Remote Work Hacks - No Office Podcast Ep. 71

What to do to make remote work efficient. How to avoid procrastination, distraction and the feeling you are constantly at work even after hours.

🎧 Listen to the podcast to learn:

Remote work can be a game-changer—but only if you do it right. Learn how to structure work, manage your time, and create a productive workspace. Plus, get insider tips from the Nozbe team on staying focused, setting boundaries, and maximizing efficiency.

✔️ Is remote work actual work?
✔️ Fighting distractions and mastering the time management - based on “Indistractables” by Nir Eyal
✔️ Seasonality in work intensity
✔️ Accessibility vs. Availability
✔️ Lack of adequate work space - how to deal with it?
✔️ Temptations lurking at home

🎧 Listen to the No Office podcast on remote work, work management and productivity

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Meet the Host

• Michael Sliwinski (@msliwinski)
• Magda Blaszczyk (nozbe.com/magda)

🔗 Show notes

• Book “Indistractable. How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life” by Eyal Nir
• Cal Newport’s podcast episode on remote work
• Michael’s home office
• How to reduce the number of meetings and how to plan them

🟣 Find Us

• No Office website: nooffice.fm
• Tweet us @nozbe
• Follow us on Instagram @nozbe

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Read this episode’s transcript if you prefer

Isolation, depression, dark thoughts and the dark side of the remote work. Can it be salvaged? Can you work remotely and be Not unhappy? Is it possible, Magda? Welcome to 71st episode of the NoOffice podcast. Again, we skipped a few episode numbers right below 70, so it’s now 71. And today we’ll talk about hacking remote work, how to get more done when you’re working remotely and if it’s actually possible to be productive when you work remotely. Yeah, because now as there’s a lot of discussion about hybrid work and remote work, I can hear people kind of biased about remote work. It very often seems to be the source of depression and isolation, as you said, in a theatrical way at the beginning, and people think that people who work from home are really isolated and sad and they are squeezed somewhere between the kitchen table and the sink and the toilet seat and it’s horrible and we would like to just, you know, like break some of those stereotypes and give you some practical tips. Of course, it’s not perfect. You can’t have everything, but there are many ways to make remote work really nice and productive and efficient and not so lonely. Yeah, some of these tips and the whole idea for this episode was inspired by Karl Newport. Karl, we’re, you know, waving to Karl Newport. If he’s listening, I don’t think he is, but if he’s listening, Cal Newport, thanks for his amazing books, Deep Work, and So Good They Can’t Ignore You, and Recently Slow Productivity, Amazing Books, and Amazing Podcast. He has a very cool podcast, and in one of the episodes, he was talking about his way of hacking remote work, and this inspired me, us, to do this episode to talk about some things that he mentions, but also mention our own experiences and ideas. That’s right. So the first dark side I would think of would be the fact that when you are working from home most people think that you are actually unemployed and you don’t have work and you are just sitting at home so So they’re not kind of recognizing it and they’re not respecting your focus and they are calling you in the middle of the day. Your dad will call you asking to help him with, I don’t know, with the car and your mom will call you just to have a chat while she’s having coffee at noon and stuff like that. Maybe that can be difficult because not everyone really can understand that. Yeah, that’s the one thing. And especially I remember when my parents visit me sometimes and my dad also works in our company. So we both sit with my dad. This is kind of our co -working experience. My dad is here. I am here. We work in the same room for a while. And then my mom comes over and she just asks, Like out of the blue, she just asks us questions. And we’re like, we are working right now. Because she thinks, okay, there is my husband, there is my son in the same room. Let’s ask them some things, you know? And we actually know that we’re working. So we are respecting each other’s boundaries. Like my father is with his laptop, I’m with my iPad, we work, but she just comes in and she just like ask questions out of the blue. And we were like, huh, we are working. So it’s kind of awkward. But I think your mom understands. She knows that you are working remotely. Like she knows. I know she’s also the evangelist. But I don’t know, it just works like that. People just– When you don’t with, you know, with desks and people and your boss standing above you. It’s just, yeah, that’s just the feeling that you are not working. So what are the ideas that how can we, how can we avoid it? There’s a really good, apart from the rational thing. So you just talk to your close ones and you explain that please don’t call me from that hour to this hour, because I’m really trying to focus. I’m working. My dad, after like 10 or 11 years of me working in Nozbe, he got it. Yeah. But yeah, decade, whatever. But Paweł, Paul from our team, he had a great idea because he also had that problem that his parents who are like elderly people. They would call him regularly during his working hours. And when he didn’t pick up the phone, they would text him like really horrible messages, like please urgently call back or something. So he was really stressed out. He thought that maybe there was something wrong, an urgency accident. And then it turns out that, oh, I just wanted to ask you whether you could lend me this hammer or I don’t know the, you know, anything. So it wasn’t urgent. So what he did is he turned, he turns his phone into focus mode. But there is some setting that lets you unblock this focus mode and let the incoming calls through after the second time one caller calls you. Yeah, so probably if it’s really urgent and someone is once again, okay, he’s not picking up once again, then that would go through and that would be really urgent probably. Yeah, so that’s a good idea. Yeah, on the other hand, on the other hand, as you mentioned, like your dad, it took him quite a while to understand that you’re working, you know, even though you’re at home, it’s, I feel like this is a minus. People still don’t understand this people still don’t take me seriously here like here my neighbors they think i’m a just stay at home dad so and even my children sometimes like my favorite quote from my elderly daughter she was it was like daddy i need to play with you right now i cannot i’m working no you’re not you’re just writing random stuff on the internet so yeah So it’s like, you know, I’m not a, you know, lawyer, I’m not a doctor, you know, I like, there is no respect. So, so it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of okay. It’s kind of okay that you have to get used to it. But as we mentioned, you can work on the boundaries front and explaining. I have this thing I have them right now you can buy in IKEA these smart bulbs. So like this, you know, we can remote remotely control these bulbs. So light bulbs. And I have a light bulb right outside of my office. And when the right light bulb is on, it means I’m recording something. And now my kids know it. So they don’t barge in to this office, because they know that, you know, daddy is recording something because there is a light bulb. If this light bulb is not there, then they know, okay, they can come in because daddy is not recording anything. So it’s also kind of a, you know, visual queue, as you mentioned, but you cannot overuse it because they would realize very soon that you were cheating if the light bulb would be on all the time. No, no, that’s why I’m not overusing it. I have it like this that I put it on only when I, so I have this mode in my home app, the podcasting, and when I put it on, automatically this light light bulb turns on. So this way, when I’m done with podcasting, I turn it off and then the whole thing turns off. So that’s why I’m not using it, but on the other hand, this way, my daughters know that at that moment, please don’t come in. That’s a really good idea. Next point is lack of external motivation and the work energy, this vibe that you can probably feel when you are in the open space office or in any kind of office that you can see that everyone around is working, they are, you know, like, looking into their screens and I don’t know, maybe wearing headphones and just appearing and looking very busy and very concentrated. So maybe this vibe makes you feel okay, everyone is working, so maybe I will try to work as well. But Probably everyone knows that in the circumstances like that you are not able to stay focused all the time, so probably 50 % of the people who you think they are focused, they are probably checking private email or doing something on social media, but still this vibe can be really helpful if someone needs these external triggers and external motivation to concentrate and work. This reminds me of something we mentioned in the last episode of the podcast, when we’re talking about this, that people were offending me, but telling me that, you know, we wouldn’t be able to work like you guys, because we have to be in the same place, because only when we are in the same place, there is this vibe between us and we can work creatively, otherwise we cannot be creative. So this is like the key to being creative is that we are in the same space and in the same place. So, but I get it. I get it. People are here. People are around you. You know, when you work from home, you have to self manage much better. You have to have a good tool like Nozbe to have your tasks and projects and have feedback loops from your people. And, you know, in the comments to tasks, this way you know what needs to be done and you know what to do and you are motivated by by work but for me for example one of the things that motivate motivate me a lot is seeing action in our tasks like yesterday and and the day before when I came back from from a week long vacation and I was reviewing all these tasks you know, all these mentions and all these comments that I was missing out on. I was so inspired and so like motivated by seeing, for example, some of your demos that converted into praying customers, that Jarek, for example, did this cool thing with AI for Nozbe. So spoiler alert, AI is coming, but it’s going to be cool. So he did that. So to me, more than seeing people work, seeing fruit of their work inspires me, you know? And seeing that, for example, that, you know, coming back here from the vacation and seeing that you have all prepared, you know, for the podcast and everything is ready. So I just have to just, you know, catch up and I’ll be able to record. All these things motivate me To be better and to work better and to get things done things that I see that you’re progressing everybody’s progressing and This way I don’t want to be left out because I see movement in the tasks. I see movement in the comments I see you don’t want to be the lazy one. I don’t want to be the lazy one exactly I want to be delivering cool results as well. Hey, I want to be cool. So cool, too So so this kind of thing motivates me. Yeah, but someone has to start right someone has to bring the effects first just to inspire the others. And probably here the counter argument would be that it’s really hard to focus when you are all alone in your room and there are plenty of stuff that really seduces you and tries to distract you. And here comes Mr. Nir Eyal, I think that’s how you pronounce it. This is the guy who wrote the book “Indistractable”. And he seems to be really irritated by people saying, oh, I really cannot focus because there are all those triggers and incoming noise and notifications and social media. I’m a victim of the whole system and I cannot focus. And he, yeah, he says, come on, if you are like you have to find tools to fight those things. And also, there is a nice quote that he that he wrote being indestructible means striving to do what you say you will do. So first, okay, generally, all motivation and everything we do or we don’t do stems from the desire to escape discomfort, to avoid discomfort and feeling anxious and feeling bad. And it’s really easy when you are in this position of a victim, that you’re a victim of the system, of notifications, of social media. Of course, it’s all bad for us. But let’s avoid believing in the willpower, and let’s start labeling ourselves as having self control. After all, it’s difficult, but we can. So this is a good start just to make ourselves accountable and just, okay, to practice self compassion, not to be too cruel and to hurt with ourselves, but not to be a victim of everything around because if you There are tools to find this and you have much more agency than you believe like you can really do things To to help you get in the groove and there are all these you know Small tips and tricks that we have already mentioned on this podcast many many times But this thing of having you know most of notifications off or some of the notifications on, I still don’t understand how people can have notifications about likes on the posts on social media. Why would you do that to yourself? Also, notifications to email. You shouldn’t have these notifications. You just commit, and this is another thing, when you commit that you will be checking email every two hours, then it’s fine. Every two hours you go there. It’s like on WhatsApp. I use WhatsApp a lot because here they use, so whenever I get, I am being added to a new group in WhatsApp, the first thing I do is go to this group, mute notifications always, like completely mute notifications from this group, because I don’t want to have this deluge of, you know, messages coming my way. I will open WhatsApp. I’m using it every day. So, you know, if there are messages in this group, I’m going to get to them, but I don’t need to have notifications about them. So it’s like this you can do. And of course, you know, we have already been talking about our Super Fridays and about weekly reviews. So about this whole fact that if you have a good weekly review and you prepare for next week, then you know what to do next week. Like, you know, if you have a good tool that, you know, that has some projects and tasks, you could you could have a structured day and you would know what to do. So it’s like now as a dad I have three daughters and they are right now basically teenagers. I mean two of them and the third is the youngest but she’s not far off and we talk about this that you know he provoked me and I’m like no he didn’t provoke you. There is no way I mean do you have do you give him so much power that he can provoke you to do something you chose to do this because you saw him do that you made the choice you can make another choice so it’s like the whole conversation that you know that’s about your agency and about other people or other other things not influencing you you I mean they can try to influence you but you still have a choice it’s your choice to make. Yeah it’s really difficult because naturally we are programmed to avoid discomfort so we do things that will save us from that difficult feeling so let’s say if you have a really hard task some report or some long article something really that will require a lot of mental energy of course you will move to checking emails, work emails, because you want to still be working not to feel bad about it, or you will answer to some comments, or you will do something easy. That’s natural. But if you try to convince yourself that doing this will bring a lot of satisfaction, that you can divide it into smaller steps, that you can turn off notifications and not check your social media and your email from 1pm to 2pm. There are several tricks and several approaches that can lead you to trying to And this procrastination, this way you escape from this comfort and choose easier things and choose not to focus and to work, but to do other stuff. Also like a practical tip that, you know, this is what I do. So every day I start with smaller tasks. So this way I get up to speed, like I start doing something and then, you know, from this, I start doing the bigger task and the bigger task. And then I do something really big. So it’s like, it always like, you have to find ways that work for you, that, that, that help you get motivated and then help you get things done. But yeah, and what you said is really great because you said that you are planning also the same, the same guy, Mr. Nir Eyal, he said that you can’t call something a distraction unless you know What is distracting you from? So just you need to, this is also a nice phrase. You need to make time for traction. Yeah. If you want to complain about this traction. So he asks people, okay, you, you, you are being distracted all the time, but show me your calendar. And then there is empty calendar. We’ve just the dentist visit p .m. or 5 30 p .m. and maybe one meeting in the middle of the day. How can you plan your work and how can you fight with those procrastination and with the urge to avoid discomfort if you even didn’t plan what you are going to do at which part of the day. This is the this is the basic thing. You have to plan your day and create this rational and achievable list of things, blocks of time for your day, and only then you can complain that you are being distracted, but there is a big chance that you won’t be distracted because you know what to do, you have nice breaks in between, and this is so much easier. - Yeah, completely, completely. So yeah, planning, executing tasks, it’s, you know, And just one last thing, we talked in the last episode about hybrid, about return to office and all that stuff. So one of the things that what I like about people who work a hybrid way, and we mentioned that in the last episode is that very often they treat going to the office as the more social kind of work because they interact with people, they visit people, they talk to them and they have more meetings. But then the day that they stay at home, it’s their day for focus. It’s their day for deep work. And this way, they can turn off the computer– I mean, the turn off the notifications on the computer, turn on the stirp, and just focus on the big document, on whatever they’re working on. Yeah, exactly. It also relates to Carl Newport’s idea about the fact that when you are working remotely, you can use something that he calls small scale seasonality or intensity seasonality. So this is the way that lets you while in the real off in the like, you know, brick brick and how do you say that? Anyways, in the in the physical office, you have this atmosphere of work and culture that kind of demands pseudo productivity and when people are just pretending and feeling pressured to appear busy rather than really get productive. He suggested that remote work allows you to balance this high intensity when you have to really work focus and go to deep levels of work with something that you can call a recovery day. So when you are making less effort, you are doing lighter tasks just not to exhaust yourself and this way you can actually boost productivity.

• Yeah, completely. And the thing is also that we, you know, I think, I mean, we have proven that people who work from home, of work remotely, they actually, instead of slacking off, they’re actually trying to prove to others, yeah, I’m working here, I’m here. This is what I deliver. So they work a lot. And sometimes we have days that are very effective, very efficient, and sometimes this means that the next day it’s gonna be less efficient because you will kind of pay the price of yesterday’s work, then today your body and your mind will tell you, “I need to relax a little bit.” So this is also important to have for these kind of days, have lighter tasks. Exactly, to manage this, to predict it and to manage it, to have this balance. Exactly. This way, even on a worse day, you still are going ahead, you still are doing something, you still are moving forward compared to these days when you’re just so effective and everything is, you know, going your way. - Yeah, so there are four points that Carl Newport suggested in this short episode as a cure for this thing. First, time block your schedule to different between deep work and logistic tasks. Then balance heavy and light work days so that you have this kind of sinusoid instead of spreading tasks evenly to make each day equally productive. Just give yourself a chance to have this trend. Then this is a really nice phrase, trade accessibility for accountability. So yeah, focus on deliverables rather than constant availability and being there and pretending to take part in every discussion or chat or email conversation. And another one that you don’t really like, Michael, create no meeting days. For example, Mondays, no meeting days, so that everyone in the company is able to focus and then go to deep work and do something instead of being distracted by meetings and calls and phone calls. - I’m gonna explain why I don’t like no meeting days, because no meeting days means that on any day, you can have any kind of meeting at any kind of time, which I don’t like. So in Nozbe, we say meetings are regular, optional and well -prepared. And because they’re regular, we can plan our time blocks, our work around them. So for example, you know, we both know that our marketing meeting isn’t Tuesday So, we know that at that time we’re going to be on the meeting. But then we know that we can prepare our time block for after the meeting or, for example, on Monday before the meeting, so to get prepared for the Tuesday meeting. So, it’s just predictable and it’s easy to predict and it’s easy to plan for. And now, to make it even, you know, because as we work remotely very often I want to talk about some things with people on our team and I asked them via messages in Nozbe, “Hey, do you have availability now? Can we talk now?” But I started doing it less and what I instituted was office hours. So on Thursday afternoon I have office hours, two hours, and it’s in our company calendar. Everybody knows that in these two hours you can talk to Michael, this is my Zoom is open. And also, I use it as a way to lure people in. I’m like, “Hey, Magda, can we talk in my office hours now about this and this?” And then, you know, you come in and we talk about this. So this way, people also know that most likely I will not ask them for a meeting, any kind of meeting apart from this time. Yeah, exactly. And this is And this is time blocking, again, this is scheduling, and this is just helping yourself to manage yourself in time. Exactly. Exactly. So I think this is a cool thing, and also what you mentioned about accessibility and accountability is, again, I think people are very often mistaken that they are being expected to reply within five seconds. But what they are being expected is to deliver things. So if you prove to your superior, to your boss or to your manager that, hey, I’m not going to reply within five seconds to anything you write, but I am going to deliver, when I say I’m going to deliver, then they’re going to be happy. You’re probably, unless your work requires instant reactions, but yeah, that’s probably, yeah, you will earn more money by doing something than replying to some random and public emails or questions. Okay. You don’t have to reply to any emails or phone calls if you are using Nozbe, right? Because everything is there and this is asynchronous way of working.
• Yeah, completely, and that’s why we have, In Nozbe, we have project tasks and comments for these tasks. And we have also messages in Nozbe. So we can really have your own team communication within one app. And you don’t have to just be accessible all the time. Even in our Nozbe messages, the messages are bigger to encourage you to write a longer comment and not just, “Hey, enter. How are you? Enter. I have a question. Enter.” And you’re like, “Oh man, what’s the question?” So anyway, so even that we have designed, so it encourages like a thoughtful question or a thoughtful message. And we are not alone here. We have thousands of happy customers. And maybe today, let’s listen to Sarah. We haven’t had her for a while. When we’ve been around for about 10 years, our business has, and we’ve been using Nozbe for about eight of those years. And as we grew, we kind of got to the point where I just couldn’t remember everything anymore. I’m pretty organized. I would just kind of keep everything in my head and with Post -it notes and things like that. And it just got to be too much. And so I started looking around for some sort of project management software that could help me have a set up really trusted system. But really, I just wanted a system where I could know that I had everything in there. I wasn’t going to forget anything. I wasn’t going to drop any balls for clients or missed deadlines. All right, so let’s talk about home office, my favorite subject. Yeah, another dark side of remote work the work space, the limited home office space that regular, not super rich people struggle with. Yes, we usually live at this in Poland, in, I don’t know, apartments to maybe two or three bedroom apartments. But if you are at the beginning of your career, you can probably live just in a room, in a rented room in the shared apartment. So that’s really difficult to create your proper, really nice and ergonomic work, I don’t know, work home office with proper desk, with proper chair that won’t destroy your spine, with microphone, with the second monitor, with a good mouse and You know this is really difficult for regular people. So that’s that’s that this is the aspect when you shouldn’t When you shouldn’t save money on that’s one thing, but there are several ideas to like you know to hack this or just to To find a different solution not necessarily Seek in your home so first of all, I think I think Magda in, ‘cause I remember this, like I remember when I was buying my first apartment and I remember that we bought a very small apartment, of course, and that’s why if you go back, if you go to my blog, Michael .team /office and you look at my first home office, it was an IKEA cabinet in the corner of my living room and because I didn’t have a special room for my home office. But what I wanted to say is that I think that it was also a mindset that we would, like people who would, you know, get an apartment, they would always just think about like what they need now, like without thinking like what they could need a little bit down the line in the future. I remember like my wife’s brother was getting an apartment and he wanted to get, you know, only a you know, only a two bedroom apartment. And we were like, look, man, like you just got married, tell the kids whatever, get a three bedroom apartment if you can afford it. ‘Cause you will need it and you might need it. And then later he actually got a three bedroom apartment instead of two bedroom apartment because of that. Because like, you know, we didn’t know what we need at this point and we think, you know, we don’t need so much. We’re going to be, you know, less is better. But in that sense, it’s not. I don’t think so. But I remember even in this crammed space, I managed with my IKEA cabinet, which I could close, which was like the end of work, was a good hack to be able to have a home office and the dedicated corner for my home office in my apartment. So it is doable, but there are more tricks. Like you can have a co -working space, maybe next to your, I mean, not far away from your home. This way you kill two birds with one stone because you can go out on a commute, which is like a five minute walk or 10 minute walk. And then you go to the co -working space and you work there, and then you have like your co -working space, which means work. And then you walk back home and then it’s home. So there are things that can be done. Yeah, but still, if you decide to stay at home, it’s really important to try to do everything to separate your life, personal life from your work life. So even if you have a small place, you could arrange things. And you know, there are many inspiration and inspiration and solutions on the internet. I’m sure you can find something, you know, people now with DIY and different ideas just to make this separation. It’s very important because otherwise, you will feel like you are constantly at work and that’s not healthy for you. So yeah, various tables, various cabinets, various tables that are like closed and opened from the wall or I’m sure there are many things that’s important that this is the this is the aspect where you shouldn’t save the money and probably your employers also can refund some of the furniture or some of the stuff because yeah if you are employed probably there is some paragraph that advises the employer to support you in this aspect Also there is. Yeah, so also also like the whole idea for me of changing where you work. So like you can take your laptop or that your ipod like in my case and do your weekly review in your favorite cafeteria. So this way you work in a different place and and to me doing a weekly review in this cafeteria means weekly review. It means I have to finish the weekly review over there. And And Cal Newport mentions this, that you can even go to a museum or something to, you know, to get this higher price. Yeah, he calls this adventure work and looking for inspirational places or parks or cafes or even galleries or museums, that will just change your mindset and help you do the work even better than sitting on your sofa or in your kitchen table. There is another way, another tip from Cal Newport. And this is, I think, you are doing it very often by doing sport directly after work. This is kind of the simulation of the commute, because if you are not working, if you are not working in the office, you don’t have this time when your brain switches from the working mode to the leisure mode. And it’s nice to have it, to have this sharp break, sharp line between your work and your private life. So yeah, it can be sport, it can be short walk. It can be, as you said, with your small corner in your first apartment that your ritual was closing this cabinet and hiding everything related to work and then doing something else. So yeah, that’s the simulation of transition. it’s needed as well.
• Yeah, I mean, for me, just this Monday, when I was my first day after a week -long vacation, and it was a very intensive day. So for me, going out and just going for a run was amazing. It was a great way to close the day and to get ready for the evening with family and then for tomorrow. So I think walking is anyway a good idea. We already mentioned sometime on this podcast that on some meetings we go out with people, we go out for walks. So we can, you know, have a meeting while walking. And, you know, right now all our, you know, iPhones and smartphones are connected to 5G networks. So we can really have a great connection, great audio, great video and just walk around, talk to people. And if you have Nozbe on your phone, you can have access to all the information you need. So if you have to look up something, you can still do it right on this phone. So this way, the meetings are not so stationary. And especially, I think if you wanna just talk over something with somebody, it’s even better because the pace walking stimulates you to actually make some decisions and just, you know, just have a better conversation. Yeah, when you are on the move, on the go, your brain is working in a different way and probably is aspiring information quicker. Okay, another dark side that is being mentioned is the way People who work from home are kind of afraid to take their time off or they are afraid to go to sick leave. I think it’s called presentism or something like this. And this is the way that you feel you should be present all the time. That you should be present, seen, and the fact that you are working remotely is already a bonus so you shouldn’t ask your boss to take some days off because, yeah, even if you are sick, you won’t infect anyone by coming to the office because you are working from home, you won’t be sneezing on people, you don’t have to commute so your fever won’t get worse. You can just sit in your blanket, in your bed, but still be working. And I think this is dangerous. This is dangerous, taking your work with you when you were going on the vacation because it’s okay, I’m working remotely, I will take my job with me, I will be working a lot and then I will be just having fun in the evenings. But that shouldn’t work like that. - Unless it’s a choice, like for Emilia on our team, she travels a lot with her husband and she clearly states which days are her days where she does work even though she’s traveling and which days are the days where she’s sightseeing and she’s not working. So like she takes, you know, she takes it kind of very consciously that on these days she’s working, you know, her, but then on these days she’s taking the days off. So this way also we know when we can, you know, reach her and we when we shouldn’t reach her. Also in our team, we had these moments where people were sometimes working when they were very, very sick and we told them like, come on, just close the laptop, like go away. You know, it just relax, take care of yourself. So it took, I can tell you, it took some time for everyone to understand that we can do this, like we should do this. We should not be afraid to take time off. And probably that’s also depends on how your boss is and how your boss sees that. Speaking of Emilia, because you mentioned Emilia, she’s amazing. She travels a lot and she also gave us her tip. It’s related to and to the the way you can have flexible working hours when you are working from home. Because sometimes she lives in Poland and then she’s working in the regular hours because most of us are in the Central European time zone and so she wakes up really really early and then she works until 3 p .m. but then she often moves to Taiwan and Then when she is there, she adjusts her schedule to align with us here in Europe. So what she does, her mornings, when we are deeply asleep, fast and asleep, she’s doing the deep work. So she’s replying to customer emails, she’s doing some strategic work and some deep work. And then she takes time off, she goes to, she eats something, she’s having lunch, she’s doing some sports, only to come back to work its evening there. And then we are already awakened and we are working here in Europe. So she can dedicate maybe two hours or one hour and a half or two hours to in in touch with us and to be more interactive. So this is, as she said, this is not a problem for her. This is just adjusting this rhythm. It’s easy for her and she appreciates this flexibility. Yeah, I mean, to me, it sometimes looks like she never sleeps because she applies to messages like at 2 a .m. my time and then at 3 at 3pm my time. So it’s like, does she ever? I’m sure she would say if that wouldn’t be okay for her. So yeah, I’m not sure. But it’s so cool that she can do that actually, you know, and very often when she’s in Poland, she’s a very early riser. And then when she’s there, she’s not, she’s like, she’s doing it differently. So it’s cool. And I like it. I like how this way, even when we are, you know, nine hours apart, we can still have a meaningful overlap to be able to work together. Yeah. The last thing probably that I would like to mention is the way people say, oh, when you are working from home, you have so many distractions like homeworks. Actually, you are really tempted by the washing machine or dirty floor and you said okay I will do some work and then you do breaks and breaks and breaks just to do some homeworks and then it turns out that to be honest and to be fair and to really work eight hours that you have in your contract you will be in front of the computer until seven p .m. or something like that. So I have my own system to avoid it but honestly Honestly, this is possible because I’m not working full time, like eight hours, but maybe seven. I think it’s seven and a half. So I have right to work a little bit less according to my contract. But what I do is I invented my own Pomodoro technique. Probably you all know Pomodoro technique. This is the way you work for 25 minutes, and then you have a short break, then again working session and then share break again. And after several working sessions like this, you are allowed to have a longer break and then restart the short breaks again. And I modified it a little bit. And my breaks are a little bit longer, but they involve doing the homework. Yeah, exactly. My first break is maybe like after one hour and a half or two hours of work in the morning. This is when I’m trying to arrange and tidy up our flat after the morning cows when kids are leaving to school when my son says, “Okay, mom, I won’t be washing this plate after my breakfast because, you know, I’m in a hurry, so he leaves it somewhere in the middle, then someone leaves the clothes in the middle, someone, oh no, it’s a huge chaos. So, and I prefer to work in the neat place. So, my first break is just tidying up this this chaotic mess after the morning, morning rage. It takes me like maybe 10, maybe 15 minutes. Then my second longer break after working sessions is either going out to buy some food or doing some, I don’t know, paying bills or checking something in, you know, something related to my home and to my my personal life. But during my break, legal break, and then, and then I have my third break dedicated to cooking lunch or cooking dinner, whatever. And yeah, I’m preparing food. It takes me like 20 minutes or something like this. And then I’m done with all my responsibilities as mom and as a housewife and as my person who lives with the family. And also I’m done with my work probably in time. and I’m not cheating with the working hours because I take my breaks. I only devoted them, dedicate them to my chores.
• Magda, I think we missed the whole opportunity of a good headline here. Like we have here remote work, burnout, depression, isolation, or maybe we have this other remote work hacks get in less time. I think we have it. No, we have a much better headline. Remote work. Is Magda tempted by the washing machine? Yes, sometimes my second break is doing the laundry. Like there is so much in there. With this washing liquid, That smells so nicely. - The washing machine is flirting with you.
• That’s true. - Yes, completely. - Do you have any other tips or hacks or ideas that we can share?
• Yeah, I have kind of the same routine in the morning. So I also first throw my kids out of the house to the school bus, and then I start to work. And then after also like maybe an hour, maybe an hour and a half, I go to the kitchen, I make myself a cup of coffee, and I clean up the kitchen, I clean up some stuff. Maybe I have a late breakfast. It depends if I had breakfast right there with them or if not. So it’s like, it also gives me a natural break after the first stint at work to just gather my thoughts as well and just, you know, get ready for the rest and, of course, having the coffee, having a little bit more energy and down the line. So I also have something like that and I find this nice. And especially in the morning after everyone’s out, it’s so quiet. It’s so nice. So it kind of activates me and after that, oh no, I’m gonna get something done. So it’s like, it’s kind of a natural break and I like it. I love it. So I, you know, this is another aspect. You know, we are both extroverts. We like people, we like hanging out with people, but as an extrovert, I also appreciate this moment when just there’s quiet and I can just focus on my thoughts, focus on my work, focus focus on things I have to do. So there is a benefit to that. So yes, so remote work can be really productive unless you are you not put yourself in place of a victim of a system and with no willpower, with no strength to overcome procrastination and all the temptations from the washing machine to social media and and other distractors and triggers. And just look for your ways to make it productive and to make it not so this, like not so stressful or not so, I don’t know what. It can be really productive. If you just work, if you’re just not looking for some golden rules, super hacks, just sit and work. That’s the best advice.
• Yeah, the basic thing, you know, the basic thing we said on a Friday, do a weekly review, prepare your week. On Monday, you will know what to do. You will have, you schedule it, you schedule your time blocks, as Cal Newport suggests. And we will have a whole episode about my weekly template, because I think this is something that we also have to have to talk about how we can plan the week so that we have this seasonality and take advantage of this seasonality, like, you know, things that I do on Mondays or Tuesdays, or which part of day what we do, all these things can be taken care of. And this way, it’s kind of, you know, the work flows, you flow, and you feel that you’re achieving something, that you’re doing something, that you’re getting things done. And of course, you know, to get things done, the best way is to use Nozbe and to put everything in projects, tasks and comments, but you knew that already. But if you still haven’t had an opportunity to try Nozbe, or maybe you were using Nozbe before, but haven’t tried the new one, and now it’s a great moment to give it a try. We have a special gift for you. So if you use the special link, which I’m about to mention, You can use the money that we give you when you sign up for a free account that you can upgrade to premium for three months almost. So take advantage and see you and hear you in two weeks. Thank you for being an amazing listener of the NoOffice podcast. Every other Wednesday we meet to talk about productivity and hybrid lifestyle because we believe that work is not a place to go. It’s a thing to do. It’s a special gift only to know -office podcast listeners. When you sign up for Nozbe using this link, nozbe .com /podcast, you’ll get 30 bucks of credits, which you can use to upgrade to Nozbe Premium. Nozbe helps thousands of smart business owners and their teams get their professional and private life organized in a single app in a simple way. And Nozbe is free for up to three active projects and three people on your team. So start today and claim your free bonus credits, which you will later need to upgrade to unlimited projects. Once again, thank you for being an amazing listener. Thanks for your support and for spreading the word about our No Office podcast and Nozbe. See you and hear you in the next episode. and in the meantime, claim your bonus credits here.