My relationship with WFH
Safeguarding focus and building healthy habits
Based on the flood of LinkedIn posts about working remotely and specifically working from home (WFH), I learned that the amount of fully remote jobs and vacancies have grown to unprecedented levels. While I can see that working remotely works for a lot of people because of personal preferences, type of work, social circumstances and/or financial and geographical (in)conveniences, it just doesn’t seem to fully click for me personally, yet.
This is not because I’m principally against it — I totally see its benefits. In this piece I just want to share my somewhat troublesome relationship with working from home, to keep the conversation going, at least in my head, about how I experience it and where I can improve.
Safeguarding focus time
I think why I’m not overly excited about WFH (yet) has to do with being sensitive about the workplace atmosphere and a perceived lack of control. When I’m working in the office I have this perception that the team is doing fine, although I’m not actively communicating with them all the time. On some days while working from home, I’m just not that sure that everything keeps rolling, for some reason. I receive Slack messages that are very short and lack the amount of context for me to decide if a situation or specific question is urgent enough to respond immediately. When I’m not sure, I tend to act on it immediately, which sometimes works. In some cases, after Slacking back and forth for a while, stuff can still feel undefined to me, causing me to pick up the phone — which in hindsight I blame myself for not having done in the first place. Safeguarding a decent amount of uninterrupted focus time is still a challenge for me when working from home.
Consistently taking care of myself
Until recently, whenever I entered my home office to start a WFH day (I’m aware I’m privileged enough to have a dedicated room I can work from) I sat down and started to work. If I’m having a ‘good’ (i.e. productive) day, — I forget to hydrate; I forget to take breaks, I forget that my dog is with me, I forget whether my partner is at home or not and I definitely don’t have a clue what the weather looks like for half the day.
When on a call my dog would slip into the room, as always really excited to see me. The only thing I would be consciously aware of was how that looked on that little window in the corner of my Zoom screen. I usually tried to ignore him as subtly as I could, not something I’m particularly proud of. Obviously, my partner always entered the room when I expected it the least and it always took me a couple of seconds to adjust to the fact that she was ‘suddenly’ there and I have to actually listen to what she had to say.
In order to be more mindful about my energy levels and act more or less emphatically towards my surroundings, I recently decided to consistently schedule reminders which appear on my screen every 30 mins, they simply state: ‘Drink’, ‘Walk’ (walk the dog, that is), ‘Eat’. It works! For some reason when WFH I benefit from reminders about the most basic stuff.
Hacks, habits & routines
I like to perceive myself as an adventurous person, always ready to explore exciting new things. What I came to understand is that I also thrive by very basic routines, which appeared to me as counterintuitive at first. In a recent attempt to accept myself for the person I am, I embraced the idea that it could benefit me to hack my current patterns by limiting the amount of decision-making on trivial stuff. I did not grasp this ‘worklife hack’ out of thin air though; I actually learned about it when reading a Harvard Business Review piece I came across, which I liked. It stated this:
If I asked you to name the major causes of stress in your work life, you’d probably cite deadlines, time-sucking meetings, a heavy workload, bureaucracy, and maybe even a controlling boss. You might not think to say “making decisions,” because most of us aren’t aware of this powerful and pervasive cause of stress in our lives. Yet every time you make a decision — which candidate to hire, when to ask your supervisor for help, whether to delegate a task — you create mental tension that is, in fact, stressful.
So use routines to reduce the number of decisions you need to make. Former U.S. President Barack Obama, who once had one of the most stressful jobs imaginable, took this approach. Here’s what he told Vanity Fair about it:
You’ll see I wear only grey or blue suits. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make. You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.
If there’s something you need to do every day, do it at the same time every day. Establish a ritual for preparing for work in the morning, for example: perhaps you can check e-mails and Slack DM’s and respond to the urgent ones first thing, which clears the decks and makes it easier to move more quickly to important projects. Set up a similar routine for packing up to go home at night. Once you’ve put less-important decisions on autopilot, they’ll stop weighing on you — and you’ll free up your energy for things that matter more.
Source: Harvard Business Review — Guide to Manage Stress at Work
Gamifying trivial routines
I already mentioned that I hacked my WFH day to improve my consistency in taking breaks during the day. From my personal perspective, this is actually more of an example of a crucial necessity rather than a trivial routine.
One truly trivial routine I incorporated into my work life is preparing for an office day by making sure my bag is packed the previous evening including my laptop and headphones already fully charged. It gives me quite some conscious appreciation (and saves me quite some energy and self-blame) when I’m able to listen to music or podcasts the next day on my train commute. To make sure this routine sticks, I tie a streak score to it: the number of consecutive office workdays I managed to enforce this routine without interruptions. I’m proud to say that my current streak is 23 workdays!
Playful team hacks
Since our Head of Talent Christian entered our workplace, we experiment a lot more with team hacks to improve on areas of work life. One of my favourite hacks Chris introduced, is organising team love bombs.
This hack can be integrated as a short icebreaker when meeting remotely, and it can obviously also be used during in-person events. We use it with the whole team as part of a monthly retro.
A love bomb icebreaker is a short and sweet team-building exercise. It’s a simple game that encourages teams to share what they value about their colleagues in a professional context. As a result, teams feel more comfortable, relaxed, and connected to their peers.
The way to execute on it is very straightforward: as a team, you take turns expressing gratitude towards each other. This may be related to saying thanks for offering practical support. It can also be value-related or character traits you appreciate about someone in general.
When using it as an icebreaker while working remotely, it can just work like this:
Step 1: Prepare the session by creating a canvas that shows profile pictures of participants. If you organise this as part of a remote meeting/event, you can use a Butter/Miro/FigJam template to run the Love Bomb with.
Step 2: Explain the aim i.e. to provide positive feedback. You can change the length of the session depending on how many people are taking part but don’t let it run for too long. The aim is to keep it short. Explain what the Love Bomb is about - write positive feedback on things your team members value and appreciate about other team members. Remind everyone to only add one or two words to the notes
Step 3: Pick your background music. When you set your timer, choose some background music to keep the energy levels high.
Step 4: Add sticky notes. Instruct everyone to add sticky notes around each picture that describe things they value and appreciate about that person. Remind everyone to only add one or two words to the notes, as you’ll discuss them in more detail at the end of the session.
Step 5: Review the love bomb. When time’s up, go around the board and read out all the sticky notes. People can add some explanation to their notes or let the feedback speak for itself. Either way, it will help everyone feel comfortable and warm them up for the rest of the meeting.
Why is it beneficial to regularly organise love bombs:
- To show your appreciation. It’s worth taking a moment to express gratitude and appreciation for your team members. It makes them feel valued and shows how they contribute to the team, which can increase their happiness and motivation at work.
- To boost confidence. Showing team members how much they’re appreciated is a great confidence booster. They can also refer to the icebreaker later or whenever they need a boost of confidence in the future.
- To build positive relationships between team members. It’s hard to build professional relationships when working remotely. Starting your meetings with the love bomb icebreaker makes it easier for remote teams to build relationships.
- Highlight diversity in working styles. The icebreaker can bring unique and diverse working styles to light, highlighting different strengths across the team. For example, a creative and free-thinking team member might value how organized and structured another colleague is. These differences are what make the team strong, and using this icebreaker is a great way to showcase this.
I can only hope that I make professor Arnold B. Bakker proud by sharing Playful Work Hacks because I think they align pretty well with his theory of Playful Work Design, which is described in this Cambridge University Publication as ‘the process through which employees proactively create conditions within work activities that foster enjoyment and challenge without changing the design of the job itself.’
Can you do me a favour and please think of one work hack (playful, crucial and/or trivial) that would help you or your team? I dare you to introduce one and put a streak to it.
PS: would love to hear what works for you and your team!
