Five tips for mobile working
Mobile working enables autonomy, but also requires self-organization, different work processes and methods for building social capital. My five tips for mobile working.
In mid-February, I had the opportunity to share my experience with mobile work in a webinar hosted by the mentoring organization MentorMe. Right after that, I got COVID, and then the terrible war broke out in Ukraine.
Is it even appropriate to write about personal productivity against this background? Maybe some of you are like me: work is harder than usual, but it’s still there. And maybe some of these tips will help you to focus on the most important projects.
So here are my five tips for mobile working:
1. Planning and self-organization
If you work from home, you need to be able to motivate and organize yourself. For me, a mindfulness planner helps (for example “Ein guter Plan”, but there are also other planners like the “agile notebook” from Zettelweise).
Such a planner helps especially with medium and long-term goals and projects. For planning a single day, I use my calendar and the “time boxing” method. My calendar not only shows my meetings, but also fixed times for answering e-mails, learning and development and long-term projects.
To avoid procrastination, it helps to make an appointment with a colleague to work “quietly” together: Simply open a video conference and everyone works on their own project. After an hour, you reward yourself with a chat over a cup of coffee.
2. Work with me
It can be difficult to work with someone you don’t really know.
That’s why I created a so-called “work-with-me” document. In a way, a work-with-me document is like an “instruction manual” for working with me. It describes my daily routine, my preferred communication channels, my availability (and when I am usually not available) and what interests me beyond work. Results from personality tests like the Enneagram test can also be part of such a document.
The work-with-me document is linked in my profile on the intranet, so anyone can easily access it.
3. Take some time for networking
Networking thrives on chance meetings in the cafeteria, a joint lunch or an encounter in the elevator. In a hybrid world, however, networking should be a fixed part of the job description and planned accordingly.
For example, I regularly arrange to meet colleagues for coffee via video call — without a fixed agenda or occasion.
And of course it doesn’t always have to be colleagues: a walk with a peer from another company or a coffee with a neighbor in a coworking space can also help to clear the head a bit or get fresh input.
4. Train your micro-habits
In his book “Atomic Habits”, James Clear describes how you can make lasting changes to your behavior or learn new things by taking small steps. My “micro habits” remind me, for example, to exercise regularly, improve my writing, or practice mindfulness. Conveniently, I can also track my “micro habits” in my daily planner.
5. Codify your corporate culture
Corporate culture is like an iceberg: You can only see the tip; most of it is hidden at first glance. In a hybrid working world, it is even more difficult to discover these hidden elements of corporate culture.
Just as a work-with-me document describes how I work as an individual, decentralized companies like Github or Dropbox (where I work) have developed guidelines that govern the principles by which collaboration works within the company. These can be rules for meetings or accessibility and non-accessibility, for example.
These five principles certainly do not claim to be universally valid — but they have helped me personally. A sixth principle is the willingness to constantly question oneself and to learn.
In this sense: In this database I collect articles and books on the subject, which can also be sorted by keywords.
Photo: Estée Janssens / Unsplash
This post was first published on 18 March 2022 on danielflorian.de
