Mindfulness, achievements and personal brand building
Insights from Week 4 of The Great Work from Home Experiment
This week in the Great Working from Home Experiment, WFHers have been sharing experiences of the online communities they’ve joined, tech nightmares, and what they’ve learned about themselves. We are seeing an uptake in mindfulness practices as we’re appreciating more wholesome activities and focusing on ourselves; both professionally and personally.
We’ve been keeping our promises. Over 70% of us made promises to ourselves when lockdown started, and so far the vast majority of WFHers have kept them. The commitments that we’ve made fall into three categories; maintaining a routine, keeping up with exercise, and taking up more mindful activities, like gardening and baking.. Some WFHers are maintaining their daily commute by taking a walk before and after work, while others are using spare time to focus on creative projects.
“Haven’t missed a day so far!” WFHer on sticking to their exercise regime.
Want more good news? Check out the Happy Arc — a website dedicated to good news around Covid.
How your tech works depends on how your organisation’s set it up. The age-old question — why does some tech work for some people and for others it just seems a massive flog? Well, the answer may be in how your business has set it’s privacy settings. Some companies were wary of Zoom due to their supposed laxer security settings, which is reported to have the best user experience, but they have since updated their privacy policies.
We hear you. If you need help navigating the tech, talk to Fluxxer Karl, he’s our guru.
Some of our WFHers are finding it difficult to get through organisation tech high walls:
“We are finding it difficult to co-ordinate peoples tech. External companies we work with often have policies that need to be worked around.” WFHer on finding it difficult to keep in touch.
We want quality content that cuts through the noise. We’ve been enjoying online communities like webinars, talks, working sessions online — but the value of the sessions relies on the quality of content and the level of interaction with participants. We say no to sales pitches and yes to practical knowledge sharing.
“It was interesting to a point but I spent the last 15 minutes wishing I’d made my excuses and dropped off the call.” WFHer on virtual events.
We hear you. If you’re planning a virtual event or workshop, check out this article for tips and tricks. Be sure not to take up too much of your participants’ time; our recommendation? 90 minutes or less.
It’s time to build your brand. Whether you’re focusing on developing new connections after a webinar or pumping out content on your socials, our WFHers are taking me-time to the next level.
“I’m working on marketing myself! I have seen a huge uptake in engagement with my Facebook business page, and have seen increased activity on my Instagram and LinkedIn pages too — I’m deepening connections virtually so I’ve got opportunities to speak at events, etc when we do go back to face to face.” WFHer on personal marketing.
We hear you. Use this as an opportunity to connect with old contacts, avoid the zoom fatigue, and have someone to one time the old fashioned way — by picking up the phone! A third of WFHers said this was their most successful channel right now.
We’re thinking about the longer-term implications of the lockdown. Some people expressed concern about sharing office space, but most people said they will be working from home more often in the future, and have a greater appreciation for the face to face contact.
“I hope more colleagues (including senior colleagues) work flexibly in the future.” WHFer on office life post-covid.
We hear you. Nobody can be sure of what our post-corona world will look like, but we hope that this will create a more flexible and inclusive working environment for everyone; one that maintains the compassion and empathy that we’ve communally relied on so much during this strange time.
Check out the rounds ups from Week 1, Week 2 and Week 3. We’re excited to see what other rich insights the experiment will bring — stay tuned by following Fluxx on LinkedIn or WTF Newsletter, and we’ll update you as we go.
Are you curious as to how Fluxx has helped companies such as Condé Nast, Thames Water, News UK, More Than, and many more? Learn the secrets for sustained, repeatable innovation models from expert practitioners in our 2-week bootcamp; The Innovation Starter Kit. Get in touch with me at Jassi@Fluxx.uk.com for more details.
