The One You Feed - Special Episode: How to Work From Home

Episode Date: March 20, 2020

As the COVID-19 pandemic intensified earlier this week, Eric reached out to several previous guests of the show to ask them if they would be willing to talk with him for a special edition of The One You Feed Podcast. They all generously agreed at a moment’s notice and this episode is the result. These mini-interviews are with 4 experts on the subject of human behavior and Eric talks with each of them about how we might go about structuring our time, environment and mindset on living and working from home. These are all new conversations with previous guests, David Kadavy Charlie Gilkey, Chris Bailey, and Liz FosslienYou can find all of the most up to date crisis help & support resources that Eric is making available through The One You Feed by going to www.oneyoufeed.net/helpIn This Episode, We discuss…How to set boundaries for yourself in your time, space, and mindThe Pomodoro MethodWays to divide your physical space for workSetting up mental boundaries to get into and out of a work mindsetMisdiagnosing distractions when they’re actually challenges of competing prioritiesPre-work, lunchtime, and post-work routinesMaking your environment work for youThat your environment matters more than your willpower over the long termHow to be productive while in crisis modeReplacing your commute-to-work time with self-care activitiesBest practices for consuming the news while working from homeHow it’s ok to feel feelings during this difficult timeBest practices for managing people Deciding the next day’s priorities at the end of the previous dayNot letting praise be something that gets lost while working virtuallyEmotionally proof-reading your messages before sendingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi everyone, welcome to a special edition of The One You Feed. This episode is all about how to structure your time and days now that so many more people are working from home and have their families at home with them. What I've done is reach out to some previous guests and ask them if they would share their thoughts with you and they, with incredible generosity and at a moment's notice, made time to do so in order to be of help at this critical time.

They're all productivity experts, and I've asked them for some of their ideas on how we can make this transition to working from home and how to set some boundaries for us between our work lives and our personal lives. These are all new conversations with previous guests. In addition, we've been working hard over here to try and think of some things that might help you and support you in this difficult time. This episode is one example of that. We'll have another episode out on Tuesday, our regular day, which is going to be about dealing with our emotions and our fears during this time. I again reached out to some of my favorite guests from the past,

and they generously agreed to come back and talk with me about handling our emotional and mental health during this period. We're also going to be doing a few other things that I want to tell you about, and all of what I'm about to tell you can be found at oneufeed.net slash help. First, I'm going to start offering a free weekly group coaching call. This is going to start this Wednesday, the 25th, at noon Eastern Time, and it will happen at the same time each Wednesday thereafter for the foreseeable future. It will be an opportunity for you to ask questions, let me know what you're struggling with, and I'll offer my thoughts on how you can work through

those things in the most productive, healthy, and strengthening way. Secondly, I'll be making a number of one-on-one coaching spots available for free to healthcare workers. So if you're a healthcare worker and you're on the front lines of all this and you could use a little bit of extra support, email me at eric at oneufeed.net and we can talk. In addition, I'm going to discount all of the one-on-one coaching programs. So over the next several weeks, I'll be discounting my private coaching services to make them accessible to as many people as possible who need them. So if you're wrestling with restructuring your day, building new routines or habits, or you're wrestling with your emotions and dealing with those, or like most of us, you're dealing with a blend of those things,

the coaching program might be a really good support for you, and I will be offering discounts on it over what we normally do. You can get more details about all these things at a new page we've created. It's at oneufeed.net slash help. It'll have details on how you can join the free weekly call, how the healthcare workers can get in touch with me, and how to learn about the discounted coaching sessions. It'll also have a link to the Facebook live session that I did the other night and anything else that we create that will help during this time. So go to oneufeed.net slash help for all of that.

Also, if you're not connected to our email list or on social media, this is a great time to consider doing that because we'll continue to share new things that we are offering via all of those channels. time to consider doing that because we'll continue to share new things that we are offering via all of those channels. And again, at oneyoufeed.net slash help, you can get access to all the free resources and you can get on the email list there and connect with us via social media. I wish you the best in staying safe, healthy, and sane in this difficult time. I hope you enjoy this episode about structuring your time while being at home, and we'll have another one out

about dealing with difficult emotions on Tuesday. Be well. Thank you. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com We'll be right back. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandy B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And first up, we have David Kadavy. He's a best-selling author, blogger, podcaster, and speaker. On episode 283 of the One You Feed podcast,

David and Eric discussed his book, The Heart to Start, Stop Procrastinating and Start Creating. Hi, David. Thanks for taking some time to come back on and chat with me about how people who are newly working from home can be more effective and deal with the unique challenges of working from home. Thank you for having me on, Eric. As I said, I was just thinking about the same thing this morning. So I guess great minds think alike. Yes, yes.

So people are working from home in unprecedented numbers, and a lot of people who just are not used to doing it or have never done it. And so what are some things that they can do to make that transition more seamless for them? I think it really starts with boundaries. I've been working for myself, aka working from home, for 13 years. And, you know, at first, when you first start doing it, you think, oh, this is so cool. I can work whenever I want. I can work on the couch. I can sit on my bed and work. And it doesn't take too long before you realize that that's not a good idea. So I think boundaries in general, you know, I think there's three places where you need to set boundaries. That's in your time,

your space, and in your mind. And we can expand on all those if you want. Yeah. Let's, let's, uh, let's work through this. I think I agree with you a hundred percent as somebody who in the last year and a half, I guess it's been a little bit longer than that, moved to working from home exclusively. I have certainly found both the wonderful parts of it and the challenging parts of it. And I think I agree with you that what I have found is I do need to set some boundaries. So let's walk through each of those categories. I think the first you said was time. Yeah, the first is time. And it's interesting because I think that working from home is really not so much about time management as it is mind management.

All of these things are set up to create boundaries in your mind. Because when you work in an office, you've got eight hours. But how many of us are really working for all those eight hours? And then you come home and now it's really not so much how much time you're going to spend on things. It's are you going to get things done? And you usually find that you just can't really focus for eight hours. So I think first, you want to set up some boundaries with your time. And this is extremely useful because there's so many distractions at home, right? I, you know,

I guess I shouldn't say fortunately, but I don't have kids. Fortunately for my work, I don't have kids. I don't have that aspect going on. But there are other things. There's a plant that I see that needs to be watered or I need to do some dishes, things like that. And so if you can set up a boundary for those things where, you know, maybe you do realize I need to water this plant or I need to do some dishes, you just stop for a second and say, okay, well, I'm not going to do that right now. I'm working between these hours and at 11 a.m. I'm going to take a break and I'm going to do that. Or I'm not going to do that. That can wait until the end of the day. So setting up some boundaries with your time is really big because it can create that mental boundary that you naturally have when you're going into an office every day because you go into that office and what happens over time, you get conditioned so that you're suddenly in that right mental state to do work when you get in that office. You don't have that at home. So you have to create those spaces yourself.

One of those ways is through time. Yep. Yep. I agree a hundred percent. And I think that working from home is a great way to start trying out some working techniques like the Pomodoro method or Palsy. Because again, when we walk into an office, we sort of sit down, like you said, and we're in our work environment, and we're going to be there for eight hours. And some of that's really focused, some of it's not really focused, but we're kind of there. And at home, it's very different. And so I find, you know, it's a lot more effective to be like, all right, I'm going to work for a chunk of time. And then I'm going to give myself a little break. And then I'm going to work for a chunk of time in these really focused blocks of time with breaks. And being home means that those breaks,

you can do things during those breaks that you can't normally do at work, which is great. And then knowing when it's time to get back. And so, you know, I sort of live by my timer. Like, all right, I'm on for an hour, 15 minute break, or I'm on for 30 minutes, five minute break, but I set the timer for both the time I work and for the break time. So I know when it's time to return. Yeah. And I really love that because if you're setting these, these chunks of time,

like you mentioned the Pomodoro technique, you might set a timer for 40 minutes or 20 minutes or whatever. When you set that chunk of time and it gives you that boundary within which to focus, you have to re-architect your brain to be able to work from home. And your brain is plastic. So any thought that you have, it's going to become easier for you to have that thought. So if you are every two minutes going and doing a chore while you're trying to get work done, you're going to carve those neural pathways. You're going to set up bad habits. But if you do create those spaces where there's 20 minutes that you're going to be focused and anything that you think about, you can just kind of set off to the side. You're starting to carve those neural pathways to be

focused on the thing that you're working at when you're in this home environment, which is going to be critical to your productivity. Yep, exactly. So, okay, so we've talked about time. What's the next boundary? The next boundary is space. And you might have some idea what I'm talking about here is that if you have a home office or a separate room that you can work in, that's great. That will help condition you so that if you can make it so that you're only working when you're in that space and when you're in that space, you're only working, that's wonderful. Not all of us have that space though, but there's other ways that you can manipulate your space so that you can condition yourself and create those boundaries so that you

are in the right mental state to work when you're deciding it's time to work. I had a perfect example of this 13 years ago when I started on my own. I had a tiny bedroom in San Francisco. I mean, you can imagine apartments are small in San Francisco. This bedroom was so small, there was hardly any room between the bed that I had and the desk for there to even be a chair there. But what I did was I set up a boundary by changing the space when it was time for me to work. So, you know, those little room dividers that you can get at probably Target or all sorts of places? They're also called Soji screens. I don't know if people normally call them that.

But I had one of those, like a translucent one, and I would set it up around my desk and I'd make a little cubicle for myself. And then I'd get like a little clip lamp and I just would sort of redirect the light upwards to kind of change not only the space, but also the lighting in the room. And then that's where I would work. And then when it was time to shut things down, I'd shut off the lamp. I would go the room divider around the desk so that I couldn't even see the desk anymore. So that way, my brain was conditioned then so that when that was set up, it was time for me to work. When that was taken down, then I could sleep. I wasn't thinking about sleeping while I was working, and I wasn't thinking about working so much while I was sleeping.

Yeah, that's a great solution. And I have seen on social media this week, there have been some hilarious home setups of the way people are working, people working on big garbage cans, people working on ironing boards. Apparently, ironing boards are the new adjustable desk. Oh, it's not a standing sitting desk. I just got one of those. They're wonderful. They're wonderful to have. So I need to check that out. That sounds entertaining to see some of these home setups. Yes. So yeah, but I think it's a great idea. And I think that, you know, we can try, and I think your example is a great one for how can we sort of transform our space to sort of mark out these boundaries. So, okay, so we've got time, space, and our final one. Our mind.

You can set up mental boundaries to help condition yourself to get into the right mind state for work. And also, importantly, to get out of that mind state into a different mind state when work is over. When you've decided that work is over. And I think that's important, too. To have some kind of boundary late in the day where, you know, after this time I'm not working anymore. And so the way that you can create these mental boundaries is just through rituals. And I've already described a bit of one, which was the setting up of the room divider and setting up the, uh, the lamp that really changed the feeling of the space. But there was also a sense of ritual to that. And I didn't mention that in addition to that, one thing I did was there was a certain

album that I would play immediately when I started working. And it was the same album every time that I started. And it just had this beginning to it where that was just my cue to get into the mental state to work. Additionally, I had an aromatherapy diffuser that I set up, and I would specifically use lemon aromatherapy scent, and you could come up with whatever one you wanted. But adding those things on helped create a mental ritual that created that boundary. I've heard of all sorts of other things. It really doesn't matter what you decide as long as you do it over and over again. There's a writer who I know who has a Star Wars mug. And so he only drinks out of the Star Wars

mug when he's going to write. So he knows that when he sets up his coffee, when he touches his Star Wars mug, that means it's time for him to write. I remember hearing a quote from some writer who was saying, you know, it really doesn't matter what you decide. You could say, I'm going to only write wearing flip-flops on my back deck and that was going to have a placebo effect. And that's going to help you get in the right state to work as long as you decide that it's going to and you repeat it on a regular basis. I love those ideas. There's a playlist on Spotify called Deep Focus

and the first song on it. I love that one. Yeah, that first song, what is it? It's never even looked till now. It's called Under the Wind by the Tides is the first song. But that song for me sort of triggers a little bit of a like, OK, now it's time to sort of settle in and and work right now. So I think music is a great way to do that. Yeah. So all those things you can use to to just set up those boundaries. I think the boundaries

part is really important and is something that especially when you first get started, it takes a while to learn the hard lesson that you need to create some boundaries. Yeah, it's absolutely essential. I have found working from home to be wonderful in some ways, and as you said, extremely challenging in others. I think the other thing for me that I found so important is to get up and get out of the house a little bit. And now this is not a time to go like visit your local coffee shop right now. I've been really enjoying being out in nature a lot more. I find it nature is sort of a always a great touchstone for me. But that's another one for me is remembering to get out of the house because since I don't leave to go to work, if I

don't make a point of getting out, I never leave. And then I start to get claustrophobic. You know, it's funny that you mentioned that because I do the same thing. I'm a writer. So mornings I'm spending writing. But eventually I get kind of a mental log jam going. And actually, just before I got on this conversation with you, there's a park near my house that has all these beautiful bamboo trees in it. And, you know, we're under quarantine, so there's not a lot of people there, so that's important. So I was just in that park,

sitting and thinking and relaxing and thinking a little bit about this conversation too. So I actually use it as a creative session to prepare and think about what I was going to talk about with you. Awesome. Well, I love it. Well, thank you so much for taking a few minutes to talk with us. These have been really helpful ideas. Great. Thank you so much for having me. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you

and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us tonight. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello,

Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Up next is Charlie Gilkey, who was our guest on episode 300 of the One You Feed podcast, where Eric and him discussed his

book, Start Finishing, How to Go from Idea to Done. Hi, Charlie. Happy to have you with us to talk here for a couple minutes. I appreciate you making the time. Hey, Eric, I'm super pumped to be back and appreciate being asked. So what I'm trying to do with this short little episode is just give people who are newly working from home some tips on how to make the transition and make it as seamless as possible and allow them to find some sanity in working from home. So maybe you could start off by just giving us a couple tips that you have for people who are working from home now. for people who are working from home now? So I'm going to lead my tip with sort of a mindset shift, because I think in when you first start working from home, people misdiagnose distractions and interruptions, when really there are challenges with competing priorities and boundaries. And I say that because when you're at home, you're presented with a lot of different things. Maybe

it's kids that are at home too, or maybe it's another adult working partner. And you know, you're sitting there in the middle of a work block and you're like, oh, I need to get groceries. And maybe I need to do laundry. And those priorities don't exist in a way when you're at work. And so really understanding that so much of the distractions and interruptions that you might be facing are really the shifting priorities that go on with you triggered by the environment that you're in is super, super helpful. So one of the tips that I would put in place is at the very minimum, recreate or re-engineer their pre-work, lunch, and post-work routines. Most people, whether they are intentional about it or not, do in fact have a pre-work routine. They have a lunch routine and they have a post-work routine. They have a lunch routine, and they have a post-work routine,

and those give the beginning, middle, and end of a day such that it turns that long, what am I going to do today, into coherent blocks that you can use more purposefully. What are some examples of those types of routines that people could put in place when they're at home? Because when we're working, some of those things, they're very clearly bookended by things like a commute, as an example, as a sort of enforced routine. But we have a commute that allows us to transition. Absolutely. And so something I've worked with people for years, and it sounds crazy, Eric, but I will encourage people who are newly working from home to actually walk around the block one way at the beginning of the day, and then walk around the block the other way at the end of the day.

And that creates a similar level of space and movement that parallels the commute. And it also gets people to trigger into like, oh, yeah, when I come home, I normally do X. I normally like scoop the loader box. I normally do all these sort of things. And you can actually piggyback upon those native routines that you built. And so absolutely recreating your commute, you know, not having it be the, I wake up in the morning and I step six feet and I start working at the table. It's a very good thing to do. Another thing that I've talked about with some

people is, you know, if you've been making lunch for yourself and kids to take it to work, maybe keep doing that, right? There's no reason that you can't go ahead and get all that set up in the morning, just the same way as you would if you were going to work. And then when it's lunchtime, you're not having yet another thing to do on top of eating lunch. And so you just eat what you pre-made. And what I want to lean into here, or at least amplify here, is that so many of these routines have a physical movement component to it. And that's really important because not only does it give you space from the devices, not only does it give you space from the anxieties and the news, it actually recruits your body into helping you memorize, process, move, stretch, things like that. And so any of those routines that have a movement component are just going to be so much better for you than, you know, sitting in a chair or sitting in, sitting, you know, on the couch all day. Because again, you don't have stairs to climb,

you don't have parking around to you don't have a bus you need to catch. And all those things do work for us that a lot of times we don't see. Yeah, I think finding ways to move is a challenge and particularly so right now. Absolutely. And, you know, I'm fortunate. I live in Portland right now and it's sunny and the weather's nice. And so I understand that there are other places in the world, in the United States, that maybe it's still snowy and cold outside. The amount of times it takes you to put on your clothes and go outside and walk is actually really good integration and separation time from whatever may be holding onto your attention from the news cycle or from the social media cycle. Yeah, I'm in Columbus and it has been cold and wintry. We had a surprising amount of snow the other day, but I've been certainly making a point to get outside, walk, bundle up, just be outdoors and move some just because I felt like I've needed it for sure. Yeah. Another thing to think about as far as routines, or it's not quite a routine, but it's close, is making your environment work for you. A lot of times our home offices or kitchen

tables, depending upon which way you roll with that, aren't necessarily set up for us to be and which way you roll with that aren't necessarily set up for us to be focused and not distracted, not interrupted. And so maybe it's time to change. For instance, if you have a TV room or an entertainment room, maybe it's time to sort of change that around, co-opt that as your office, maybe get the TV out. Or if you know that there are certain things, especially electronics in your room that are distracting you, it may be worth taking time to remove those things completely rather than fidgeting with them and fighting with them all day. And so, you know, while we have this general

background anxiety because of the pandemic and a new way of working and the social media cycle, news cycle, last thing you need to do is fight with your environment too. And simple changes make a huge difference here. And sometimes it's replacing that, you know, used chair that you got six years ago at the Goodwill store and actually buying a for real office chair. And to this point, we got to remember that this may not be a short term thing. It might not be three, four weeks where we're working from home. This could be three, six, nine months. And so your environment over the long term is going to matter way more than your willpower, way more than any sort of

grit that you want to put into it. So it might be time to invest in some of those things that makes it work for you. Totally makes sense. And I think that idea about trying to get our environment to work for us, it makes me think of wrestling with the news cycle or wrestling with social media. I found that it's been helpful sometimes when I feel like I'm not winning that wrestling match to let my devices do the limiting for me. So there, you know, there's lots of tools on our phones, on our computers that can block us, can actually stop us. Like no more Twitter, Eric, like you're done. And so if, if we are finding that, like we're setting an Eric, like you're done. And so if if we are finding that like we're setting an intention, I want to spend less time doing that I want to spend less time and we're

still not finding ourselves able to hold that intention, then it's really can be useful to use some of those tools to set some of those limits for us because this is a hard time to set those limits for sure. Harder for me than normal by a long shot. I absolutely agree. There's an app called Cold Turkey Blocker that saves my bacon almost every day because it allows me to set up different applications and websites. And I also want to talk about environment here. So one of the things that you could do is rather than fight your phone in the distractions all day, like keep your phone in the kitchen when you're working upstairs in your home office. And you know, that physical distance, and there's plenty of research that

shows that just having your phone in your work area decreases your IQ decreases your focus. And so it's not about what the phone is actually doing. It's about your relationship with the phone and its proximity to you. And so for instance, my wife and I, we have a cubby where our iPhones, so we walk in the house, the iPhones go in the cubby, they stay there most of the day, most of the time until we intentionally go back. And like, you know what, I actually want to check my test messages to see what's going on. And then we do that. And then we put it back in the cubby and go on with our lives. It harkens back to that time, Eric, you probably remember where we used to have to go to a wall where they had a phone on it, right, and actually answer the phone or go to the actual voicemail machine, do our business there, and then go on with the rest of our lives. And so

that was supportive for us then. And turns out it's super supportive for me and Angela now. Excellent. Any other ideas for people? I would say that if you're newly working from home, something that surprises people, there are two things that surprise people. One is how lonely and isolating it can be. I might get to that in a second. The first is that you realize how much you can get done in a short amount of time without all the distractions from work, without all the people poking over your head and so on and so forth. And there's this really awkward thing that many newly working from home people find out is like, wait a second,

I can actually get everything done in five hours a day because I don't have nearly as many meetings if your office is doing that or not nearly as many interruptions and distractions. And so I would be having a lot of conversations with yourself and maybe your teammates and coworkers about what you do with that extra three or four hours where you're not actually doing something productive, but you're kind of at the computer because you're supposed to be. I don't have any super solid answers that that's going to be team dependent. But if you find yourself at two o'clock in the day

and there's just not a whole lot for you to do and you're sort of itching and things like that, you haven't done anything wrong. It's just that there may not be nearly as many work distractions and interruptions and meetings going on right now. And it's a really good time for you to maybe get caught up on some back projects, you know, maybe get caught up on some of those back emails, but also it could be a good time for you to connect with your other teammates who are isolated too. So in some of the work I've

been doing with organizations that are standing up remote teams, I've had to remind them that like teams need time for just bonding and chit chat. And the manager is always like, I'm not paying people to chit chat. It's like, well, you've been doing it for years. It just hasn't been demarcated as so. But like maybe you coordinate with some of your other teammates who are also during that low period and you catch up with each other, not just about work, but about how you're doing and what's going on in your life. And depending upon your team and your manager, that counts as work. And again, it's what you normally do, which is why working from home can be so lonely

because you just don't have those touch points. Right, right. We do lose a lot of that interaction that we take for granted with other people, and it can be very isolating. And I think I had another guest, we were talking about this, about how, you know, when we're in person, there's certain things that we do. There's just ways of relating to each other that express warmth and kindness and support and appreciation. That when we go to all digital channels, particularly a lot of emails and stuff, that stuff just all gets stripped out. And so it's really important to think about that stuff. And I think for all of us right now, you know, one of the ways to deal with being under a lot of crisis is to, while not ignoring the very real challenges that we're individually facing, is also to ask ourselves,

well, where can I support others also? And I think this is an area that there's an almost unlimited amount to do in supporting the people around us and just connecting with people and seeing how they are. Absolutely. And it's small things that happen every day at work, like someone asking you if you'd like them to grab coffee for you while they're getting their own, right? It's a simple thing, but it reminds you that you're a part of a team and that people are thinking about you and they care about you. And when you're at home for a week and you haven't had someone to ask you if they'd like you to get coffee or if they'd like to get coffee for you, then it's easy to feel

forgotten. Another thing that I was talking about with my wife earlier is that when we switch to virtual working, a lot of times we switch from a verbalization or a lot of us talk at work. We chit chat with each other, like physically talking. And then all of a sudden in remote work environment, things are reading and reading and writing centric. And not all of us are reading and writing centric. And some of us struggle with getting our thoughts down in words, right? And then we come across caustic and we lose our warmth and things like that. And so that's another challenge people find when working from home is like, oh, I have to do a lot more writing and reading than I'm used to, that I care for, and that I don't really know how to do. It can be super frustrating. So again, with those check-in moments that I mentioned earlier, maybe instead of spending 75 minutes writing emails and Slack updates all day, you get on the phone and talk 15 minutes with your teammate in the way that you normally do and get out of all that jazz. That's a great idea. Well, Charlie, thank you so

much for taking a couple minutes to share some of these ideas with us. I really do appreciate it, and I know it'll be helpful to the listeners. Eric, thanks for having me, and thanks for your leadership in making this happen. My pleasure. Coming up next is Chris Bailey, who we had on episode number 244. And Chris ran a year-long productivity project where he studied and ran experiments on the subject. In that episode, we discussed his book, Hyperfocus, How to Be More Productive in a World of Distraction. Hi, Chris. It's good to have you back on. Good to be back on, man. How are you holding up over there in Ohio? Holding up okay. I think like everybody, a lot of uncertainty for sure. How about you? Yeah, it's so crazy because you can't even talk about what's going on right now because

between now and when this episode comes out, the whole world will have changed again, but we're hanging in there. We just got done with some travel and now we're just chilling at home and waiting things out, I guess, which is what people are saying to do. Yep. Yep. Us too. Well, I wanted to get you back on and have you share a little bit with our listeners, some tips about how to transition to working from home. So many of us are finding ourselves working at home now that may be new for a lot of people. And so I just was wondering if you could share some ideas and strategies for how to make that transition. Yeah, for sure. I think it's important to preface any of these strategies saying that

this isn't really a normal time because we all have so many more distractions than we usually do. And so I'd preface this advice by saying, just reminding folks basically, I study productivity. I kind of have a somewhat of a grasp of what gets in the way of our focus, of our productivity. And I should preface all this by saying that it's okay to not be as productive as you normally are right now.

It's okay if you find it impossible to focus or to make sense of the current situation or to understand what's coming next. Productivity is the very last thing on some people's mind, especially during a global pandemic that's shutting down a lot of the world. But that said, I'm happy to help where I can because we still do have obligations to bring forward to the front of our consciousness with our work. And so maybe I put together a couple notes here for listeners of the podcast, both to not only be productive while working from home,

but also to be productive in kind of a crisis mode, if you will, if you think that'd be helpful. Yeah, I think the goal isn't necessarily like, how do we get people to maximize their output? It's just really, this is a strange time. And I think some people are finding, I'm working from home and all I'm doing is I'm just working. And other people are saying, I can't get home and all I'm doing is I'm just working. And other people are

saying, I can't get anything done. I can't concentrate. And so just some orienting ideas in this time. Yeah, would be great. Yeah, for sure. So my approach to productivity, as you might know, is there's not like a one size fits all thing. So I'll give a few bite-sized pieces of advice, kind of a buffet of advice that folks can choose from. Number one, don't keep chips in the house. This is my number one rule for working from home. I will eat an entire bag or two of chips in one sitting. And so that's step zero. But once you get that done... Chris is probably going to edit that part out. What's that? I said Chris is probably going to edit that part out, but hopefully he? I said, Chris is probably going to edit that part out,

but hopefully he'll keep it in. Yeah, keep it in if you're trying to get it down to time. But I would start by suggesting that people give themselves a bit more time to settle into important tasks and just be patient with yourself. So if your mind is busier right now, it's going to be a bit more difficult to focus than usual. So give yourself a few more minutes than usual to settle into important tasks that require a bit more concentration.

You'll probably just need that time so your mind can settle down a bit. And another thing to mention is because we're not commuting when we're working from home, we do have a bit of extra time at the beginning and the end of our day. And something that I know you talk a lot about on the podcast, something I talk a lot about too, is to find things that you're able to savor or slow down with. And this is so important. We have so much news bouncing around, not only in the world, but in our own minds after

we consume it while we're trying to process the things that we consume. So maybe even in the morning before connecting to the news, you can do something slow. You can cook a nice meal, take a walk, do a yoga video on YouTube, run on your treadmill, go for a run around the neighborhood if you're able to do so while keeping up the social distancing. See that amount of time that you would normally spend commuting as time with which you can invest in your mental health a little bit and overcome any anxiety that you might have around the current time. And if you do feel anxious, do work that doesn't require a deep level of concentration and thinking. But it's worth doing

the focused work strategically too. So we have these two types of tasks that we do. We have the things that require a greater level of focus, of concentration. Then we have the maintenance things, organizing folders on our computer and keeping up with email that we can do when our mind is in a bit more of a frenzied state. And so I would suggest doing those strategically, such as the deep work tasks right before you even check the news in the morning. Maybe use connecting to the state of the world and what the heck is going on right now as a sort of self or reward after you do your deepest tasks. people are, you know, connecting to the news and trying to figure out, I know I'm trying to figure out what's a reasonable amount of that, when to do it, how much to do it. And I'm also finding with myself and coaching clients that using some of the technology that exists to set the limits for us can be really helpful right now, because I'm finding myself setting a limit and then going

right past it, setting the limit, going right past it. And so I'm finding it helpful to sort of let my phone say, nope, that's enough. You are blocked. Well, and this is a period of time in which you should be really paying attention to how the news makes you feel. So we're not connected with this enough during normal periods of time, but notice how your mood changes after consuming the news for a little bit. If you're watching a stream of CNN online or you have the news kind of turned on in the background or you do some anxiety scrolling and refreshing Twitter throughout the day, really notice and reflect on how your mood changes before and after that experience. notice and reflect on how your mood changes before and after that experience.

And if you find that it's affecting your mood, take steps to defend your mental health, especially. So if you can at all, tend to those distractions intentionally rather than just whenever you feel a bit stressed out. This is kind of the ironic thing about the time that we're in right now is that by consuming the news, we feel a bit more in control of our situation because we are more knowledgeable about it. But at the same time, we realize how out of control some things are, which may ironically lead us to feel less control over our life overall. over our life overall. And so by scheduling it, something that I've been doing is I start the day, I realize, okay, I need to get my most important things done first thing in the morning. I'll do them, then I'll treat myself to a bit of news at 10 or 11 in the morning, usually when our prime minister here in Canada has his daily press conference. And then I'll go back to it. And when I feel the need to check something, I'll write down the thing that I want to check. Okay, I want to check the New York Times. Okay, I want to check the Wall Street Journal.

Okay, I want to check the Globe and Mail. And I'll make a little list to tend to during my next scheduled period of time during which I want to distract myself. And then I have the to-do list that I usually have the rest of the time so that I can have kind of a balance and maintain

some modicum of mental calm throughout this busy time right now. Yep. Yep. Those are great ideas. Other ideas about working from home? Yeah. So track your time. This is a great opportunity to really see how you're putting in your hours every single day. You can just keep a little... I have a little notepad here that I'm flipping through right now and a pen. And I just write down how I spend every 15-minute block of time because it keeps you accountable on a minute-by-minute basis. And also, that idea of anxiety scrolling is key. Keep that to a minimum. Notice when you're doing it. Have rituals that you depend upon as

well. So one of the biggest pieces of advice that I'd usually put at the top of this list of advice if we weren't in the current situation that we're in is to have a dedicated workspace in your house and have rules if you're sharing your house with other people. So my wife and I, we're both working from home right now and we have little stickies that we attach to the outside of our laptop, saying working with a smiley face when we don't want to be interrupted when we're focused on something. But headphones are a great social signal for that too. And one of the biggest things that I can recommend, ironically, sometimes the best way to calm our mind is to do something active. And so getting exercise every single day, especially if you're forced to self-isolate. This is out of anything on this list. Take a few of these things. Take the ones

you think would work for you. But exercise is not really a suggestion. It's almost a requirement because we have less activity when we're just staying at home and working from home. And so we need to compensate for that. All right. I guess to recap. So take your time with tasks. Take the time that you'd spend commuting and do something slow with it. If you feel anxious, do something that doesn't require deep concentration or deep thinking. Do focused work in the morning before connecting to the news, perhaps.

Maybe if you have kids at home, take a split shift with your partner. If you're there alone, maybe be strategic about their screen time when you're in important calls. Don't keep chips lying around the house. Have a to-do list every day. Schedule some news and distraction time.

Work out, please. Work out to maintain your mental health and have some rituals that you depend upon and track your time. That's a lot of stuff, but take a couple of those things and the ones that work for you and leave the rest,

but just a bunch of suggestions that hopefully folks find helpful. Thank you, Chris. That's wonderful. I really appreciate you taking a couple minutes. And that was a very good summary. And listeners will know I'm on board with the exercise. It's kind of key to my mental health in all times and feels especially important now. And it's so important. It just is. Yeah. You can do every single exercise in the world with a resistance band and you can always adjust how intense it is by grabbing the band at a different place. It's like 10 bucks for one. It's a great investment right now. And just investing in you right now is a good investment

right now. Indeed. All right. Well, thank you so much, Chris. I really appreciate you sharing some of these ideas with our listeners. Thank you. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer.

And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir.

Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening?

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or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For our final guest, we have Liz Fossline, whose work has been featured by the New York Times, The Economist, and NPR. On episode 310, her and Eric discussed her book, No Hard Feelings, The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work. Hi, Liz. Hi. It's a pleasure to talk with you again. You were a guest on the main episode of The One You Feed, but what I'd like to talk with

you now about is just to get some ideas from you on things that people can do, some short, actionable advice on how to make the transition to working from home and how to do that more effectively. Yeah, thanks, Eric. That's a great question. And I'm sure a lot of people are making that shift right now. I think the first thing is really just to acknowledge that it's okay to feel feelings at this time. It's an unprecedented time. I think, you know, there's not only work to do, but there's just a lot of emotional labor that we're all doing, sort of showing up to meetings, trying to be normal, trying to focus when there's obviously the world is shifting in major ways. So the first is just to give yourself

some space, be kind to yourself, that kind of thing. Yeah, that's a really good one. Because I do think everybody's having trouble concentrating and focusing right now. It's pretty endemic. Okay, so we give ourselves sort of permission that it's okay to feel the way we're feeling about what's happening. Yeah. And then I think that goes for managers as well. So if you have one-on-ones, you know, maybe add a few minutes to the beginning or to the end to check in on how people are doing. Also just being cognizant, especially if you know that your people have good intentions and work hard in the office. Right now they might be dealing with their kids might be home too, which obviously can be distracting. But just making space for those

kinds of conversations and allowing maybe for a little more flexibility with hours too, if it's easier for people to shift when they're working or when they're online. And so one thing there that you can do is maybe meet as a team or send out an email thread and say like, what are people's preferred hours? And can we agree on like a chunk of four hours when we're all available? And then the rest is sort of do your work when you can slot it in. And so what are some tips for people about how to think about working from home? Because it is a very different experience, right? We've got our routines in the office, but we get home, it's like the distractions are almost endless. Yeah. So I think it's important if you,

especially if you love your routines in the office, to set up routines for yourself at home. So one thing I'd recommend is actually having a designated workspace and keeping that workplace tidy when you wake up or when you're going, you know, quote unquote, going to work, put on clothes, get out of the pajamas. It's really easy to just, you know, snack all the time or stay in your pajamas, but I think it can help you feel a sense of normalcy and be more productive if you're still keeping up some of the habits that you used to have. And then also, I think one of the things too, that actually I've been receiving a lot of emails from people because I've been asking, what are you dealing with in this time of transition as you're working from home often for the first time? And people also say it's really

hard to remember to take breaks. So take a lunch break, maybe make it virtual, get together with some coworkers and set aside an hour to eat and talk about not work. Because when you're home, you're not getting up to grab a cup of coffee with people. You're not having people sitting by your desk. And so you might be just like hunched over your computer for many hours. And it's just as important to get up, walk around, keep your mental health up as well. Yeah, I think that's totally true. And then I think there's also the opposite that some people have, which is they find it hard to be very focused at home. And they're kind of all over the place. And I think another approach for that is, is kind of like you said, to, to think about

like chunks of time that we're going to work. There's a way of working called pulsing, right? Where you do very focused chunks of time focused, you know, followed by breaks. And this can be really, I think can be really helpful at home. And you can actually, then some of your breaks can be things that you don't normally get to do at the office. They can be breaks where you see the dog, see the cat. You enjoy some of the things around your house if you sort of structure it in that way. Your breaks can actually be more enjoyable breaks at home if you plan it out that way and think about it. Yeah, definitely.

And if people are really having a hard time focusing, I think it can often help at the end of each day and your quote unquote work day by putting out a list of, let's say, three things you want to get done the next day. And that can help you when you come to your desk and you sit down, let's say you just had your cup of coffee, maybe you just get in the flow. And if you knock out those three things right away, then it's, you know, not as big a deal if you're less focused, but that's a good way of holding yourself accountable and just having a plan every day when you wake up. Yep. Any other ideas that you want to add that you think are really helpful for people in this time? Yeah. I mean, I think that the two others that I'd add are, so like I said, I'm based in San Francisco and we're being asked not to go

to the gym where many of them are closed. So just putting time on your calendar to get some physical activity. I really love it's called the seven minute workout, which is on YouTube. But just remembering, again, it's like these regular routines that also keep the blood pumping, keep our mental health up. And the last thing I would say is, while so many of us are making this shift to working from home, being cognizant and recognizing that not everyone can do that. So healthcare professionals, people who are delivering food or cashiers, they cannot work from home. And so if you do go out, you know, social distancing, wash your hands, thank them for what they're doing. I think this is a time when

we just need to be really thoughtful and supportive of one another. That's a great point that not everybody is able to do this. Yeah, it's a wild time. So I think a little kindness goes a long way right now. It does. It does for sure. Did you have one other? Yeah. So I think one other thing that gets lost when we're working from home is praise. So there's a lot of research that shows when you're communicating digitally, so emailing, Slack messages, whatever sort of your digital communication platform is, we often get into efficiency mode where we're just hammering out like, this is what needs to be done.

Here's the bullet point. Can you check this over for me and we forget those little spontaneous moments which often happen when we're walking to the bathroom or walking to a meeting together when we'll say like oh you did a really great job in that meeting or I so appreciated this other thing you did for me so just emotionally proofreading your messages making sure that you're being explicit about praise, that you're thanking each other, that these sort of informal gestures that go a long way towards cultivating relationships and a sense of belonging, that you're not dropping those just because you're no longer in the same location. That is a really good one because, yeah, so much of our digital interaction, like you said, it's just efficiency. It's just boom, boom, boom, boom. And all tone gets lost and all warmth tends to get lost, which we know is really important. Yeah, and this is a common thing that remote workers say.

It's just feeling like they just don't get the praise that they feel like they deserve. And so I think now that so many of us are working from home, really keeping that top of mind can go a long way. How are you coping working from home? Do you do it often or is this a relatively new thing for you? So my company has a policy where you can work from home one day a week, which is drastically different than all the time. So I'm definitely, I think for me, I found it hard to focus. I get sucked into the news or like I just have to avoid Twitter because I will just to avoid Twitter because I

will just be on Twitter for an hour and then start panicking. So I've actually set myself some pretty strict limitations around news consumption. I have 10 minutes in the morning and then 10 minutes at lunch and 10 minutes in the evening. And that helps me feel like I'm on top of things. I know what's going on. I know what I should be thinking about, but I'm not sort of spiraling into reading every single firsthand account of a scary situation. So really trying to protect my mental health and then as a byproduct focus and productivity. Yeah. I think that's such a challenging dilemma right now, which is how much information is enough? You know, how do I then turn that off and get back to the other parts of my life that are really important and just not get lost in

that rabbit hole? Because it's really easy to do right now. Yeah, I think the best thing we can all do right now is protect our mental health, be kind to others, emotionally proofread your messages, you know, just as much as possible, try to stay calm and maintain some sense of normalcy, even though obviously much, much easier said than done. But I think really making it a point to do that can help everyone get through these next few weeks. Wonderful. Yeah. And I loved the point about exercise. It's such a useful thing. And I've been sort of using the opportunity of like not going places to exercise so much as an opportunity to really be outside in nature a lot. And the combination of moving my body and being in nature has been

really nice because nature, it's just kind of going about its business, right? The trees are getting ready to bloom. They're doing their thing. The squirrels seem to be just perfectly doing what squirrels do. It really gives me, it's comforting and it's a change from being in a gym, but it's been a pleasant and a welcome one for me, for sure. Yeah, I love that. I think that's a great suggestion. I should start taking walks more regularly. The natural world is always, I find, a very good touch point when the human world seems insane. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for taking a few minutes to share some of your ideas on how to handle this new working from home that a lot of people are doing. I appreciate you spending some time with us. Yeah, and thanks for helping raise awareness of issues and then helping people find solutions. Doing our best. I think we all are. Yep. Thanks again. Okay.

Thanks, everybody. We hope you got a lot out of that episode. There was a lot of great advice in there and a lot of great things to think about. We will be back, as Eric mentioned, on Tuesday. Bye.