a correlation between like we've all worked in a place where people check things like Reddit or do other random things is like little breaks. But I think the amount of time you spend doing stuff like that changes drastically depending on whether you're in a job where they count the amount of time you're in front of a screen versus just be as productive as you can be. Because when I sit down, if I have three hours just to get something done, I don't check Reddit or do all these other things. I sit down and do what I need to do. But if I'm going to be in an office for eight hours, and I know I'm stuck there for eight hours, then it's like, okay, I can just throw this in,

check this thing, check Twitter, do whatever. it's a lot easier just to slip all that stuff in, allow yourself to get distracted. Yeah. So speaking about the commute then, so Carmen, you do both then. You kind of go to an office every third week and you also work at home. So you know, you can kind of compare really those two things. What do you do with your commute and how long is your commute? And when you work from home, do you think of ring fencing that commute time to put to some dedicated use? Or is it just blend into the rest of your day? It's for exercise. So my commute is kind of considered my exercise during my New York weeks. It's about, you know, depending on the subway schedule, it could be if

I catch all the trains right about 35 minutes if I don't it'll be closer to an hour or if I'm off peak so I just you know when I'm home I use that time to schedule it's just a completely different schedule right I have a different work schedule when I'm home versus when I'm in the office um someone in the channel asked if anyone plans to offset their work schedule to accommodate and you know for the family being home and my answer is 100 yes i love to get up very very early and start my deep work at about five because one i'm an early morning morning person in the morning because i'm already an early bird which time zone is that right well this started when my team was based in berlin

and i was the only one in the new york zone. And I agreed that in order to collaborate more, we needed to have more chunks of hours where we all were together. And I already really liked, so nobody in my house likes to wake up early. I'm the only one and I already do it to get some space. Right. And so this isn't work for everyone if you're not a an early bird but I would work from five and then end my work day at one and that was perfect in my old job I also manage expectations with my team now and say listen my hours are going to be a bit blotchy but I want that some of that deep work and so the first kid now that none of them are going to school they don't want to wake up till eight so for me five to eight is great deep work time I mean I just hit it out of park I don't check emails I don't go to social media it's just whatever I had set off is my big rock thing to do from the day previous gets done during that time and it really sets the tone for the rest of my day so yeah to answer Matt that is exactly how I ring around that. And it's just, you know,

I just have internalized very differently what a workday looks like when I'm here at the house versus a workday, what it looks like when I'm in the Google offices in New York City. So my brother has three children and he would walk two of them to the bus. So he did something very similar to what you did, where he would get up every morning at five or so. He would get basically one big thing he wanted to get done for that day. He'd start working on it then. And then as soon as the kids were getting ready for school and stuff, he'd walk them down to the bus and do that, which would interrupt his day. But the way he communicated it to me was basically that it allowed him to make sure he got the most important thing done for the day. And then the rest of the day, if there were distractions, it didn't matter quite as much. Right. My wife would take and drop one of our kids off and then go into Boston. And then I would, then I, in the afternoon, we'd go take the dog. We'd go for a huge walk, like an hour long walk, even though the school's like six minutes away. But just get a nice big walk in, in the afternoon that was nicely scheduled around picking him up.

And so like that, those things are gone now for a lot of people. Like, you know, and so for me, I'm still trying to keep that time frame if I can and still keep trying to take him out in the afternoon. Although I found that now that my wife's home, trying to see if we can coordinate a little bit more time in the afternoon for her and i maybe go for a walk you know just a little break in the afternoon which is quite nice so if you have a spouse or a partner or somebody like that you can schedule a nice walk in the afternoon take a break kids whatever lovely you know walk the dog like those are all good things i know she's turned her morning commute into running. She runs half marathons. So she gets up every day and instead of, you know,

getting up at five 30 in the morning to go running, she can get up at six 30 in the morning and go running instead. That's her big, like, this is wonderful. I can get a nice big run in every morning. Yeah. Mark,

let me ask you this, mate. Yeah. What do you wear for bed? Well, you qualify that for why you're asking the context. Yes, I'm not sure I'm going to answer that, Avi. I'm sure there's a code of conduct violation just waiting on the other side of that question. Just answer the question.

It's entrapment is what it is. Okay, fine. It's entrapment. Well, one of the bits of advice you hear a lot is that you should have different clothes to work in. Have you heard this? So they say like, we didn't talk about this already. No, no, no, we didn't. By different clothes, you mean like,

I don't have to get up, put on a suit, and work at my desk all day, and then change into jeans in the evening. Well, that depends. Some people do actually do that. My brother does that, actually. Yeah, so he, right, presumably doesn't sleep in a suit. He might.

Yeah. Well, then he's not doing that, is he? He's very conservative. Then he's working in his pajamas, which is what they say you shouldn't do. And I don't know how I feel about this one. Yeah. What do you think? I think it just depends on the person. Like, figure out what works for you. I mean, I said this before we got on air, but I don't sleep in pajamas. But I own a bunch of pajamas that when I wake up in the morning, I put them on because it's cold in my house. And I will go out and I'll make my coffee. I'll go downstairs, I'll get on my computer, and I'll answer work emails, and I'll do a couple things like that. And I don't shower for the first couple hours of the day because I tend to go out and exercise in the afternoon. Somewhere around lunchtime is when I like to go out and exercise. So a lot of people think that's weird because, you know, if I hop on a video call or something, they're like, you clearly woke up and didn't shower. And like I try to limit those calls to just people that are okay with that.

I got that this morning as a matter of fact. But like to me, that's just part of my routine that works. Like it's kind of like Mark said, I like to get straight to emails and straight to doing that stuff. You know, I like to me that's just part of my routine that works like it's kind of like mark said i like to get straight to emails and straight to doing that stuff you know i like to do these things and then eventually when i work out well i don't want to shower twice in the day i don't want to shower in the morning and then work out get sweaty and then not shower or you know shower second time so it just makes more sense to do this and then after i do that i can put on whatever clothes i want for the rest of the day you know do whatever and i can even like sort of link the rest of my day around that where like if i'm going to go to the grocery store or do that sort

of thing, it tends to happen after I've showered and put on some normal clothes, not when I'm sitting around in my pajamas. But that also allows me to sort of, it's almost like my pajamas are my deep thinking work clothes because, you know, like I'm clearly not leaving the house at this point. I'm not doing that stuff as much. I say clearly, I've definitely left the house in my pajamas and my wife's yelled at me, but most of the time. Yeah. No, really, it's about that mental preparation. Whatever habit that you need to get into, it could be that you wear your blue pajamas to bed and the green pajamas to work. It's just the point meaning that you're preparing your mind for a work mindset. And it's the same trick as I sit in this spot for the small dining table for work and this spot to eat meals. So it's again,

boundaries separating the psychic space of this is the home where I try to relax and unwind from work, but also where I now have to work. Now, the one thing I will say is slippers are 100% allowed. Oh yes. I'm so happy and highly encouraged. Yeah. I totally love that. These are what I wear all the time. I'm showing it. Yeah. I've got some UGG slippers that are just like, I got them a couple of Christmases ago and they're just amazing. Yeah. Cozy house slippers are definitely probably top five perks of working from home. Invest in some nice quality slippers. That'll be like all the links for the show is just referral links for slippers. What's the brand to you?

You know what? Let's actually talk about comfort because that is important. Office chair. Oh, yeah. If you can, if you have the space and you have the ability to get a nice office chair, you absolutely should. I've gone through a couple different chairs now and I have a steel case chair now, which I absolutely love. I got a Herman Miller maybe six or seven years ago. Fancy. It was like a low end Herman Miller, but it was the first nice chair I had ever

actually splurged on and didn't just go to Staples and buy the a hundred dollar like executive model. Right. Like this was a nice chair. And I remember saying to my wife, I was like, Oh, I can't believe how much I spent on that Herman Miller.

And she's like, Mark, you sit in it 40 hours a week. Yeah. Like that's a justifiable purchase. Like of all the random junk you buy yeah a nice chair and a good desk are okay things to purchase like yeah all the easter island heads that you bought i have a full collection by the way that was just broken um yeah my heart goes out to them

you know and this is one of those things people are probably asking, should I make that kind of investment with an unclear amount of time that I'm going to be at home before returning to the office? I don't know if that's the answer, but if this is going to be more than four or five or six weeks, your back will thank you if you have the means and the space to invest in a chair. Yeah. I use this GT racing chair. I'm showing people in the Zoom chat, but gamer chairs are made for this kind of stuff. They're made for people who are in it looking at a screen for a very long time. So I got a racing chair for Christmas as a gift and it was the best.

You code with one of those steering wheels as well, which is, I think, amazing. It also has multiple cup holders, which is amazing. So I have a Herman Miller in my desk for work. So I've definitely spent money on a more expensive one because I use it so much. But upstairs at our dining room table, we actually have Costco sells an office chair that's like, I think, $150 in that ballpark. And it's not quite as nice as the Herman Miller, but it probably gets you 90% of the way there with ergonomics and everything. And I would highly suggest if you're

looking for a cheaper option to go look there, you know, where all the Herman Millers and those ones can be 600 plus, that one will be like 150 or something. And it's a decent option to check. And then even as far as space goes, my wife and I keep an office chair at our dining room table. Like it's just one of the chairs there. And while we both don't like to work at the dining room table all the time there are times where like I need to go up and watch my daughter while my wife goes and does something and I can sit there and work and it's still again like that separation is still slightly there even though I'm slightly in dad mode nice tips yeah one of the things about being in an office is you tend to get up and walk around a

lot more than when you're working at home. So I think that has to be a bit of a conscious thing you do as well. Even if you do have a Herman chair, whatever it was. Yeah. So excuses to kind of get up and walk about, I think are also probably quite important. Get a glass of water every hour. Yeah. Or get a dog. A dog definitely helps. Dogs are awesome for this. For the first time, I got my very first dog just over a year ago, and it's changed my life. And I can't believe I've worked from home all this time without a dog. Like my dog will literally, if I'm in my office too long, he'll come over and start nudging me with his nose.

Really? So even if he just has to go to the bathroom or something, it makes me get up. But then on top of that, every day I'm like, I can't skip the walk today because he needs a walk too. Yeah, he needs to go outside. That's great. They're great excuses for walks, for entertainment. Just like I talk to my dog.

He's my rubber duck. That's great. Is that another pet? Is that another one of your pets, Mark? Yes, yes. Take him for a little swim in the bath so i have this watch that you know if you can't have pets in your building or your house if it's not allowable i just have a watch and i just set it to if it if you detect no motion for 60 minutes beep and i hate it sometimes especially when you're in deep work and it doesn't have a

setting where you can say only notify me between these hours of the day it's just any motion so i sometimes turn it off but it's a nice way to um or maybe use a browser like a browser or chrome add-on um that can say get up now that's also an option to get you up and out and walking around if you have an apple watch they they do that they ping you oh yeah you to try to get your stand goals. So I know that's one of the things my wife and I, we now always see who gets their rings first, right? So the rings on our watches help us make sure we get enough activity, movement, and standing during the day, right?

And that's really nice. And you can see that and it encourages you. It pings you during the day. I'm sure Android watches do similar things. If you can enable those, if you don't have those things enabled, definitely enable them. They'll ping you. They encourage you. They want you to do things.

It's quite nice. You can also do like what the Pomodoro or however you pronounce that, the Pomodoro technique and all those things. I know lots of other people use those too and use them effectively. It's just not what I personally use. Yeah. Yeah. I need something a little less manual. And that's one of the things I like about the Apple Watch is it's kind of, it's all automatic. It just yells at you and you're like, fine, I'll stand up. I'll go get a glass of water now. You know, like I finished this water, I'll go get another one. Oh, and related to that, don't like get a really big glass of water now you know like i finished this water i'll go get another one oh and related to that don't like get a really big glass of water like i used to get this really big mug to bring

down so i wouldn't have to go refill it and i basically found that having a smaller glass that forces me to go refill it is useful yeah this is a brilliant episode don't have a big glass of water it sounds crazy but i'm in it i love it but you're supposed to drink a lot of water. It sounds crazy, but... I'm in it. I love it. But you're supposed to drink a lot of water generally. It gets you up and then it also gets you to the bathroom, which is another thing that gets you out of your desk. These things sound silly, but when you've been doing this for a long

time, these are tricks that you do learn. John is speaking the truth. I know what he's talking about. I switched to a smaller glass years ago too for the same reason. I just can't wait for them to take that clip and put it on Twitter

as the promo for the show. Just drink a glass of water. I don't have it too big. People are going to imagine us with these like tiny like Winn-Dixie plastic cups that you get just to rinse your mouth out

or something. A little dentist rinse and spit. Well, actually standing up for calls and walking around while you're on calls is if you can, you know, if you're not demoing or anything like that. Yeah. Little excuses like that to be active, I think is important.

It's definitely something that I try and do consciously. Yeah. Pace around your room. Yeah. I personally find also that's quite a good way to think as well if you if you've got a particular problem that you want to work on in your brain you know that's what i'm gonna stand up right now so now i know why i pace every time i'm on the phone and my wife yells at me for it he yells at you for what tiny glasses of water like i walk or i

pace anytime i'm on the phone and i think it comes from you know sitting around so when i get a chance to do it i do it and whenever i'm on my phone my wife will think it comes from sitting around. So when I get a chance to do it, I do it. And whenever I'm on my phone, my wife will be like, you can sit down. I'm like, no, I'm fine. Like I stand all day. I also have to tell people this all the time when I go places when they're like, sit down.

And I'm like, no, I stand or I sit a lot through the day. I'm fine standing. Yeah, it's rude, isn't it almost? I was at a elderly relative's house and they were like, oh, sit down. Because it's rude for them to not kind of invite you to sit down. So then it got flipped on its head and just became, I was the rude one for not wanting to sit down.

So I just sat down. Yeah, but that doesn't surprise anybody. What, that I'm the rude one? Yeah. Oh. Okay. You did ask me what I wore to bed. So I think I'm justified in my criticism today, Matthew.

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Everything that's happening, all the change that's taking place, my bubble and everyone that I speak with is just, it's the only topic on mind. What about you? Yeah, most certainly. What about you? my kids out of school and work and you know trying to being in the helping profession and interfacing with people and you know um especially with what is going on in terms of people's physical health it is apt to produce other you know issues in terms of mental health too so what's even more interesting to me is that, um, is that for so many, the new normal is working from home, but not for everybody. Like there's been a large population that has already been working from home. I'm one of them. So, you know, for me,

aside from a few things, not much has changed in terms of work and life and balancing all that you know obviously you know my wife and my kids are at home with me all day like i work from home i have a home studio the things that's really changed is they don't leave you know my son used to go to preschool they would go and do activities and so they were home like 70% of the time versus 100%. And that's the difference is just that they don't leave and we don't leave to go do things. They go out to eat or go do fun things on the weekend. So, you know, this last week has been colored by just the fact that they never leave and neither do I. Right? Right. Yeah. Well, I think we can't help but look at the way in which this experience with coronavirus is changing how we interface with one another.

And yeah, we've had a number of different shifts. I mean, I was mainly live face to face with patients and kids in school and has been working, which all of that entire apple cart has been upset, trying to make accommodations. And, you know, it affects all people. So I, I mean, as of within the last 24 hours, am now going to be full-time working from home as well. Which is way different for someone like you. It is. Well, and so with that, it's involved a steep learning curve over how do I function within the constraints of state and federal laws. And because I care about people and of all times that I think people need support, this is one of them.

Yeah, for sure. But I am beyond grateful for these changes because there have been a number of different constraints for years, which has made it more challenging for people to receive psychological services from remote locations. So the fact that this whole experience has opened up that door and that I'm still able to see clients through a different medium, I am beyond grateful to be able to help people in that way. And one of the biggest challenges there for you and them is this missing data component. We've talked about this before, this idea that if you're not face-to-face, you can't see body language, et cetera. You're missing some data to sort of have a full picture of someone's state. And so this is a new normal for you and a new normal for them,

but still you've got this missing data component. Yeah. Well, and so it's like we've talked about the value and importance of resiliency with like figuring out how to get back up and how to continue to navigate things when obstacles emerge. And so one of the things that I think is incredibly important is looking at how do we simply make modifications around the way in which we communicate and interface. So even though I don't have the full face-to-face with somebody live in my office, there's opportunities to see more of their face and sort of discrepancies between either what they're saying or how they're saying thing and their facial expressions. But it's interesting because technology, you know, isn't all the same in terms of its stability, right? I mean, if somebody's live in front of you, you don't have hiccups in terms of Wi-Fi signals or delayed with words.

So it just creates other nuances to some of the social exchanges, which is interesting. Yeah. So we have a lot of people going to work, but not going to work. Yeah. Right? Yeah. We've got this mandatory stay home, this term social distancing, which I've actually heard it be said, I forget what it was called.

Matt Mullenweg said it, and I'll have to go check out his blog while we're talking here to confirm, but it wasn't social distancing. It was more, it was just on this idea that we still have a relationship, and it's not about socially distancing. It's about physically. It was physically distancing versus socially. I like that nuance. Because we're still humans.

Yeah, and I think that this is really important that nuance. Because, you know, we're still humans, you know. Yeah. And I think that this is really important as we talk about, you know, remote work experiences that, you know, I think for a lot of people, it's involved a sort of learning curve of going, what works for me and how do I create that work-life blend or work-life balance wherein I still get to see people. I mean, this is why in my area in the Northwest here, there are more and more pop-ups with remote locations where people from all different kinds of work arenas can come to the same place and pay even for a spot one day a week, two days a week or more to be able to interface with other people.

Because there are just these sort of idiosyncratic experiences when we are face-to-face with people that are, or maybe even a better word is haphazard. Like they just happen without planning, like water cooler chat or somebody was walking down the hall past your office and they tripped on accident, right? I mean, we lose those sort of social experiences when we're not face to face, and yet they're very necessary and very helpful to being human and doing our lives. Yeah, Matt says, I've really had enough of this term social distancing. That is not all we are looking for, is it? We should be looking for physical distancing. In these times of rampant loneliness, disconnection, and lack of empathy and

compassion, we need the opposite. We need social connecting. Yes, I couldn't have said it better. Because I think about it with some of the issues that we're now trying to navigate in terms of what people have all gone out out of fear and purchased to make sure they don't run out. friend who said how they needed something for their family, and they just put a message out there to people like, I don't have this. If you see it, can you drop it by? And they ended up with 10 gallons of water or something like that because they needed this special kind of water. But that's part of community and recognizing there's resources in other people. But how do we do this when we need to keep physical proximity? Somebody had said, a friend of mine said, I'm talking to a lot of people these days via the phone. Yeah.

Where, you know, don't be that whole social connecting. Yeah. if you're going out, we're low on water, pick us up some, if you can. Sure. And then drop it off at the front door. You don't have to come in and say hello or knock or feel obligated, but this idea of like still connecting in ways where we were, we're just not, it's so weird. It's just so weird to even talk about this. It's surreal. Sure. And I think that it's important as we have this conversation around remote work, that this has a whole different sort of qualitative feel to it. Remember how we talked about our

choice as being incredibly valuable, that it feels different. I mean, part of my decision to work remotely wasn't wholly my decision. And that out of the safety, there was an executive decision made. And I have tremendous respect and I think it was probably the wisest choice, right? But it's different if you already work from home and that was a choice you had already made because the working from home facilitated other aspects of the life that you wanted to have. Yeah. Right? We,

I joked about contagion, the movie, the last time we had this conversation, we've actually had one episode come before this one on memory, which was recorded prior to coronavirus being a thing. And I guess it was actually while it was happening, but not so much on the restrictions here in the United States. And it's funny that I went back and watched this movie.

Not as entertainment. Although it can be entertainment. More so as boot camp. And potentially what could happen. Obviously the viruses in the movie. Versus this one is different in terms of its effect on humankind. But similar in nature and the way it spreads. in the movie versus this one is different in terms of its effect on humankind, but similar in nature and the way it spreads and all the things that happen. And they actually said

the phrase social distancing in the movie. So I was like, I thought the movie is like, I don't know how old it is, maybe like eight years old, 10 years old, but social distancing was a phrase in that movie. Isn't that crazy? That's crazy. That's crazy. And it was a phrase in that movie. Wow. Isn't that crazy? That's crazy. That's crazy. And it was a coronavirus. Really? They said the word coronavirus.

They said R-naught. They talked about it's, you know, I mean, so much of the movie is just so accurate in terms of what you would really deal with in a pandemic. Sure. It's just so interesting. Like, you know, could we not have just watched that movie and prepared better? with in a pandemic. Sure. It's just so interesting. Like, you know, could we not have just watched that movie and prepared better? It's almost like, what happened here?

You know, it's interesting even in talking about this and going, you know, I think humor is so valuable and, you know, it doesn't mean people can't be offended by things that others find humorous. However, it's a really functional way to navigate, you know, stress that making light of it and going and not in any way am I making light of this as a serious issue. However, to be able to still go on and manage yourself and your family, loved ones, etc., while this is upsetting the sort of normalcy to which all of us have been accustomed for quite some time, right? I heard it said, you know, that just this is so significant. This is going to be in our history books in the years to come because of the way in which

it's changed our lives, right? And I think that for anybody who's been allowed to or had the opportunity to work remotely, that there's benefits to it. But like all things, there's different challenges associated with it. And so how do people figure out ways to navigate it as best they can, given the constraints that we're all having to deal with at this point in time? I know that most of the research when it comes to remote work has said it's generally better in the sense of enhancing productivity. But they can't say why. You know, why would it be that if I let you work from home that productivity goes up? And I don't know, have you ever heard of Daniel Pink? He wrote a book

called Drive, which gets at sort of motivation as a factor. It's on my list to read. Well, he talks about this in terms of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. There's things sort of internally or intrinsically that drive us, and then there's things outside of us that are motivating, like money, right? And so these are critical factors when it comes to however we set up our life. But what he highlights is that extrinsic motivation occurs when we are motivated to perform a behavior or engage in a specific activity to earn a specific reward or avoid a punishment. And I don't think any of us want to only feel like work is a reward or avoiding other punishment. I mean, do you? Yeah, I don't think so.

That would be unfortunate if it was. Right? And so this is really at the heart of learning. And I would say life, because life involves learning and adapting. That's what we're all doing right now. And so he talks about motivation with having a few different critical aspects. And they are autonomy, there is purpose, and then there's mastery. And so what he's talking about in terms of autonomy is that we all have this inherent drive to create.

There's people who have talked about this with different companies in technology, wherein, as far as I understand, they've been allotted a certain amount of time to work on their own creative endeavors. And that there's a portion of your time that it's like, I don't care what you do. We just want you to then share it because this is intrinsic in all of us. All of us are made in a way to create and be creative. Yeah. Right? And so if I'm like, here are the keys, you can have far more flexibility and autonomy

to pick when you work, how you work, like all of those things so that you can accommodate other things in your life. Wouldn't it make sense that productivity would go up? Yes and no. Say more. The yes is because that seems to be a good recipe. The no is not everybody is wired that way. Touche. Not everybody has the necessary self-discipline and maybe even it's just experience. Because I think after a while you can get into a rhythm of remote working and self-discipline.

But abrupt and I guess change where you didn't participate in the choice might be harder to immediately be more productive. Sure. You're going to hit some challenges in this change. Most certainly. Most certainly. But part of that comes back down to, you know, really know thyself, right? And going, when do you work best? I think it's Michael Bruce, who is a sleep researcher, who I think I've alluded to in the past, who talks about our sleep cycles and having a genetic component around timetables. So there is sort of early birds, you know, and then there's what he referenced, he assigns an animal to these different sleep types, but it basically gets at how we all work better as based on our sort of sleep rhythm or style.

And that is one thing that remote work offers, right? o'clock, like that's when I'm like, the juices are flowing. Let's create, let's go. That's going to be hard to get up to be in an office at eight or nine in the morning if you're up until two o'clock in the morning, right? Your most effective hours are in an environment where you're not as effective. Right. So that's just one thing. And then other subsequent dominoes would look like, well, then who else is awake in terms of coworkers if you get stuck or you need other feedback at those times of day? So there's this asynchronous aspect to doing the remote work, right? I think that's the key is the synchronization of others like you can do things asynchronously and not be blocked by someone else and let that become a pattern for work rather than now not all work is that way though i mean some work you can't

do asynchronously like try building a car asynchronously you know like you need i guess you could probably do some of that if it's an assembly line like you you know some parts can get built and then you add the components after somebody else has done things so that's asynchronously you don't have to do it together so to speak but the next person can't do the thing until the one thing is done so it doesn't really compute the same for everyone yes not all work yeah this is why i think it's helpful when we have these conversations like helping people build a different framework, like a mental sort of grid for how they can make sense of this. And I think of this like a rhythm in all we do and whether you're, you know, at the job, but also, especially remotely to say, is there a rhythm that you can

work within wherein sort of you can come together and work with people and sort of meet up like people will do and then sort of move away and go asynchronous to not be, you know, present at the same place at the same time doing the same thing. And that, you know, all of us have some sort of hybrid of that. And that's what helps us all, you know, work better, both with ourselves and with others. I mentioned the isolation, I suppose, or the missing component there. A lot of what's happening or has the opportunity to creep in in remote working is isolation, obviously. Probably some anxiety because of that. And if disconnected long enough, potentially some depression. Yeah. Well, and so what I would offer is that part of what you lose is actually feedback.

You know, part of how we build relationships is over time, really imagine you're constructing a sort of 3D model of a person based on repeated interactions. I mean, you have a sense as based on when you interface with someone, when you text them or email them or call them, how they're going to respond. Do they answer? If so, in what timeframe? Because that's part of collecting the data. And in the same way, people might respond very short like which could come across incredibly curt, right? Or sort of cold in a digital format. Whereas face-to-face, that isn't the same presentation that they provide. When I'm more isolated and I don't have the interaction with coworkers, I sort of forfeit that additional information. Not to mention, it also, if I flip the lens back at myself,

when I'm looking at feedback I get, like performance, I don't necessarily have to take in the feedback that my supervisor or peers are giving me because how do they know what I'm doing? I might not be meeting my own expectations, but they don't know that. And so they can say, like, you're doing awesome. But I might then be like, well, they don't really know. And so it's super easy to minimize that feedback, which then changes how I perform, what I give, how much I'm going to offer up.

It's really, really a fascinating dynamic, I think. Because there's no way that we're going to opt out of relationships with other people. We need other people, just like you're talking about, to get jobs done. Take some self-discipline, that's for sure. You have to be a strong-minded person. I don't want to say strong-willed because I think it doesn't give it enough depth. I think strong-minded and that's like an emotional intelligence kind of thing. It's a, you know, potentially even a professional. I don't know how to describe it really well, but someone who, I don't know, has good intentions. I mean, it really takes a lot of intention to do it well. Yeah, you have to be purposeful, right? Yeah, that brings up a good point too, because of the variant setting that people will be in,

whether they're meeting or not meeting, you can have a lot of distractions come into play. You got interruptions, potentially a lot of things that can frustrate you that did not previously frustrate you. And this change is going to bring that kind of change too, where you kind of just have to get thicker skinned or just be more aware that, you know, if you're

working from home and you have children, it's likely that one of them might come in, even if you tell them not to. And that's okay too, right? I mean, that doesn't mean it's okay. You're not going to like yell at your kid or do something not nice or have a negative response because, I don't know, I'm just thinking about me in particular because when my son comes in I try to always make sure that my environment is welcoming to him that he's not I don't say hey come in and bother me during a podcast or something but there is limitations to that some constraints to it but I don't want him to feel like dad's in here working and you know know, be a mean

person, I suppose. I try to be flexible so that he always feels welcomed into my world. You know, this is my office, it's my world. So that's how it works. But, you know, almost planning for, I guess, interruption, frustrating things that can happen and take place that didn't take place before. Sure. And I think especially now with the changes, you know, talking about this in terms of decision fatigue or like cognitive load, like a fair amount of like work from home or remote options for work involve a degree of cognitive demand. So if I'm using this decision making and that living like Garmin of going recalculating, recalculating, you know, your brain might be like, and I'm done. Like, I can't handle more distractions or sort of upsetting the apple cart in another way. recognizing the value of flexibility and going, you know what, like, things are going to just

have to be a little chaotic until we can make it work. I mean, that's very much what it's looked like with, you know, my schedule and, you know, kids and going, okay, I have to be responsible and help them get work done for school and have some semblance of structure for them while I still need to do my work responsibilities and going, you know what? Like, it didn't look like it usually does. That's okay. We just sort of recalculate, recalibrate, and do what we can when we can. I think when people realize that, you know, there's other ways of doing things that might

not have been the way that they've always been done, but that they could work if they're willing to go explore, it can allow them to discover more about themselves and their lives and how they want to function within the world. Because look, every single person, every single one of us is unique. And

I believe wholeheartedly that we all have a specific design to fulfill a different role within the broader context within the world. And so when we have a sense of respect around that, and when we seek to do sort of work that speaks to us from the inside out, it has far more reaching effects, not just for ourselves, but our entire community. And that's really when the work becomes fun, much more process-based, and you want to do it just because you can't help yourself. It's really for the love. Yes, it is for the love. We love doing this. We hope you love our shows.

We put a ton of effort into them. Thank you so much to everyone involved here at changelog.com. Let us know in the comments at changelog.com slash 391. What are you thinking about remote work? What are you thinking about everything that's going on with coronavirus and this new normal we're all in, where everybody is embracing change? Of course, you can comment on this show and all our episodes at changelog.com. Open your show notes and click discuss on ChangeLog News.

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