Tag: Working from home

First impressions are made in a blink of an eye and can have lasting effects

I have not worn a shirt for work in 12 months. Since working from home, my wardrobe has gone toward the relaxed end of business casual. I convince myself that this is OK because I run a team of people with Designer in their job title and I make an effort to buy quality, branded, smart clothes that last. However, my premise somewhat fails when I look at my calendar and realise that I spend most of my time in video calls with people in director or management roles. Tuesdays for me are the busiest days for meetings, and so for a few weeks I started to wear a shirt each Tuesday, but two of my reoccurring committees that day ended as we moved to a new phase at the university, so my shirt-wearing ended along with the meetings.

People are much more forgiving of your presentation and other elements of professionalism once they know you than when you first meet. First impressions are made within a tenth of a second and once formed can affect the way you think of someone for over six months after you meet. First impressions can be so influential over how you feel about someone that even when presented with facts that contradict these initial feelings, your brain will side with the false first impressions.

Professionalism is the habits and norms that people see as acceptable within a field and is highly specific to an industry or profession. The variability of standards is particularly relevant for your appearance. Many design agencies would not hire someone who turned up to an interview in a suit, but it is the opposite for many corporate positions. A study found that wearing a brand named cloths has a positive effect on first impressions. Other habits, however, like turning up on time and good levels of personal hygiene are universal.

Acting professionally in the right context allows people to focus on your work skills. You do not have to change or hide your personality but making sure you don’t distract people with your appearance or grammar, this will allow them to focus on what you say and make them more open to getting to know you. Just be genuine, making an effort, and respect peoples time. 

 Quantic suggests that you pay attention to: 

  • Appearance: be neat, clean, and dressed appropriately
  • Demeanour: be confident, articulate, have good posture, and a firm handshake
  • Reliability: Show up on time and prepared 
  • Ethics: Be honest, kind, helpful, and moral.

Focus and flow with the Pomodoro technique

The Pomodoro technique is a simple way to increase your productivity and is particularly useful when working from home. You work in intervals of focused work with breaks of rest away from your desk. The breaks help your brain focus, gives space to assimilation new information or incubate new ideas, builds in time for you to make a coffee or use the toilet, and provides an opportunity for movement breaks.

The basic idea 

  1. Select a task or set of tasks
  2. Set a timer for 25 minutes
  3. Get your head down and work uninterrupted until the timer goes off 
  4. Take a 5-minute break away from your desk before starting step one again. 
  5. After a set of 4 Pomodoros, you give your self a 15-30 minute break.

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Parkinson’s law

The six objectives

Once you are in the habit of separating your working day into Pomodoros, the 25-minute work intervals and breaks, work through the six objectives in sequence, only moving one once you have mastered the current objective.

  1. Time tracking – Become great at estimating how long tasks will take by tracking how many Pomodoros you need to complete all your focused work.
  2. Lazer Focus – Protect your work interval from all interruptions, extend the breaks to call people back or deal with emerging issues, but when you work you work.
  3. Estimate time needs for all tasks – Use your estimation skills gained from objective one to estimate how many Pomodoros you need for all activities in your todo list.
  4. Make your work interval more effective – Start your work interval with a few minutes to recap what you have done and end it with a review.
  5. Create a schedule – Plan out each day according to your todos and time available, scheduling in Pomodoro sessions in the slots available between commitments.
  6. Create your a personal objective – Come up with an objective that will make you more focused or better find time to complete your work.

Learn more in the Pomodoro Technique Handbook by its creator Francesco Cirillo.

Daily stand-ups for remote working

From the first day of lockdown in March, I have held a daily catch-up with my team first thing each working day. The main intention was to give the team a feeling of connection and maintain a level of routine. It also helped to get us through a hectic work period moving a university of 33,000 students from campus-based delivery entirely online. 

The daily conversations kept everyone aware of changes, got quick answers to questions, and it allowed emerging problems to get identified and fixed before they got too big. Interestingly, I tested the idea of scrapping the catch-up after planning the new academic year in October, and the whole team rejected it. I wanted to give everyone back a couple of hours of their week, but the team saw it as the best part of their working day. We had a week off the meetings in the end, but they have become the centrepiece of how we plan and run our projects.

A ‘stand-up’ meeting is 10-15 minute informal meeting where attendees stand to force them to keep it short. Queen Victoria introduced stand-ups with her Privy Council in 1861 to minimise her public duties. More recently, it has been adopted by various agile project management methodologies, including Scrum and Kanban. The goal is to increase workflow through collaborative problem solving and signpost things that will soon cause problems. 

How to run a daily stand-up

  1. Book out a daily meeting first thing in the working day. I book mine for 25 minutes to keep some space reserved in the calendar if follow-up conversations are needed. The aim is to have them complete in 15 minutes.
  2. Keep them as conversations but short and to the point. I use the first 5 minutes for social discussion and then a quick update from me including a what I completed yesterday, what I am doing today, and what I need from the team.
  3. Get each member of the group to do a 60-second status update. Ensure each person shares and let some conversation naturally emerge but once it starts to get into detail intervene with “Let us carry this on outside of the stand-up”. Each member should share:
    1. What they are will complete today.
    2. Requests for collaboration.
  4. End the meeting with an opening for questions or issues that the team want to raise. A final opportunity to talk usually brings up a few questions, and so is worth adding. 

We use Microsoft Teams with a reoccurring meeting invite to host the video call. Using Teams allows the chat channel to stay open for social and work conversations to continue for the rest of the day. We set a rule early on that video is needed to make the calls more personal and people stick to it most days. Working from home can be isolating, and the social element of an office is hard to replicate. A short daily call acts as an icebreaker and helps keep the team collaboratively solving problems while having some fun. 

Have a go with your team and let me know how it goes on Twitter.