Crisis – Stand Up Right

Do You Like Working In An Office? I Don’t

September 25, 2020 by Andrew

I Hate the Office

No, no, no, not “The Office” starring Steve Carrell, not the British one with Ricky Gervais. I hate the office, no caps. You know; the place we all go to work. The place where you suffer:

The jackasses on the roads, just to get there
Constant interruptions
Incessant background noise
The lighting conditions, too bright or too dark, never right
The environmental conditions, too hot or too cold, too dry or too humid, never right
Your obnoxious coworkers and their disgusting eating, drinking and personal hygiene habits

What if there were an alternative to working at the office? You know, where you have no commute, no irritating co-workers interrupting you, chewing with their mouths open, slurping their tea or coffee, hawking loogies into the sink (You think I’m kidding about that one? I’m not). A place where you don’t have to suffer the inane chatter of others, who then complain if you talk too loudly. A place where you control the lighting, the heat and humidity.

Heaven on Earth

What a heavenly place to work this would be, if there were such a workplace.

Well, the advent of high quality, high-speed internet, in conjunction with the Kung Flu, has given many of access to just such a workplace, our own homes.

When I graduated Engineering school, we were in the depths of a nasty recession. I spent the entire summer of 1992 searching for work, any work, watching my meagre savings dwindle, wondering if I was ever going to get my career going.

That summer at my annual physical, my doctor told me I had slightly elevated blood pressure. Not a big concern, because I also had a nice low resting heartrate, and that slow heartrate meant my heart just had to do a little more work each beat.

Over the years I have never not worked in an office, except for the time I spent teaching English in China. Oh, and the 7 years I spent travelling North America teaching how to use CAD software. I have never not been in an open concept, low cubicle walled hell space where there was no privacy, no peace and quiet, no peace of mind.

Through all the years, through 4 different family doctors, I have never not had mild diastolic hypertension. You know, the lower number on your blood pressure reading.

Until August of this year.

Last December, my doctor took my BP, and was a little worried. I told her about my history, and the 1992 diagnosis and conversation with that doctor. She didn’t care, wanted me in for a follow up to really check my pressure.

Fast forward to January

In January, I went in for that follow up. The doctor’s assessment, diastolic hypertension and I’d best come in for a follow up in six months. You see, as a non-drinking, non-smoking, lean, fit, healthy man with a good diet, my only risk factor is genetics…you know, family history.

Later that month, I crashed the ribbon cutting ceremony at the new wing of our local hospital. Dad, the longest serving doctor at the hospital, was part of the ribbon cutting and there was no way I was going to miss that.

At the meet and greet before the ceremony, I bumped into my doctor, as I was chatting with Dad. I introduced them, and she got the family history of hypertension. Turns out there’s a lot of it, and now my doctor is thinking about how we’ll plan my future course of treatment.

Fast forward to March

The Lung Pao Sicken Lockdown began, and I left cubicle hell for my spare-bedroom-cum-study. Six months of working from home; feeding, educating, raising and playing with my children later, my doctor’s office started taking in-patient appointments again, and I went in for another BP test.

Results?

“Everything is perfect, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

The modern office may not be a place purpose designed to suck the life out of you. But if it were, would it be designed any differently?

A New Working World Is Coming. How Will You Prepare?

September 23, 2020 by Andrew

Last week I wrote a little bit about the changes we’re going through, as a society. An old way of living and working is coming to a close, and a new one is opening up. As we’re only in the early stages of the change, the ultimate shape of what is to come is not even close to being clear, but we are starting to get a hazy image of what might be.

We know that the advent of high quality, high speed internet is improving our ability to work from anywhere we have a net connection.
We know that the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing many of us out of the office.
We know that the economic fallout of the pandemic is creating havoc in the high density, high rent financial districts of the globe.

All of this means that an increasing number of us will either work for our companies remotely, i.e. from home, or we will figure out ways to work for ourselves, i.e. from home. Which means we will have to learn a new skillset in order to navigate these new waters.

But, what new skills will we need?

Ergonomics

It’s perhaps the most obvious thing we will need to know, but we’re going to have to have at least a basic grasp of ergonomics. Now, when most people hear the word “ergonomics” they think of their comfy, adjustable office chair.

While it is true that your office chair is part of the office ergonomics question, it is not the whole of it. Don’t forget about:

Your desk
Your monitor(s), keyboard and mouse
The location of your office (which room are you going to use, and why)
The physical arrangement of your office (where are you going to put your desk, for instance)
The décor
And so much more.

Ergonomics is about the way we interface with the world, and now you have the opportunity to take control of your entire working environment. What are you going to do with that control.

Task management/workload

The old days of; show up at 9am, take lunch at noon, head home at 5pm are done. Now your job will be defined by a set of tasks to perform, rather than by the times you are at work.

How do you ensure you are neither overwhelmed, nor underworked
How are you going to schedule it all?

You now have the opportunity to take ownership over your workload, or, at the very least, enter into much more of a partnership with your boss.

Time management/scheduling

There are a certain number of hours in the day. You have a certain amount of work to do, and a life outside of your job.

It’s easy to let family distractions interfere with work.
It’s equally easy to let your job take over your life, and end up working long after you would have quit, were you at the office.

In short, how do you ensure that, between work and life, one does not encroach upon, or even completely take over from, the other?

Personal and professional interactions.

Need a few minutes with a co-worker, a subordinate, or the boss? His desk is right over there, go have a quick chat.

Wait, no it’s not, not any longer. How are you going to manage these relationships? So much of our communication is non-verbal, and now we’re using email and direct messaging. We’re doing our meetings over video, or even just the phone. How will that affect your job, and what are you going to do to make sure the effect is a positive one?

These are but a few of the things we will need to consider, starting, oh, about six months ago. We’re entering a new world, and it’s one few of us were even remotely prepared for. We don’t know what the ultimate shape of it will be, and yet we have no choice but to try to prepare for it.

Do You Want to Get Stress Relief? Then You Need to Give Stress Relief

September 23, 2020 by Andrew

Last week on Stress Relief Tuesday, I told you:

Stress relief isn’t science, it’s art and what works for one man doesn’t necessarily work for another.

I’ve been working remotely now for six months. As a part of my little project to create a course in how to make remote work effective for you, I take pretty much any interaction, social or business, as a chance to do a little research.

Sociable but Not Social

One of the things I have found is that a great people have difficulty with being cooped up at home, with their main source of social interaction confined to their immediate family. Shorter Aristotle:

Man is a social animal.

Generally, I am not. I’m sociable, but not social. This may seem like a distinction without a difference, but follow along.

When I’m in the company of others, I can do small talk with the best of them. That’s being sociable, but the thing is, I don’t generally seek out the company of others, which is the main property of being social.

This property of not being particularly social has driven a great deal of the choices of my life, with the exception of getting into RMC. How in the hell was I expecting to be an anti-social Navy officer? What was I thinking? Fortunately, that particular avenue closed off and I was able to pursue my mostly solitary lifestyle. But I digress.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, not being a particularly social being.

Stress Relief in the Pangolin Panic Pandemic

Fast forward to today, wherein the Pangolin Pandemic Panic has played perfectly into my lifestyle. How perfectly? For the first time in my adult life, in my 50s, I have normal blood pressure. In February, my doctor was worried that it was time to start me on BP meds. Six months without having to suffer the office and suddenly, “Your BP is perfect, you have nothing to worry about.”

That was six months where I spent almost my entire life in the company of my wife, kids and, on cottage weekends, my parents. For most people, family is a source of stress. For me, it’s one of my great release valves.

…what works for one man doesn’t necessarily work for another.

But this all doesn’t address the key point that I’m trying to make. If you want to get, you need to give. This holds in so many areas of life, but here we’re talking about stress relief.

My wife was stressed from work, the kids, the pandemic, etc. To help her out, I took over a pile of the household chores. Do I like cooking, feeding the boys, doing the dishes, cleaning, vacuuming, etc.? No. But I put in my ear buds, turned up the tunes, and did it, for her. Her stress relieved, my stress relieved.
My parents were, naturally, suffering a lot of stress from the cottage sale. I went up as many weekends as I could, and helped clean, organize and sort. When the final week hove into view, I blew an entire Saturday, and my lower back, getting the heirlooms and antiques taken care of for them. Their stress relieved, my stress relieved.
My little guy was having a terrible time adjusting to the incredibly stupid new school arrangements. It was getting so bad I was on the verge of pulling him out and home schooling. Fortunately, he loves running and playing on the jungle gym in our local park, so during the adjustment period, every day after dinner, “Daddy, can I go to the park?” was immediately answered with “Let’s go.” I hate watching them in the park. The little monsters running around suffer a severe lack of parenting, and keeping the little turds under control, when their own parents wont, is a serious source of stress for me. But my little guy needed it, and seeing him de-stress and make the adjustments he needed made the stress of other people’s children bearable.

Do you want to relieve your stress? Help someone else relieve theirs. I doesn’t have to be some grand gesture. Do the dishes. Clean the toilet. Take the kids for an evening so she can hang out with her girlfriends.

Do you have healthy stress coping methods? Then get in the way of someone else’s stress. Take it on yourself, and deal with the stress when you can. You might even find that simple the act of giving (through taking on their stress) relieves the very stress you’re taking on.

You want to get?

You have to give.

A New Working World Is On The Way. Will You Be Ready For It?

September 17, 2020 by Andrew

Today, instead of writing about ergonomics, I’m going to make a departure.

Every 90 years or so, as a society we go through a period of upheaval. Historians Strauss and Howe wrote about this in their book Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1859 to 2069, tying it to a cycle of “generational cohorts,” each with its own characteristics, which lead one naturally to the next.

Richard Florida took a less clinical approach in his The Great Reset” He didn’t spend a lot of time on the “why,” instead he concentrated on the “what.”

However you wish to look at it, about every 90 years, everything changes; there is a time of societal and cultural upheaval, and with it comes a massive shift, a realignment. The last one was the Great Depression/WWII and if we take the period as beginning in the late 20s, and fast forward 90 years, this transition began a few years ago, and we’re just now coming into the heart of it.

The Transition

What does this transition mean? According to Mr. Florida, these transitions, these resets, are a time when the way we work and live go through massive changes.

In the 1850s, we were an agrarian society, mostly living on farms. There was “’the long depression” followed by the Civil War, accompanied by the Industrial Revolution, and we transitioned from being that agrarian, farming society, to living in high-density cities, working in factories.

Fast forward to the Great Depression and The War. We went from living in those high-density cities, near to our jobs in the factories, to living in the suburbs, and commuting in for our jobs. From apartments to single-family dwellings, from factory work to office work, from walking/riding the bus to commuting to work.

A few years ago, we began to see the rise of high quality, high-speed internet. As the speed and quality rose, the cost came down, and people began to discover they could do large parts of their jobs from just about anywhere. All they needed was a power source, and a decent internet connection.

This phenomenon moved slowly along. More progressive companies offered their employees the opportunity to do parts of their jobs remotely, until March of this year when everything changed.

The Change

Of course, March 2020 was when the COVID-19 crisis hit, full blast. Suddenly, workers who wanted to do remote work were no longer asking their employers for the chance to do so. Rather, employers were sending as much of their workforce away, to work from home, as they possibly could.

It’s been six months now and we are beginning to see the results.

Some people love working from home and don’t want to go back to the office.
Some people hate working from home and desperately want to go back to the office.
Of course, some are stuck between, liking remote work, but having difficulty adjusting to it.

Pandora’s Box

The thing is, Pandora’s Box is open. The genie is out of the bottle. The cat is out of the bag. Workers and companies alike are going to have to adjust.

Remote work has arrived, big time, and it’s not going away. How does an employer tell people, who have proven they don’t need to be at the office 40 hours a week to do their jobs, that they must come back?

How does an employer, having discovered they can reduce their office footprint (and thus renting/leasing costs) by 75% or more, convince employees who are less comfortable with remote work that it is the new normal? What can they do to help their employees adjust to the new normal?

These are just the first pass problems that we will need to address as we move further into this latest “great reset.”

You Want Change? Go to Bootcamp, Danny Iny’s Free Online Course Business Bootcamp

August 30, 2020 by Andrew

I am not overfond of change. In fact I just wrote a bit about how much I hate change. Thing is, sometimes change is necessary, and good. And this weekend, if you’re interested in the good kind of change, Danny (founder of Mirasee) is hosting his free Online Course Business Bootcamp!

If you want to join this 3-day weekend of live trainings, it’s not too late to sign up:

https://mirasee.com/2020/tyg/bootcamp?AFFID=463550

The camp has already begun, but you can catch up, there are recordings of everything.

I don’t want you to miss out on this opportunity to work live with Danny, and learn how to start creating your own world class online course. Today he’s going to teach us…

>> Who can succeed at online courses (and how to know if this is right for your business)

>> How your course will fit into your business model to support everything else you do

>> Why pricing your course too low won’t bring you the students you want, and pricing it too high won’t generate more revenue

>> The truth and lies of the “passive income” dream – and how to get the freedom you want without sacrificing income

>> How to create online courses that fit seamlessly into a B2B environment (they aren’t only for consumers!)

>> What the future of online course business looks like, and how to thrive in a post-COVID-19 landscape

Even if you can’t make it to today’s live session, once you’ve signed up for the bootcamp you can still catch up with the video recording.

So register for the bootcamp ASAP, and have fun learning with Danny this weekend.