March 18, 2020: The Opportunities with WFH Meetings
Good morning,
Wow, The WFH Times subscriber list doubled yesterday. If you’re new, say hello! If you’ve shared this with your team, thank you! I’ve heard that sometimes these emails get stuck in GMail’s “Promotions” tab, so be sure to check there in the future if you don’t see the daily update.
Today is day 2 of SF’s “shelter at home” coronavirus lockdown. I live on a busy street, and (anecdotally) I am seeing less traffic today. I hope this means that people are busy working from home.
On to the update!
#wfh-chronicles
I’ve recently heard good things from teams that have started WFH-related slack channels for people to post their WFH setups, routines, and minutiae. The channels seem to bring people closer to one another during these times. Consider creating one for your team!
Everything You Wanted To Know About The Science Of COVID-19
https://sph.nus.edu.sg/covid-19/
This link has been bouncing around the medical community, and the site has tons of information about the biology of the virus, the clinical presentation, and potential treatments.
If you dig deep (I haven’t yet), please share your learnings in a comment!
The Opportunities with WFH Meetings
The drawbacks of remote meetings are pretty clear, and there are plenty of creative mitigation strategies out there.
But today I want to focus on the opportunities that are unique to remote meetings, the things that are WFH-native, rather than WFH-bandaid. I’ll skip the most obvious “work from wherever you want” so that we can get right to some of the more interesting opportunities.
First, the opportunity to dramatically improve your ability to recall meetings. I now type notes for all of my remote meetings. This helps me focus on what the person is saying, prevents me from interrupting, and creates a record for the future. Typing on a laptop in-person is super rude, but on videochat nobody bats an eye.
Second, the opportunity to never be late. This may seem odd, but in-person you’re not really in control of your time. If you’re in a meeting and it’s running over, leaving is extremely rude. And then there’s the commute time, whether that’s down the hall or across the country. It’s not as rude to leave a meeting remotely, and you’ll never be stuck waiting for other people to vacate a conference room. You can stand out by always being on time.
Third, the opportunity to be physically healthy. Most meeting rooms are not designed for good health. We slouch into chairs and are locked into the room for the entire meeting. When meeting by video chat, give yourself permission to stand, walk around your room, or even walk around the neighborhood (works best for 1:1s). A good pair of headphones will ensure that you can still hear the meeting and the meeting can still hear you. If you’re at home slouched over a desk and your back is killing you, this one’s for you.
If you’re already doing these 3 things, fantastic, and I challenge you to dream up more opportunities for WFH meetings. If you’re not, give one a shot. And remember that your next WFH meeting doesn’t have to be a mimic of the in-person meeting.
WFH Setup of the Day
This guy decided to turn his urban garage into an exercise bike room!
(In general, I’m really curious to see what happens to garages as more people WFH on a longterm basis)
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow!
Andrew