7 Minutes a Week: Why Shooting the Sh*t with Your Colleagues is Important
Working Remotely
As a remote worker it’s easy to get in the habit of only talking to my colleagues when they need something from me or, in the much more likely scenario, I need something from them.
This always puts us in the awkward position of having the “Hi, how are you? Great, now let’s talk about why I really Slacked you.” conversation. This is a conversation that remote workers know all too well, and one that I believe can be alleviated with some regularly scheduled, idle chit-chatting.
It’s important for co-workers to talk about more than just work stuff, and in an office environment this happens naturally. People eat lunch or get coffee at the same time or, in our case, play ping pong together. For those of us who work remotely, you gotta make some effort.
I came up with an idea that had one rule: 7 minutes of no work talk. After the 7 minutes are up there are no rules. We can hang up. We can talk about work. We can read aloud from Jewel’s book of poetry. It doesn’t matter as long as we have dedicated time to just talk.
Why 7 minutes?
Studies have shown that seven minutes talking with me is about as much as anyone can handle at a given time. Obviously, seven is an arbitrary number. I picked it because when I was sending out calendar invites, I didn’t want to put thirty minute meetings on people’s calendar. They’ve got enough going on without having to hear me ramble on about my kids or the movie that came out 2 years ago that I just got around to seeing. The number of minutes doesn’t matter. It’s never been seven minutes; what I have found is that 10 times out of 10, we talk longer.
Aren’t these conversations a distraction from work that needs to get done?
Absolutely. You say “distraction” like its a bad thing (you had a tone).
Distraction doesn’t always have a negative connotation. Distraction, in moderation, is very important to creativity. I’ve done a little bit of writing in the past and what I’ve found is that in the moments I’m distracted and not actually thinking about what I’m trying to write, that’s when the ideas I’m trying to write about come into view. This paragraph is no exception. I basically wrote it in my head while pretending to listen to the boring story my retired neighbor was telling me about the state of Ohio. I hung in there as long as I could, but it’s Ohio.
Why are these conversations important?
I love my time in the office, but with young kids the challenge of getting to the office more than once a quarter is very real. As a team, we really enjoy each other as people (more than any company I’ve worked for) and not just co-workers. Breaking the cycle of only talking when we need something, opens the relationship so we’re more likely to randomly message each other about the fun stuff, and not just wait until its scheduled.
It’s nice to be able to interact with everyone and not just bounce ideas off the cat all day. Not surprisingly, he hates all of my ideas. I always feel re-energized when I’m in the office and for a few days afterwards. So far, these “7-minute” conversations have allowed me to recreate this feeling on a daily basis, and hopefully does the same for the people I talk to.
It also lets each other know that we’re not just interested in each other when we need something work-related. That we have common interests. That we enjoy our time together. I think we can all relate to the notion that when you know and like the people you work with, the work is better for it. Knowing your colleagues on a true, personal level builds a special trust that you can’t get otherwise.
What are the challenges?
Just like most things, time is the challenge so it’s hard to get everyone in the company on the phone. We’re relatively small with about 35 people that work here. 35 employees x 7 minutes a week equals something like…counts on fingers…8 million hours a week or something. I don’t know, I’m terrible at math. The point is the time adds up. Do you have a group call with 2 or 3 colleagues at a time? Maybe, but I think that takes away from the experience. Do you do once every 2 weeks and alternate? Not sure. This is all a pretty new experiment so haven’t quite figured it out just yet.
Another challenge is the thought of scheduled “fun time”. Scheduling fun can be seen as disingenuous at a surface level. It can almost seem like you’re forcing it. Truthfully, you are forcing it, but so far I think that’s been the biggest positive. Scheduling fun has been seen as us making a real effort to talk to each other about the really important stuff that’s going on in life like birthday parties, trips to Philly to stalk your kickboxing idol, making sound effects with your beard, songs you’re considering for your upcoming wedding, and how much buying a horse costs (these are all real conversations). Not work. Work’s not the important stuff.
Is it working?
I’ve only been doing this a couple of weeks, but so far I think it’s been a lot of fun. I feel energized and motivated after these short conversations, ready to tackle the rest of my day/week. Where they can be seen as a distraction, they actually help me focus on the bigger picture of why we work for the company we work for. Hopefully people on the other end feel the same way. They keep answering when I call, so I’ll just keep making that assumption until they send me directly to voicemail.
