The Jordan Harbinger Show - 331: How to Work from Home Effectively | Feedback Friday

Episode Date: March 27, 2020

Due to the recent COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, many of us are now required to work from home. As a team of people who have been working from home for more than a decade, we have some advice for those wondering how to work from home effectively during a pandemic -- and, of course, lots more on this Feedback Friday! And in case you didn't already know it, Jordan Harbinger (@JordanHarbinger) and Jason DeFillippo (@jpdef) banter and take your comments and questions for Feedback Friday right here every week! If you want us to answer your question, register your feedback, or tell your story on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at [e-mail]. Now let's dive in! Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/331. On This Week's Feedback Friday, We Discuss: Since we've been doing it for so long, we've got some pointers for working from home effectively for those of you out there who might be doing it for the first time during this pandemic! Your career is extremely specialized and your choices for moving to another company are slim to none. And frankly, you don’t even want to do it anymore, but you can't afford to take a pay cut to start over. What should you do? Your boss gets annoyed when you stand up and jog in place for five minutes every hour to stay limber after sitting for so long. Is taking such a short break really a demonstration of a lapsed work ethic, or is there more going on here? How should you respond to random people on LinkedIn who reach out to network -- even when you have no friends in common? You don't mind being helpful, but how do you weed out the timewasters? While you do have general social anxiety, you find yourself especially shy and less talkative around your attractive friends. Why is this, and how might you get past it? At a young age, it came out that your two older brothers were sexually abusing your younger sister. They were sent away for years, essentially breaking up your family. Now you're all adults and working on your mental and emotional issues. Where should you start seeking help? A quick shout out to Ashley Jensen, who sold her family's medical device company using some of the things she learned on this show! Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at [e-mail]! Connect with Jordan on Twitter at @JordanHarbinger and Instagram at @jordanharbinger. Connect with Jason on Twitter at @jpdef and Instagram at @JPD, join his podcasting club, and check out his other show: See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host Jordan Harbinger, and I'm here with producer Jason DePhilippo. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most brilliant people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. If you're new to the show, on Fridays we give advice to you and answer listener questions. The rest of the week, we have long-form interviews and conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes to authors, to thinkers and performers. This week we had Gavin DeBecker. It's a two-parter.

This is a great one from the vault about fear, the human fear response, and it'll make your spine tingle and also kind of make you think you have some superpowers. Really, really fun. Well, I don't know if fun's the right word, Jason, for this episode. Interesting episode, but that doesn't quite do it justice either. Definitely not a fun one. There's a lot of, like, murder and crime stuff in it. But Gavin DeBecker is kind of a genius.

Right now he's, I believe, doing security for Jeff Bezos. So, you know, kind of a big deal. Yeah, probably a little hard to get a hold of. But yeah, he's the one that worked on the Bezos phone hack and found out of it that it was like the Saudi Royal Family. Yeah. Crazy. Well, smart guy, glad to have him on the show.

Our primary mission, of course, here on the Jordan Harbinger show is to pass along our guest's insights and our own experiences and insights along to you. In other words, the real purpose of the show is to have conversations directly with you. And that's what we're going to do today and every Friday here on Feedback Friday. I just want to place one brick in the structure that makes up your life. That's what this podcast is really about. And you can always reach us Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com. And by the way, if you send your questions to the wrong inbox, I forward them, but they go all the way to the back of the line. And I'm starting to think maybe I shouldn't forward them. I don't know, Jason, ethical conundrum. If people can't follow

the instructions, do I delete their thing or do I pass it to the right place? That's the question. Well, if you're going to not follow instructions, then why are you going to follow the advice we give you on Feedback Friday? So maybe just let them go into that great black hole in the sky. Yeah, that's a good point. If you can't follow the simple instructions, do I know you're going to follow the advice? Or do I think you even have a shot in hell of following the advice? Maybe not. Maybe I'm wasting my breath.

Interesting thought on that policy. So you can reach us Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com and nowhere else, starting right now. Now, we are going to be continuing to do the show. A lot of people said, oh, are you going to run out of shows? Is there anything you can do? We use squadcast.fm. Squadcast.fm. I'm an advisor to this company, but this is remote podcast recording software.

Skype doesn't do well with podcasts. Zoom doesn't do well with podcasts. Squadcast.fm is built for podcasts. So if you have a podcast, I highly recommend checking out squadcast. And we've migrated the six-minute networking course. It's still free. Don't worry. It's on a better platform called Thinkific.

And if you didn't get an email to recreate your account or create a new password, you can go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash course and it will direct you to the new one. It should have saved your account information and your progress and all that stuff. You do have to go to the new course. You will lose access to the old one in a few days. If you don't care, that's fine. Don't worry about it. But I'm adding updates again to the new course.

You won't get it if you don't log in. It's still all free, no worries there. It's just that the old course will not be available for very much longer. Well, a little interlude here. The whole world changed since we recorded this episode, didn't it, Jason? Just a little bit. Just a little bit. I mean, we're not that far ahead with Feedback Friday.

We're like a week ahead, but this week half the free world shut down. So there's that. And we should probably just make sure everyone stays healthy and follow the instructions from the CDC. see, wash your hands, stop going out and pretending like everyone's overblowing this whole thing, because that's not really the case. You have a higher chance of contracting coronavirus if you're going to the grocery stores. Get stuff delivered and then wipe it down. You know, I know you think you've got to go out and get stuff, but you don't.

You can have somebody else do it. I know that sounds a little bit, I don't know, Darwinist. Is that a word, Jason? Darwin-esque, I don't know. Darwin-esque? Yeah, but you really need to, we need to minimize the amount of people that are out and about running around. And man, my in-laws got my wife a birthday cake after she said not to. And we're just like, you know that you're rolling the dice with your life by going to the bakery for a cake that we didn't want.

Yeah, that's not wise. Not smart. They're 60 plus years old. I mean, come on, people. So look, this means you stay inside, stay the F home. We can flatten the curve and get through this thing together. We have tips for working from home based on, I don't know, our collective three decades of experience working from home, maybe more. Yeah, a little more.

I'm a little older. So I got 20 under my belt at least. Yeah, I've got at least 12. So, yeah, three decades and change. So these are not like, make sure you take breaks every 20 minutes. Like, this is real how to work from home stuff from people that actually do it, not from quote-unquote journalist that was paid to do it and has been working from home for three weeks. And please shoot us a note.

Let us know how you're doing. It's easier to stick together through this kind of thing. All right, Jason, what's the first thing out of the mailbag? Hey, J-Team. Due to the recent virus outbreak, many of us are now required to work from home. What are your recommendations for staying productive and being the most effective while working from home? Signed, sheltered in place, like us all. Yeah, we're sheltered in place.

Well, use a work laptop, if you must, but get an external mouse and a keyboard to avoid fatigue and messing up your wrists. I use a laptop too much, and you feel it, you feel it. So I'm trying to use my IMAQ more these days. Jason, do you use external peripherals, if you will? Yeah, as a 20-year veteran of shopping. sheltering in place. Yes, I do all external peripherals unless I'm actually on the road. And I actually just bought a new Vera desk for my bedroom. So I have two workstations that can, I can lift my laptop up so it's at a decent height because you don't want to have your neck bent all day long and got another

keyboard and mouse for that because it's one of those things where ergonomics is key. So if you're used to like sitting there like with a laptop on your desk or you try and work from home with a laptop on your lap, you're going to be in serious amounts of pain and can cause like long-term damage to your back and your neck over time. Oh, yeah. You definitely want to think about ergonomics when you're doing this kind of thing. Also, it's time to make sure you're using Slack or Microsoft Teams with your colleagues. What's funny is a friend of mine who's our graphic designer here.

He's freelancing and he works for another company, a major company, full time. He for months has been trying to get people to install Slack and Microsoft Teams because all he does is sort of drive through LA traffic, park, go sit in a cubicle, do graphic design work, and go home. There's no reason that most of that company can't work from home. Now they're all like, oh, hey, what was that thing that you wanted to do, that everybody wanted to install? Because they were like, stop asking to work from home, and now they have to work from home.

Yeah. So if your employer has Microsoft teams, great. If not, you might want to set up a Slack group just for your department or yourself, because you will save, like, 100 plus emails a day. because you can't walk to someone's office to talk to the person sitting next to you. So all these little notes, all these little video conferences, you've got to set up software for this. I feel bad for people who work with a bunch of less tech companies and their phones are probably

ringing off the hook 40 times a day with little questions that could be a Slack message. Or they're getting 800 emails that are all asynchronous from different people and they're not looping in the right people on threads because they're not a freaking Slack channel for everyone to type in. And then somebody replied all to the entire company and then you have that 1,000 email thread that just will never die. Yeah, yeah, and people going, please remove me from this. You know, it's just like, hey, man, set up freaking slack, it's free. Also, upgrade your internet. I know you probably think it's fast enough. If you've got kids home watching Netflix and so does literally

everybody else in your entire apartment building or neighborhood and you're trying to get work done and you're doing a video conference with a screen share, you need more bandwidth. Do you know what's a good level of bandwidth when the whole network is full, Jason? Because everything gets downgraded like crazy. Yeah, I mean, the basic that I will ever go with is 250 megabits down and 20 up. That's the bare minimum that I shoot for. A lot of the home packages have a lot less. But yeah, when everybody's home and also when the networks get saturated, you need to have overhead on that. But, I mean, nowadays, a lot of people can get gigabit fiber right to their house and upgraded.

I don't know how they're going to be upgrading actual physical lines like that. But if you've just got cable and you just want to call and get a speed bump, you can usually do that on the phone. and it might require a modem update, which they'll send you. I do recommend, honestly, they'll go buying your own cable modem just because it's always going to be cheaper in the long run. But, yeah, it's not that much anymore. I mean, I think I pay 60 bucks a month for $250 down and $20 up. Yeah, that sounds about right.

I think I pay a little more and it's a little faster, but it doesn't matter. But the key is then when the whole neighborhood, you're sharing most of that bandwidth pipe. So if everyone's watching Netflix at the same time in your apartment building, your internet connection starts to suck, and it's going to get really old, really fast. Four, dress up like you're going to work for the first few days. No heels, maybe, but definitely don't just lounge in your PJs or you're going to feel gross and nonproductive, and that gets worse over time.

Look, I've been working from home. Jason, how long have you and I both been working for like decade plus 13 years? I've been doing it for over 20 years, but, uh, yeah. So you and I can probably get away with PJs because it's like... No, don't. You can't? No, man. We call it going down the pajama hole.

Because once you start, then you just start living in PJs and it's a slippery slope. I'm telling you, don't go down the PJ hole because you need to dress up for sure. I dress up. I get up, I take a shower, do everything like I'm going to an office and then go to my desk and do my work. You have to do that. It is imperative when you're working from home. I mean, every now and again, if you're not feeling good or, you know, you have to get

something done, you can start off and get your shower in the middle of the day and dress up. But, I mean, if you don't stick to that, it becomes a really bad slippery slope. And then you're just walking around butt naked and flip flops going, I guess I guess I'm work done. Yeah, I would say I'm not butt naked and flip flops, but I've been in the PJ hole the last couple days because I can't freaking go out. It's been raining here. So I'm like, I'm literally not leaving the house. So I stay to my PJs. And I will say, I felt a little gross as a result.

So you have to dress. You don't have to wear like your pants suit like you're going to give a presentation for the C suite. But you should get dressed like a human. Even if you're in workout gear, make sure it's clean workout gear, not like gross stuff that you just woke up in. This will help you realize that you're at work and you got stuff to do. Also, you should find a workspace that you can make an office at home if you don't already have one.

Getting serious work done from the kitchen counter is a freaking fantasy for most of us. You need a home office. You need to be able to leave stuff out. Jason, I know you had some thoughts on this. Well, you definitely don't want to work from the kitchen because, yeah, you won't get any work done, but what you will get is fat. Because the refrigerator's right there, the pantry's right there, and you're just like, hmm, I could use a snack right now. And it's basically free because I already paid for it. It's not like at the office when you have to go to the vending machine or go

around the corner to the store to get something. You will get fat if you think about the kitchen very often. So you don't want to work from it. You want to stay as far away from it as possible. Yeah, you get fat. And honestly, you need to be able to leave your stuff out. You can't be in a place where you got to put everything away because somebody wants to eat lunch or your kids are there or your kids are going to invade and then you're like, uh, I'm trying to work. It's like, well, you shouldn't be working in the middle of the place where everybody needs to go to get drinks and food, which is what people are going to be doing all day, every day for the rest of the time that we're locked in here, you know? Also use Pomodoro timers. These are these 20 minute timers. There's tons of

apps for these. They'll let you work in a spurt and then give you a little break. And you need this because otherwise you're going to be like, oh, this is happening, that's happening. You're going to get distracted by a bunch of stuff. Do these 20, 30 minute sprints and then go walk around the block, walk around your house, whatever you need to do. If you don't do this, you have to be self-motivated to constantly focus because there's no end in sight and it's really hard to do. I can do it now, but when I started working from home, I was using timers and it worked really well keeping me on task. Yeah, and everybody's phone has timers built into it now. I do 40-20s and, you know, During that 40 minutes, leave me the hell alone.

But in that 20 minutes, I can completely forget about work and you get a brain refresh. I go play with the dogs, let them out to pee. Do anything but think about work. And then as soon as that, soon as time to go back, boom, back at it, focused and back to it. So I found for me, 40-20 works the best. Everybody's kind of, I think, a little bit different as far as how the timing goes. But yeah, Pomodoro is something I use every single day. And I've done that for like 10 years.

Also, make sure you manage expectations with your team and your boss about what can and cannot be done from home. There's a learning curve here, and you're going to need to get through it. We don't all get through the learning curve at the same rate, so you've got to be patient with your colleagues who might be a little less productive of the first couple of weeks,

maybe distracted with their kids. You have to kind of bear in mind that the person who has three kids is not necessarily going to be able to focus as much as the person with no kids, at least in the beginning. But everybody should, after a few weeks, have come up with strategies for this.

And if they don't, then, yes, you can sort of get them on track later, but for the first couple of weeks, I think there's going to be massive differences in people's email response time and how quickly they're getting things done. To that end, use the calendar religiously. Keep the same schedule. So if there's something on your calendar, it gets done. If there's something that's not on your calendar, it doesn't get done. And you've got to really plan out your day in 15 minute blocks, 30 minute blocks. Also, keep the same schedule. If you get up at 7 a.m. and you start work at 9, maybe you can start work at and finish earlier, or maybe you can start work at eight and make up for the lack of focus

with an extra hour of work time. But keep the same schedule. A lot of people get tempted to go, well, now that I don't have to be in the office at the same time, I'm going to start at 10.30 and then catch up, and then I'll just work till 7. It doesn't work. It's a huge pain for everyone that's trying to get a hold of you and it throws off all the projects. So don't be the one person who thinks I'm going to make my own hours now. That's not what this is about unless your boss an organization have let you do that. Also use to-do lists in combination with the calendar. Don't think you're going to remember to do things unless you're that kind of person.

Use something like to-doist or the reminders function and integrate it with your calendar. And don't write down a bunch of stuff to do and then not plan time for it in the calendar. If you've got 18 different tasks, set aside an hour, hour, and a half in your calendar and write tasks. Because if you just have tasks and then you have a bunch of things in half an hour blocks, you're going to run out of time and not do your. to-does and you're in deep trouble if that happens because they pile up. Nine, set boundaries, especially for families and kids while you're working, but also for

colleagues and bosses when you're not working. If you try and manage your kids and your family during work, you're going to have problems. And if your boss and your colleagues are trying to message you when you're trying to have dinner with your kids at 7.30 p.m., that's not going to be good either. Blending home and work will lead to burnout if you don't have these things in place. You've got to be really careful about this because this is, this is. not something that's going to go away soon. And these boundaries are incredibly important when you're dealing with people who are just

starting to learn to work from home. Yeah. I cannot express this enough because everybody, like you said, Jordan, people are going to, like, they don't know when office hours are, but they're going to be sitting at home in their PJs on the couch at 11 at night having some Rocky Road watching Netflix and checking their email and start sending you stuff and trying to call you saying, hey, did you follow up on this, thinking that your hours are their hours? You need to make it extremely specific.

Maybe even put it in your email signature for a while. Say these are office hours while we're going through the lockdown or the sit-in, as it were. And just make sure that they know that those are your available hours. Because if you don't do that, people will be sending you Slack messages or Zoom calls at 11 o'clock at night or 2 in the morning and expecting you to reply. You need to make sure that they do not expect you to reply. They can send them, but do not expect to reply. Yeah, Jen had some issues with this a long time ago when she first

started working from home because especially when we were going through the lawsuits, it was like, hey, I don't want to hear if the lawyer emails after seven, because I'm just going to be anxious and worried about something for the rest of the night. And I'm trying to actually forget about it. And the 930, hey, did you see the email from the lawyer? And now I'm vibrating and shaking and drinking coffee till 4 a.m. because I'm wide. You know what I mean? It's awful. Yeah. So you can't do that. You can't do this to yourself and you can't do it with other people. By way of example, you and I are working a lot during the day. And we have the work chat on Slack. But then at night when we're like playing video games, I'm texting you. But I'm never texting you stuff that should go in the

Slack. And when we're on freaking Xbox yelling and blown shit up, I'm not like, hey, did you get to that notes for the commercials for tomorrow? Like that's, we just don't mention that stuff at all because it's a pain. When the Xbox goes on, the rest of the world disappears. And that's by design. Yes, the brain is off. Yeah, we're not sneaking up to, you know, do stealth kills or whatever the hell game we're playing, you know, call of duty. And then I'm like, hey, by the way, did you get the ad reads for tomorrow? Like, none of us want to deal with that. None of us want to think about that. So you have to be really careful that you're not doing that around your family too and that you're not letting other people creep in. Yeah, yeah,

like segment that time and be just draconian about it. It's like if I got on with Jordan and I'm like, we're getting ready to play some gears five or whatever. And I go, hey, did you see who's up in the podcast rankings? He'd be like, shut up. He'd turn around and kill me. Yeah. Instead of the bad guys. That's right. That's right. And, you know, I would say if you have alerts on your phone, you should turn those off during certain hours for email accounts or account specific. You know, if you're using Outlook at work, turn those alerts off after you shut down for the day or at least silence them for certain hours. Because if you're starting to get emails on your phone or Slack notifications on your phone or Zoom calls on your phone, turn your dang notifications off after 6, 7 p.m. whatever you're allowed to do and whatever your organization. decides. And to that note, use Zoom instead of cumbersome conference dial-in lines. It's so frustrating dealing with people who don't know about modern conference call stuff. They're like, call this number and here's this 18-digit pin and then, oh, shoot, I sent Tom the wrong number

because the number changed from last week. It's like just use freaking Zoom, use the same link every time. Everyone's in the call. Just get everybody on that stuff. Or you're going to be dealing with waiting for people to show up to conference calls for the next three months. And last but not least, schedule your breaks. Go for a walk outside if we're not on total lockdown, play with your kids, jump rope in the garage, you need to get out of the house or be active. We're all going to go bonkers being cooped up for the next couple of months. And yes, it is going to be the next few months, because I was talking with some CDC contacts. People will predict six to eight weeks until we hit peak virus. Jason, you're probably up on this too, right? Like, this is pretty public.

Oh, yeah. Peak virus. So that means the maximum number of infections. That's six plus weeks from now and then four plus weeks after that before things go back to what might look like normal anywhere pretty much in the United States. That's not going to be every city. That's going to be the first cities coming out of this. So that's two to three months of social distancing, isolation, lockdown, whatever we decide to do. And there will be economic pressure to open things early because people have to survive and businesses want to get back going. Different areas are going to have different rules and effects in place. but the general expectancy is that we're in this for the semi-long haul.

And that's a good thing, as long as we don't kill each other in the process. This is Feedback Friday. We'll be right back after this. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. And if you'd be so kind, please drop us a nice rating and review on iTunes or your podcast player of choice. It really helps us out and helps build the show family.

If you want some tips on how to do that, head on over to Jordan Harbinger. Arbinger.com slash subscribe. Now let's hear some more of your questions here on Feedback Friday. All right. What's next? Hey guys, I'm 40 and I've worked at the same company doing the same thing for 20 years. I make decent money, not wealthy by any means, but enough to pay the bills. I grew up poor, so anything more than 40,000 a year seems amazing to me, really. Here's the thing. I hate my job. It's boring. The people are awful. My boss is awful. The policies are awful. I sit in my cubicle the last two hours of every day, just praying time goes by faster so I can get the hell out of there for the day. My current career is extremely specialized, and my choices for moving to another company are slim to none.

And frankly, I don't even want to do this anymore. Recently, I've gotten very interested in cybersecurity after listening to you and some other podcasts that I found. It just sounds like it would be so much fun, but I don't know much about it other than what I've heard from shows and read online. I know that I have none of the skills needed, and it will require that I learn a lot of new things, but I'm actually okay with that. I've started teaching myself to code, and I'm reading books on social engineering,

and I'm finding it a lot of fun and exciting. The scary part is that I can't afford to take a pay cut. My wife and I make just enough to pay our bills, and anything less will hurt us. And did I mention I'm 40? How do you change careers at 40? Is that even possible? The thought of even more student loan debt makes me want to cry.

I've started taking your networking course, but it's been difficult. I didn't realize how few people I know that I don't work with. It seems like all of my text and email contacts are co-workers, and when I made the list of 10 people I would call if shit hit the fan, I came up with three and couldn't think of anyone else. I feel trapped, like I'm stuck at my job rotting until the end of time. What can I do? How do I grow my network?

How do I figure out what to learn? How do I? Actually, I think I just did that thing you guys talk about where I'm writing and I figured out what I need to do or should do on my own, but I think I'm still going to send this anyway, just to hear your two cents. Thanks, guys. I totally love you. Stuck and confused, but hopeful now. Well, I love people who answer their own questions through the thought process of writing the question down,

and that happens all the time, actually. So I can appreciate that. And I think a lot of, there's a lot of value in articulating what you want and writing the questions down as if you're going to send them to somebody, because often you think of the answer before you click send. But to your question, it's not too late at all to change careers. Second acts in life are very common. If you want more on this, you can check out Laura Gassner Audings episode on the show. It was just a couple weeks ago, and she's got her book as well called Limitless. I would totally hire a 40-year-old to learn something new, for sure.

I'm 40. I routinely have to master new skill sets here in my own business. You're not too old. You just feel like you might be because you're so bored at work that you can't imagine getting excited about something at work to learn a new skill. I think that's probably what's going on.

I think a lot of times when you're really, really bored doing what you do, you think, oh, I can't just retrain. I can't learn something new because you can't even think about being energetic enough to pick up something new. And I just got a letter from someone in their 60s who changed careers this year, in large part because of six-minute networking skills and wrote in to share that. So you're not too late at all.

Jason, cybersecurity, this is sort of your area, you know more about it than I do, but you've mentioned that cybersecurity jobs are insanely hot right now. They can't hire fast enough, right? Am I on the right page here? Yeah, they have basically a 100% higher rate right now. They need butts in seats. And just to mention on your changing careers at 40, I was 41 and I'd been a programmer for over 20 years and I completely changed careers to become a professional podcaster. So yeah, it can be done easily. It just, well, not so easily, but if you're motivated enough, you can put in the work. But there are tons of cybersecurity resources out there for you to learn. I will put some in the show notes. I have. a list. We talk about this on Grumpy Old Geeks quite a bit, but there are a bunch of resources where you can get free education, actually, in some cases from, like, the Department of Defense. There are a lot of hacker tools out there that you can learn the basics. And yeah, it's

totally doable and it's a great space. And, you know, right now, since pretty much everybody's probably going to be hunkered at home for a couple months, you have some time on your hands to stay up late at night and put in that time learning it and maybe switch up and get a job when this whole thing's over. My buddy, a VP at Google, he said that cybersecurity folks make him chuckle a bit because they're being hired so fast that people will pay to move them across the country. They'll give them in advance. They'll pay for their schooling and certifications a lot of time. But they always think before they get the job. They're like, oh, I don't know. I'm 27. I'm too late. I don't have any experience. It's going to be impossible to get the job. And then the company's like, you want to work full

time for us in Milwaukee? Cool. Here's an advance. Here's your cost of living allowance. All that stuff like that. And my friend, he says, they don't realize they're the homecoming queen. Like, this is such a hot job right now. Yep. Totally. Besides, with cybersecurity, you can work from home, which you can't beat that these days. Often you can work from home, not always. But that's a good thing in a job these days. Okay, Jay, what's next? Hi, all. I'm a filmmaker and I work out of my friend's home with our other friend. We work for the same company. My friend got me the job a few years back, and I've been loving it ever since. Recently, however, there's been a bit of tension. He's my boss, and it can be weird to ride the line between boss and friend. Do you have any recommendations on how to

handle a relationship like this? I want to keep our friendship intact, but also keep my job for the foreseeable future. One example of a problem we have is, once an hour, I like to stand up and just jog in place for about five minutes. I know that's weird, but it's a nice break from sitting and allows me to get my 20,000 step goal for the day. He's recently been dropping multiple hints that it's annoying him, and now I'm nervous to continue. I feel like a small break-out. Every hour isn't a lot to ask for, but maybe I'm wrong. Am I being entitled? He has a very strong work ethic and works nonstop all day.

He even will continue to work after we all leave at five. I love my job, but don't necessarily want to work like that. As a friend, I'm also worried for him working so hard for so long. But how do I tell my boss slash friend that he's working too hard? Signed, jogging on the job. Yeah, well, I asked Jen about this because I'm always working, but I'm also moving around a lot because I have a ton of energy. I also get 10,000 steps a day. So I bow down to this guy's 20,000 steps a day. That is a ton of walking. That's, I think I usually walk like six to eight miles a day

to get 10K steps. So to get 20K, that's like 15 miles. Jason, I know you get a ton of steps. What do you do on your treadmill desk? I don't do that much on my treadmill desk anymore because it's been nice out and I just go outside. And I actually put the treadmill desk away to make me go outside. But yeah, this guy's doing 20,000 steps a day. And for me, that is about nine miles. So that's about it. It depends on your stride length and how tall you are and stuff. But I'm six feet tall and 20,000 steps for me is right around nine miles. Jeez. Yeah. So imagine 20K steps outside's probably at least 10, just because I think you take longer strides when you're outside powering through. But he's jogging in place. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. This is a ton of

walking or in this guy's case, jogging in place. And Jen said, I can't help but laugh at this question because it's something that would probably bug me too. It's like when you sit across from me and shake your legs. So I bounce my legs sometimes when I'm like really energetic, but I'm on my computer because I've got to move around. And it drives Jen crazy. It drives her insane. So for me, I get it. I would say go do it in the garage, go jog outside. Don't jog in the place where everyone else is working. I wouldn't mind personally. And maybe, you know, your boss can get some dang noise cancelling headphones or something. Look the other way. But People who are getting annoyed, I think there's a bit, there's a little bit, people secretly want to be

annoyed by things. I think it's a subconscious addiction because he can't stop paying attention and that results in a break in his focus, which he then resents. So he resents the break in focus. Nobody really cares what you're doing. But I would say you're not acting entitled for wanting a break every hour to not sit in a chair at a computer. I think that's completely normal. It's certainly healthy to move around like that. And if you need to do it, it's your right to do it. For your boss being a workaholic, though, there's nothing that you can do for that. There's nothing you should do about that. If he owns the company, nothing you do or say is going to be construed as goodwill.

In fact, if he owns the company, his singular focus is making that company successful. So anything you say about working less is just going to reflect poorly on you and on your work habits, even though that isn't really fair. If someone tells me I'm working too hard, I will literally never listen. that has to be something I enforce on myself. If someone who works with me tells me I'm working too hard, I will take it as intended, but a few years ago, I probably would have assumed they were trying to get me to work less

so that they could also work less. And that's not really something you want your boss to have in his head about your work ethic. So jog outside, you're entitled to that, but let your boss work himself to death if he wants to do it. Us business owners are often obsessed with our own thing anyway, and we'd rather do that than do anything else. But jog outside, man.

Jog outside. You don't need to jog in the kitchen. I don't get it. Seriously. At least just don't do it in the same room with him, you know? Yeah, I can see that being weird. I can see that being weird because it makes noise and you're sort of bouncing around. Like, should he turn around and ignore it, probably, but you should probably just also just, you know, do it outside.

And to be fair, we would tell you a while back when you were working too hard to take a break because you just turned into a jerk sometimes. So maybe that's what's going on with his buddy. Yeah, it might be. Yeah, like, I definitely need to, like, go outside, go to the gym and stuff and take a break, but the whole, like, you know, if I'm still working at 7.30, 8 o'clock and someone's like, you're working too hard. If it's my wife, fine. But if it was somebody who worked with me, I'd be like, uh, yeah, maybe you're not working hard enough, you know, like, maybe that's what's wrong. You know, I'm getting everything done. So I wouldn't tell your boss he's working too hard and he's going to, he's going to burn out, because he's not going to burn out, most likely. He's just going to think that you don't want to work hard. I don't know. There's kind of no way for you to win that one. That's a Kobayashi my room, my friend. What's that again? Like, catch-22?

No, no, it's the unwinnable situation from Star Trek. Oh, yeah. All right, Jason, what's next? Dear Jordan, I just listened to your episode on how to ask for advice, and it spurred a question that I would like to get your thoughts on. I have a great job, and a big part of it is the relationships I've built in my community for decades. I love to serve as a sort of mentor for young men and women who I meet in my day-to-day life and want advice. I'm also happy to meet with people that someone from my network asks me to help

out. However, I've recently noticed a dramatic increase in what I'll call cold call requests for networking from people I don't know, and we don't have a friend in common, usually via LinkedIn. I find I don't want to meet these people. It bothers me that someone would reach out to a total stranger and have an expectation that I would take the time to meet them for coffee to network. Am I being a total jerk? Should I meet with anyone who reaches out because it's the way the world works? Your thoughts are very much appreciated, assigned Craby from Cold Calls. those of you wondering which episode that was, that was 321 How to Ask for Advice. Remarkably popular episode. I'm glad to see that. Look, you're not being a jerk at all. In fact, I think random people

asking to meet up is actually a little entitled. Usually it's just misguided. People don't understand. It's younger people with fewer obligations most of the time. They have more free time. They don't have a clue how busy other people are. I was the same way in my 20s, even my early 30s. Like, hey, let's hang out, let's meet up. And I remember feeling a little blown off when somebody would say, you know, hey, I can't really do that, but shoot me a note about anything I can help with. And I remember when I, long time ago, Jason, when you sort of set me up with Tim Ferriss, we were talking about this because it was like constant for both him and I at that point. Yeah. And I felt bad and he's like, yeah, you just have to get over that because you could have 17 coffee meetups a day and not even make a dent

in the requests. And it's true. And I get it. I was a little entitled myself. It's mostly, again, just not knowing how busy other people are, and they don't really want to respect that some of the time. So no, do not meet up with people who want to meet up just because they want to meet up. You have to protect your time. Here are a few ideas on how to do that. First, when somebody reaches out to you, ask them how you can help. If they ask to meet, simply deflect and ask for more detail on how you can help. So, for example, reply to their request to meet with something like, I'm happy to help, but I need a bit of background.

What do you think you need in terms of advice or guidance? If they don't reply, good, you're done, you're off the hook. If they do, make sure they give you the whole background and type it up for you. Not like, oh, let's just jump on the phone and I'll give it to you. No, no, no, no. This type of ask is good for you because it gets the asker to jump through hoops and clarify their thinking. You'll find that many people answer their own questions, or they don't even have a question in the first place.

They're just thinking out loud and they also kind of want to meet you so that you have to sit across from them while they think out loud, you don't need to be in the room for that. I also know you want to help and serve others, but the best use of your time is to help the top 10% or top 20% of people that have actually earned your time and attention. Force people to clarify their thinking. Force them to write out a clear ask. And then they have to tell you what they've done so far in order to get closer to their goals. That's a great way to eliminate the vast majority of tire kickers and timeways.

that have absolutely no intention of ever implementing your advice. Dealing with time wasters, it's actually the number one way to burn out and then not be able to help anyone. So for the sake of your own sanity, to preserve your own willingness to deal with and help others, screen your mentees, screen your meetings just like you would job applicants. It's that important. There's no better way to not ever want to help anyone than to just meet up with everyone. So if you screen these people out, and they'll self-screen, you can just say, again, force them to clarify their thinking, tell them they've got to ask you specific questions. And then if they've got really complex specific questions that would be better answered, you don't want to type the answers. Just record a voice memo. You could record a little video if you really want to go the extra mile. Driving to some coffee shop and meeting up is kind of a ridiculous ask. Asking for a meeting, I don't even want to take meetings with people at work that are working with me on a project.

So why would I meet a random stranger who's not sure really what they want? You know, it just doesn't make sense. The 80-20 or the 90-10 rule here is in effect. I think most people that ask for advice, they don't even want advice. We talked about this before. They don't even want advice. They just want to be validated. They want to meet up with you.

They want to think out loud. Again, you don't have to use your time for that, nor should you. Don't do it. You know, there's one other option here that if he does want to meet these people, he can batch it. I had some CEO friends in San Francisco and they would take one day for like four hours, sit at blue bottle coffee and let people book 15 minutes with them. And he would vet them before they got the invite link to pick a time. And then he would just sit there with his laptop and just run through people. And he met some really good friends.

Actually, a couple friends were doing this little 15 minute coffee meetup thing. And it turned out that they could just batch their entire month worth of inbounds and just get it out of the way and still make some new contacts and make some new friends. and not waste too much of their time. You know, that's a pretty good idea. You just sit there someday on a light work day or where you just, you're like zeroing out your inbox or something, and then when people are late, you can answer three or four emails. Or if somebody's a no-show, which is bound to happen,

you can just plow through emails. And then when people come in, they can't sit there for 45 minutes because they have a 15-minute time slot and the first, you know, two minutes are going to be small talk or whatever. Yep. And then they're done. And then someone else shows up. and they're like, oh, you're in a meeting, and you're like, nope, I was just finishing up here with

so-and-so, and they're like, oh, okay, we're done now, bye. So you get to plow through that. I would still screen the inbound. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you'd still have to, yeah. Yeah, you'd still have 20 out of 20, 20 out of 22 people showing up and being like, I don't really know what I want. I'm just not happy with my job. I guess maybe I want another job, but they're a job where I just, you know, do everything

that I want, nothing that I don't want. I mean, you're going to end up with dumb non-questions and people, should I start a clothing line? No, you shouldn't. But I want to. Okay, bye. You know, you're going to end up with a bunch of that. So screen, screen, batch, batch, batch. That's why you just have a limited number of slots and a bunch of people can email and you just pick the top people. And then it just is a great way to just plow through it. And like I said, two of my friends who were pretty powerful CEOs, I don't want to name them on the show. But I think they did it for about a year, like once a month for a year. And they both had like great experiences with it. We'll be right back with more feedback Friday right after this. Thank you for supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us on the air. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com

slash deals. Now back to the show for the conclusion of Feedback Friday. All right. What's next? Hi there. I have some friends who are attractive to look at. I tend to be shy and talk less when they're around. Do you have any suggestions for me?

I'm an introverted male and I'm married and I have a lovely daughter. Also, I have similar social anxiety related to day. doubts as I don't like to talk a lot. But other people tend to observe that and ask why I'm not talking. And I'm thinking internally, I have no interest in what you're talking about, but have a rather opposite view to your point and just not speaking out because it might hurt you or are conversations in the future. Signed the shy guy. This is a strange one because it sounds like he's nervous around attractive people, but then sort of thinks it makes him shy because, oh no, but I'm married, so I can't possibly be attracted to somebody else, which is just not how biology works

at all. Yeah. So the obvious cause here is that you're attracted to these women and you feel weird about that maybe because you're married, so you feel shame and you also feel like your lower status. Something tells me this person is from a culture or another place that doesn't have a very open society when it comes to human sexuality, maybe a conservative country, maybe the Middle East, something like that, it's hard to say. I kind of got that feeling as well, yeah.

Yeah, I can't put my finger on it, but I'm getting that vibe. Spidey sense is tingling for that. Yeah, yeah, because I would expect to see a note like this from maybe a younger teenager or a teenager that's a little introverted, not from a grown man who's married and has kids. Yeah, that's what threw me for a loop. I'm like, he's married and has a daughter, but he can't talk when he's around attractive people? Hmm. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, look, there are some people that have social anxiety and that's a thing. but then they don't mistake that for sexual attraction, right? They don't think it, they just go, no, I'm actually just shy. But it's so clear here by what's written that it is sexual attraction, or physical attraction, I should say. So look, you're nervous because of status and because those people are attractive. I get it. What you need to do or what you can do is realize you don't need anything from these people and you have to practice social interaction in groups.

That's what leads me to believe that he's from a conservative place and maybe has limited practice being around the opposite sex in a social situation. Eventually, you just won't care if you get enough practice. This is a hundred percent practice realizing that people who have status really aren't paying any attention to how much you're talking most of the time. So since we're assuming this is written by somebody who maybe isn't native to the United States, here, if somebody asks why you're not talking, usually, but not always, they're trying to include you in the conversation. Sure, sometimes they could be trying to embarrass you, but most of the time, like 99% of the time.

They're just wondering why you're not talking. They want to include you in the conversation. You can simply say that you'll like to listen more than talk most of the time, or that you're thinking about what's being said and formulating an opinion. You can also disagree with people politely. At least we're supposed to be able to do that in this country. It seems harder nowadays, but you're supposed to be able to do that. In any case, yours sounds like a very normal level of social anxiety.

Maybe it's tweaked a little, but this can be remedied through repeated interaction. It happens to everyone. It's not something to be worried about at all. And yes, being nervous around attractive people, especially of the opposite sex, happens all the time, especially if you're not very practiced in that. The key is to forget about it, realize you don't need their approval for anything at all. And ironically, this makes you higher status in their eyes and more likely to gain that approval in the end. So thanks for the note and welcome to the show. All right, last but not least, what's up, Jason?

Hi, Jordan, Jason and Jen. At a young age, it came out in my family that my two older brothers were sexually abusing my younger sister. After the breaking of this news, one of my brothers was sent to a rehab camp for many years, five years or more. My second brother was first sent to live with an aunt and uncle of mine, then live separately with my dad in an apartment for a few years. This understandably broke our family. Thankfully, my sister seems to have gotten the help she needed. My parents are still and have always been together, and while they were the best, parents in the world, they were never quite there for us kids emotionally. Now we're adults. My brothers and I are still in our hometown, and we all seem to suffer from the same mental and emotional issues, varying degrees of depression, anxiety, and addiction. I'm the more quote-unquote successful one, being that I'm the youngest of the three, but I'm married and about to finish college, but I still feel a lot of what they feel too. I'm thinking of starting better help, thanks to you all, but here's my question. At this moment, my second oldest brother is in the worst shape. and I feel like him living alone is hindering him from getting better.

Should I approach him into offering to split something like a rental house with my wife and I so that he doesn't feel alone and where it feels like it's easier to fall into his addictions? What as the youngest brother should I be responsible for? My parents have tried to help by paying for counseling, but I feel like it hasn't done him any good. If moving in together isn't the best idea, what would you suggest I do to be as supportive as possible? He lives about 30 minutes away, so I've thought about trying to video call during the week but I'm at a loss for how to help. Thanks for all that you do.

Sincerely, three emotionally blind mice. Well, you're in a tough spot, and there's more going on here than I think we're aware of right now from the sound of it. If your two brothers were abusing your younger sister at a very young age, then it's almost certain that someone else abused them.

And if your parents were emotionally unavailable and your dad even had to live apart from your sister with one of your brothers, it just feels like something else is going on here, and we don't have all the details. Maybe even you don't have. all the details, depending on how much your family wanted to tell you. Rather than trying to look into the crystal ball that I don't even have, I'm just going

to get to your questions here. First though, you should absolutely get therapy for whatever you're feeling in terms of anxiety, depression, guilt. BetterHelp is a good place to start, of course, and if you need something more, I strongly recommend that you go and do it. For those of you who want to dip your toes into the therapy waters, you can go to BetterHelp.com slash Jordan. It supports the show, you get a discount, win-win.

is key here. And the reason it's important is not only because it'll help you keep sane and balanced, but if you're thinking of getting more involved in your siblings' lives, then you'll need backup from your therapist to keep your orbit clean and make sure you're able to handle tough situations more effectively, especially as this involves family. As for whether you should split a rental house with your brother, I highly recommend you do not do this. When you invite someone with addiction and other issues into your home to live, you're asking for those issues to become your issues as well. Not necessarily you becoming an addict or something,

but you're having someone else's problems become your problems. I'm not saying you have to avoid people with these issues, especially family, but I am saying that you're bringing your brother and his issues into your wife's life, into your marriage. If you have kids, they're going to be affected by this. Also, this is somebody who sexually abused your sister. Maybe it was a long time ago,

but you said yourself, they haven't done a whole lot to kind of curb their issues. Do you want this person living in your home with your own family? He's already shown that he cannot be trusted with family. I don't know if I would bring this into my life. If you had some property nearby that you were able to let him use or something, that's one thing. But even if this guy lived under the same roof as you, it doesn't mean you can babysit him all the time

and make sure he doesn't fall into his negative patterns of addiction. People who are addicts are going to find a way. There are people that escape from rehab, you know, that are, look, even if you could keep an eye on him 24-7, Is that the life you want for yourself and your family? I don't think that's healthy for you. And if you need proof that addicts can find a way, bear in mind that people will go to a prison infirmary, a prison infirmary with alcohol poisoning. They OD on drugs.

Addicts get better when they get help, not when they get surveillance, not when they get supervision from somebody who's not even trained for this sort of thing. This all goes back to the idea of responsibility. I get that you feel responsible for your family, but you are not. These are adults. Yes, they may need your help sometimes, but help in this case means guidance, advice where applicable, wisdom they haven't been able to get on their own, etc. It does not mean sacrificing yourself on the altar of the familial bond because that's how you were raised. I'm guessing that as a kid, most of the focus was on these brothers after what they did and on your sister, and you may have been raised to put their needs before yours because that's what your

family did, you may also think that since your parents were not emotionally available for you, that love means always letting people have access to you and to your emotions, and that is not the case. So through therapy, you'll learn healthy boundaries and how to maintain those boundaries. And I think that's a healthy thing for you to learn right now as an adult, because you might not have had the chance to do so growing up. The good news is you sound like a caring, successful person, so I applaud you there. Just don't let your current lack of boundaries damage what you've built for yourself and for your own immediate family. Hope you all enjoyed that.

I want to thank everyone that wrote in this week. A link to the show notes for the episode can be found at Jordan Harbinger.com. Shout out to Ashley Jensen, who sold her dad's medical device company using some of the things that she learned on the show. So that's awesome. I'm glad to hear that. We helped you get through a lot of stuff, and she uses better help to get through the stress of having sold the company.

That's kind of funny. Very heartfelt thanks for that. and enjoy being frozen down there in Minneapolis, but at least you get to stay home now. Go back and check out the guest from this week, Gavin DeBecker, Part 1 and 2, if you haven't heard that yet. If you want to know how I managed to book all these great guests and manage relationships,

I use systems and I use tiny habits so it doesn't feel like work. Check out our six-minute networking course, which is free over at jordanharbinger.com slash course. Do it now, don't do it later. You get plenty of time now, hopefully, so dig the well before you get thirsty. for free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. I'm on Instagram and Twitter. It's a great way to engage

with the show. Videos of our interviews are also at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. Jason? And you can check out my tech podcast, grumpy old geeks while you shelter in place. We discuss what went wrong on the internet, who's to blame, along with cybersecurity apps, gadgets, books, and more. And we also talk a lot about what we talked about today, about tips and tricks for staying sane working from home and some technology advice along those lines. And that's over at Grumpy Old Geeks, wherever your favorite podcasts are sold. This show is created in association with Podcast One. This episode was produced by Jen Harbinger, edited by Jace Sanderson, show notes by Robert Fogarty,

music by Evan Viola. Keep sending in those questions to Friday atjordanharbinger.com. Our advice and opinions and those of our guests are their own. And I'm a lawyer, but not your lawyer. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. And remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. And if you found this episode useful,

please share it with someone else who can use the advice that we gave here today, which I think is a lot of people working from home. We've got lots more in store for 2020. Very excited to bring it out to you. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this.

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