April 1, 2020: The Ability To Ignore
Good morning,
Welcome to April. This will be a rough month for many people around the world, so thank you for continuing to WFH and helping us all get through this. If you do go out, I recommend you wear an improvised mask, for two key reasons:
So that if you happen to be sick but asymptomatic, you can avoid spreading to others.
So that we normalize the concept of wearing a mask, which encourages sick people to wear masks too.
So, tear up an old t-shirt and make that mask.
On to the update.
The Ability To Ignore
A fundamental difference between in-person interaction and online interaction is the ease with which someone can ignore you.
In-person, for the most part, we feel compelled to respond to a question from another human.
Online, however, it’s easy to ignore. The term ghosting typically applies to online dating, but ignoring online messages happens with all types of communication, from SMS between friends to slack & email between coworkers, customers, and clients. We can all be the proverbial manager with the strict secretary who judiciously screens calls and guests.
This ability goes both ways: you can be ignored, and you can ignore others. And to be clear, there are benefits, because without the ability to ignore, there is no focus.
This impacts how we WFH:
We can’t rely on a coworker getting back to us immediately, and so any blocking issues must be identified well in advance.
Similarly, it’s important to have alternate activities ready for unforeseen blockers.
Processes must have guidelines and timelines, so that communication expectations are clear.
Focus work typically thrives in WFH contexts compared to noisy office environments (caveat: unless WFH contexts have other distractions, like kids)
Joint projects with unbalanced motivation are likely to fail because the person with less motivation can simply ignore the project.
All of the above are relevant in-person, but they’re especially important to keep in mind when WFH.
One last thing to note is that just because you can ignore people while WFH doesn’t mean that you should ignore people. You also have the ability to stand out from the crowd with timely responses. This can even co-exist with time carved out for focus, for example by sending an email auto-responder with your “communication hours”.
WFH Setup of the day
Back by popular request, the WFH setup of the day. Nice way to repurpose that bike during shelter-in-place. Send me your setup and I’ll post in a future newsletter!
Have a good day, see you tomorrow!
Andrew