Inside Bukalapak: Forget work/life balance, I found work/adventure balance in Bali and it was awesome!
A few weeks ago, I spent 5 days on a very strange working schedule. One day, I explored a hidden waterfall after breakfast and in the evening dialed into my team’s daily standup meeting. The day ended with an awesome sunset in Campuhan hill. Another day, I walked into a monkey forest in Ubud and then spent the rest of the day there designing a gamification feature for Bukalapak.
How is this possible? Is this the new 9-to-5? At Bukalapak, as a designer you are allowed to work remotely from any place in the world! In this writing, I want to share 4 tips from my experience working remotely in Ubud, Bali on how to stay productive while exploring a hidden waterfalls, enjoying hill sunsets, and walking through monkey forests.
1. Show me where you work and I will show you your work result!
Choosing the best place to work remotely is really important. Depending on the choice, you can end up feeling more, or less, productive.. For example, it was always tempting to work from my hostel bed but this usually resulted in my feeling sluggish and preferring to take a nap than pushing pixels. :p
In my case i found 3 types of workplaces that helped me work more productively while remote:
A. Coworking space
Collaboration is the mantra here. Everytime I visit a new city where I need to work remotely, the first thing I look for is a list of coworking spaces.
The main benefit from working in a coworking space is that the ambience encourages collaboration with other freelancers, remote workers, or digital nomads you find there.
Sometime it is not really “official” collaboration per se, but rather it can be merely a low key insightful conversation over lunch accompanied by a cold Bintang beer. Please note: too many Bintang beers typically causes the conversation to be less low key and less insightful.
Besides the ambience, many coworking spaces also host various networking or knowledge-sharing events which are usually held every week. This is a great way to meet more people and contribute your knowledge (as well as get insights from your peers)!
The only disadvantage for using a coworking space is the price. The hourly or daily rate can be quite pricey depending on the location and company used. In Ubud, you can check Hubud or Outpost, two of the more well-known coworking spaces there.
B. Hotel/Hostel
If renting a coworking space is too posh for you — and you are the kind of person who is not easily tempted by the sleepy powers of an empty bed — then a hotel or hostel room can provide a great working location. During the day time, when most people go outside to explore Ubud, your hostel or hotel room can be very quiet and empty with nothing to distract from your work! Another benefit is you are already paying for the space, so might as well use it! Usually a desk or table results in better results than the bed, but to each their own! In my first day at Ubud I chose to work from my hostel, which is located in Hanoman street.
C. Restaurant/Coffee Shops
The last option is the places which can provide a constant flow of caffeine to our brains: Coffee shops, restaurants, or cafes. In these places you never need to worry about going hungry. An added bonus is that food in Ubud is mind blowing!
The downside is that often these places are not designed for working: internet connections can be quite laggy, access to power plugs can be sparse, and your neighbors can be noisy or annoying. Coffee shops tend to provide better internet connections, but the other challenges remain. I worked from F.R.E.A.K Coffee shop at Hanoman Street, Ubud and it was a pleasant experience: caffeine + good food + fast internet = best design works!
2. Balancing Working and Leisure Time
Managing time while working remotely can be much more challenging then working 9-to-5 in a traditional office setup, especially if you don’t have the best time management skills to begin with. At Ubud, there are so many temptations to explore: green rice fields, a monkey forest, Campuhan Hill, and other places mentioned in that “Eat, Pray, Love” book.
Time management is the key here! You need to have willpower to set a working time since no one will watch you and you could be slacking off all the time! (But, I know you would never do that dear reader!).
At Bukalapak, we don’t have fixed working hours. It is more a results-oriented working environment than a time-oriented one. As long as I get the work done that I need to do, I can work the times that suit me best and be flexible on days I may need to work less or more. As a result, I really needed to find processes and tools that helped me manage my time.
For example, for the first 2 days of my work week in Ubud, I created a schedule in my calendar that booked 10am to 5pm everyday as when I should be doing work. This let me explore Ubud a bit in the morning, but helped me stay on schedule to be getting to work by 10am. A good way to ensure I kept on schedule was to book all of these times in my online calendar which notified my phone of any upcoming events. That way I could ensure I didn’t stay out too long exploring many Waterfalls.
3. Utilizing Collaboration Tools
When not meeting in person with my colleagues, it can be more difficult to properly collaborate and share my work output. Thus, I needed to utilize all kinds of collaboration tools. At Bukalapak, we rarely use emails and emphasize instead using Telegram (a messaging app) or Slack (a team collaboration tool).
We believe that using a synchronous tool will make our working pace faster regardless of the physical location of the individuals on the team. It also prevents lost time versus the use of asynchronous tools like e-mail, which tends to be replied to much slower!
Sometime, I also need to dial in with Google Hangout (video chat tool) to do my daily standup meeting at 3 pm daily. This allows me to see the team and “feel” much closer to them as opposed to just doing a phone call.
Finally, don’t forget to also change your profile status in whatever tool you use to be “remote” so that people know that you are not in the office and that there may be a delay in response. It is only polite that you notify them in advance!
4. Just Enjoy it!
The last tip I would provide is to really just enjoy your time working remotely. As a designer, we do need a creative environment so that we can always aim for a “north star” design. Working remotely in wonderful places like Ubud is one way to get more inspiration and insight for my design work.
Sometime people feel guilty because they work remotely. Please don’t! Instead just enjoy the wonderful opportunity you have to meet new people, explore a new environment, and experience a new way of working!
Also, it may be a good opportunity to prove to your colleague that you can be even more productive during this remote working time!
In the end, I can recommend that everyone experience working remotely if they have the opportunity to do so and hopefully the tips in this post can help you convince your boss or make the most of your time!
If you have your own story or tips for working remotely please share them with us. Also, if you are looking to join a product design team which is bias for action, and also allows you to work remotely in many cool places, please just ping me at moga.adiangga@bukalapak.com!!
