#62: Remote Working Tactics for Success

Hey, everybody, thanks for sitting down with us this evening. This is the drunken UX podcast. This is episode number 62, where we’re talking about working remotely during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond. I am your host, Michael Fienen.

I feel like my intro to this show the longer I’m doing it. The more newscaster this the whole starting segment is getting. That’s why I say other other Host. Yeah, I don’t have like a nice little catchy thing. It’s just like I’ve just kind of fallen into this very Matter of fact, it’s like I’m doing well. Thank you for asking. Hello. Folks, this episode of the dragon UX podcast is brought to you by our friends. Over at New cloud, you can check them out at New cloud.com slash drunken UX. You can go check them out if you want to get anything done with interactive maps, illustrations or tools for your website. Let’s see what else do we got going on Aaron?

And let’s talk about what we are drinking tonight. I’m having makers 46 makers 46. I like Maker’s Mark sounds good. Yeah, normal makers market gets Okay,

But boy makers, 46 makers 46 to me, is maybe not as like I like it. I like Maker’s Mark. I’ve had gentlemen jack on the show before and I mentioned like I don’t like jack daniels. I think jack daniels is kind of crap. But boy do I enjoy gentlemen jack This is a similar kind of thing

yeah kind of that that’s gonna insult somebody but

of jack is great for mixing Yeah. And Maker’s Mark is very much that way normal Maker’s Mark is a great cocktail bourbon but man makers 46 with just a giant hunk of ice in it is it’s a nice it’s, it’s a little bit more aggressive than like gentlemen jack is gentlemen jack is incredibly smooth and just has a nice even mellow flavor. But makers 46 has a little bit of a kick to it. You can really taste some Corn in it. Mm hmm. The sweetness the sweetness of the corn comes through a lot harder than in gentlemen jack. Yeah, it’s it is a permanent fixture in my in my bird mini ski.

You understand what that means?

that I have to drink twice as much. Well I have to keep the show balanced if you’re not drinking I have to drink twice as much.

is gonna hurt I’m going to give a shout out over to a friend of the show Adam for I apologize on the name of Bob getting that a little off as usual because I want just once I would like somebody to be like my name is john smith. I can okay

Adam reached out to us a few weeks ago to share a tool with us that he built and I got to look at it and you’ve maybe seen this on some you know some of the news sites I know it has definitely made the rounds but it’s colors dot law lol yeah it’s kind it’s a it’s a nice little fun yeah break so to speak it it’s a it’s overly descriptive color palettes so you go there and he’s just he’s generated I don’t know how he’s generated these you know based on something or using you know a tool to pull like triads or something like that out but the

they they are I think from a color theory standpoint, do you That’s why I say like he did something to generate these that all of them are

I’ve got two here that I think are two of my favorites. So there’s one it’s a a Gio tropic dark Aqua Marine, stone light green, blue, and ornate water blue. And then there’s another one that’s a integrative pig pink. Multi screen baby pink, and eerie dark gray. The multi screen baby pink, I think wins it for me though.

Am I right here? I’m looking at this. Yeah, I am. Right. They the sizes of them changed to like he’s he varies the swatch widths. Yes. Just kind of with you know, with a certain amount of random randomness to it there. It looks like there are upper and lower bounds but visually, it’s not the same over and over and over. There’s a lot of deep it’s like there’s a lot A lot of detail here that, you know, he clearly used some kind of description generator, you know, adjective noun, and then the actual color is kind of thing. For a simple thing that doesn’t do a lot like I can respect the work that went into generating this, I think, yeah, I think I can if I went to his website, which is just Adam for calm, a da MFH, er calm, he’s actually done three other tools that are very similar to this. And I got those. And they are also just very cool little exercises in you know, like color art.

boxes and rectangles, you know, are harsh black lines up and down and left. Write with a primary color palette. So whites blues, yellows, green or red. Red, yellow, blue white. Yeah. Like like pure Red, Yellow Blue, right? Yeah. White coloring those boxes. What

Yeah, you’ll know the art. But it’s random, right? You go in there and you can refresh. And it’s it’s generating a random with random Mondrian with CSS,

Yeah. Okay, so this is another one that I kind of, and I think this stuff is all in GitHub, and I should go. I don’t maybe he does this by hand. I could, I guess I could see him doing this by hand because he’s only doing one a year. He pulled the last two decades of the Pantone color of the year. And he’s listed them out on this page. Then went out and found the imagery to go with those colors. Yeah, so 2020 Classic blue. And he’s paired three images of it. One of them is like a What is that? a banana tree? Yeah, it looks like that on a holodeck. I don’t know what that image is but it’s but like a hazard and like a dark blue light. Yeah. And then Kanye with that’s not Kanye, but it’s kind of it kind of looks like it on my monitor. But with like a blue light on his face and then like a dude in a space helmet on a planet looking at like 12 suns, but again cast in this blue light, right? Again, it’s just kind of a cool exercise and color identification and balance 2016 they did two colors, serenity and rose quartz. And so his images balanced both of those colors.

Yeah, he’s got one other tool, the glitch art generator. It’s a glitch art generator. I don’t know what to say about that. It’s still it’s also very cool. Go check this stuff out. And Adam, if you’re listening, Thanks a ton for sending it to us. If anybody else has built something that they would love for us to give a shout out to, by all means, send that we do read all those messages and dig through them. Sometimes I get a

This is it. You know, this demonstrates you know, thinking right problem solving. It’s a great way to demonstrate your skills if you’re trying to build a portfolio. We’ve talked about that so many times. Go definitely go check us out. Obviously links are in the show. notes for that, or look for the tweet on on Twitter about it. And I’ll, I’ll tag him in that as well so that Unknown Speaker folks can go check it out. Yeah.

So, as of February, January, there’s an article over at reformed. org that cites I think it’s the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or one of those that noted that only about 7% of civilian workers in the United States roughly 9.8 million of the nation’s 140 million civilian workers have access to a flexible workplace benefit or telework. And I say that because there’s a couple of key notes there. First of all, a lot of places will offer this flexible work. Place. That doesn’t mean you work remotely full time, it means a day a week, you can work from home or something like that. So that’s being included in this. The number of people who work remotely full time is incredibly small.

There’s there’s been a lot of growth in the field over the last five years, there’s a 44% growth and the number of people who are like straight up working remotely. That’s a stat from flex jobs. I’ll throw some links to this stuff if you ever want to reference it. But that still only amounts to about 3.9 million people. So Compare so that leaves about 6 million of those other people have just access to it occasionally. The The reason I bring this up is as a consequence of COVID-19, obviously a lot of organizations have switched to working from home. According to the Bureau 29% of Americans can work from home. That’s about 46.8 million. Yeah, so already almost 41 million. Yeah.

head. I’m trusting you on this. Like, I know, you can write some mean Ruby code on the calculator the same.

Yeah, I know. And I was kicking myself because I actually seen a stat that kind of estimated how many people are working from home right now. And unfortunately, I could not scrounge that number back up. So let’s, let’s pretend like it’s the upper bound of 41 million for the moment because it may even be like you’d normally say a teacher can’t work from home. But they are, but they are, you know, sort of adapted to it. But when things go back to normal, it’s not like they are going to continue to have a teach from home day, most likely. The thing that we want to get into first and foremost, I want to just say, obviously, working remotely is not for everyone. Even though it seems like a lot of people are doing it, turn on the TV and you see all the news people you know, sitting in their little studies or whatever it You know, everybody talked to is talking about zoom and this and that. I know it seems like a lot of people are doing it. One big thing I want to start off with and this is a sticky point for me semantically, I do not like the phrase working from home. I work remotely.

working from home is casual. Yeah, working from home is what you do when you do it. Once a week, or once a month. Yes, yes. What I and I’ve taken a little bit of sadistic pleasure in some of these conversations with people because over the years, and we should mention, right like between the two of us, I’ve worked from home for stress. I already did it to myself. I’ve worked remotely for over eight years, and you had two or three years

And so the reason that I get picky about this and why get put off by the phrase working from home is because whenever you have a conversation before everything happened before all of all the COVID-19 stuff, you would, you’d say, Oh, yeah, well, I work for a company that’s based out of Boston. I do all the web development. I live here. And they’re like, Oh, you work from home. That was so nice. And it It wasn’t that it was a condescending tone. But it was sort of this sing song kind of like, I don’t know what the sentiment is that I’m trying to apply to that but it was definitely a you’re taking a little less seriously. I think

It’s used almost like a like a project. IV that yeah, it’s just this idea that Oh, that must be so nice. And my answer was always the same, always the same. So we’d be like, loving, that must be so nice. And I’m like, try it.

Yeah. And I’m not gonna lie. I have taken a little bit of sadistic pleasure in seeing people’s Facebook posts about like, how much they hate having to work from home right now, because it makes me feel a little validated in this idea. And it’s not. I don’t say that to be mean to anybody else. The My point is, working from home is hard. And it takes balance and it takes a lot of things that we’re going to talk about here in this episode to do it successfully. But more importantly, it is simply not right for everybody. It’s just like learning. Everybody gets excited in college, when they think about, I’ll just take all these online courses, and I don’t have to get up and go to that 8am lecture. The problem is, a lot of people learn really badly that way. They need guidance, they need that lecture hall, they need that structure and format in order to learn effectively, and it’s not, you know, that’s not a bad thing. It’s not like a bad trait or quality. It’s just a difference in how people learn. And the same thing exists with how people work.

Have you seen the mosquitoes? I like that metaphor. So first and foremost, I want to talk about first and foremost, you have to take it seriously. And that is part of why I like distinguishing between working from home and working remotely. Right when I say I am working remotely, it lends a different kind of gravitas to the way that I approach it, as opposed to me just saying, I just work from home. I don’t sit in my recliner in the living room with the TV on while I’m working. You know, I am not up, you know, just working on my phone, walking the dog and stuff like I am in my office, at my desk, doing my work. And part of taking it seriously. And you’ll hear this a lot is you’re going to work. You get up, get dressed, take your shower, get ready. Like if you work

right. Yeah, I’m not getting up and putting a suit on in the morning, right? I am right. I’m throwing some jeans on. I got socks on. You know, the one thing eight years I’ve been doing this and one thing nobody can ever accuse me of is standing up in front of my webcam and forgetting that I am in my boxers like that’s not a thing that happens. Yeah, I can’t do that I have to get up.

The other part of taking seriously is maintaining office hours. Mm hmm. I start work at nine. And I work until five. Yeah, just like I would if I was going into the office. And sometimes I start a little earlier than that. 830 or so I usually jump on but you want to maintain that offsides? Because it’s about structure and routine, structure and routine as part of what makes working remotely successful. Right. And if you aren’t taking your hours seriously, and you’re sleeping, and I will admit I sleep in much later than the average person. My office is only you know, 30 feet from my bedroom. But that’s purely a logistical choice.

Let me ask you this because that’s that that’s an interesting point. Do you do that in your office? No, I go out, I usually do it on the couch because the couch is uncomfortable enough that I’ll fall asleep for a long time. But it’s comfortable enough that I can like, hit that bottom point of falling asleep and losing track of time. And then rebound out. There’s a psychological reason I mentioned that you don’t want your brain to associate your office with sleep. Right as then it will encourage you to fall asleep at my desk or you know, in front of your computer and you don’t want that like that.

Yeah, that actually is an incredibly good point. And for a number of not just because of the association, but because you know, there’s all this stuff about light theory. And right you know, the way blue light triggers your brain and stuff that Yeah, you can actually break your ability to fall asleep in bed the way you should normally go about it. So,

I will readily admit that I break that a lot. But you are right. I’m not saying that to disagree with you. All right.

that. And I very much value like I, I before everything went to hell, I would go out to eat at least twice a week, which sucks because it’s more expensive to do that. But yeah, it was valuable to me to get out of the house for that 30 minutes to an hour and go eat somewhere or go to the gym, I would go to the gym a lot over my work hour. Mm hmm. So, but this all leads into the next point, which is to know your space. What do you mean? When I started this job, I lived in a 952 square foot house, okay, it was basically a cracker box. And it was the kind of cracker box that you could basically see the rest of the house from any point of the house you were in. Okay, if you were in the kitchen, you could see through the door and into the living room. If you were in the bedroom, you could see into the dining room. Right. My problem was my office was right off the dining room. And as a result, if I was in the living room, I could see my office. Right and I have discovered You know, this idea of like my office now that I’m sitting Right now recording this episode, this is my office, I refer to it as now, I will sit in here and play video games or something as well once in a while. But this is a workspace. This is and this room, you can’t see this room from the living room, you can’t see this room from the bedroom, when I leave it. I can mentally disconnect from this space and enter my living space. And my living space is not where I work. I don’t take my laptop into the living room to work.

It was just it was not mentally healthy. For me to have that old house where I couldn’t escape work, I was always thinking about work. You don’t have to be perfect at all of it, though to be successful at it, right. But you do have to be aware and know when it’s time to turn off some of those things and, and separate, and you can’t do that at all if you don’t know your spaces and know where your boundaries are. Right. So the next part is I kind of fudge these together, but they are a little different. But one is knowing your ergonomics. And the other one is knowing your quality of life. The quality of life thing factors into all of this taking it seriously knowing your space, the work life balance.

So to start off with like, ergonomics and and the ergonomics also this is just kind of a technology talk but one is if you’re going to work remotely and this this came up because of COVID-19 you know you can’t find a Nintendo Switch right now. Yeah, yes. You know what else people weren’t able to find for a solid few weeks?

Yeah. webcams. Yeah. Good webcams were gone. Yeah, because everybody knew they were going to be switching to zoom and while laptops usually have a webcam, they aren’t generally very good. The webcam is important if you’re going to be you know, on in front of people for a while I’m even I have a good webcam and I don’t love the quality of my webcam. It’s a Logitech C 920. I think which is a good, good webcam like it’s a good high end webcam.

probably somewhere in there.

Yeah. So interesting point on that. I mentioned here as we were talking that I’m recording this episode in my office, so I’ve got sound deadening behind my monitors and stuff. But this microphone, I use a Shure SM seven be one thing that inevitably happens, especially when I’m talking to like new folks at work or something is they always say like, that’s a big microphone. You sound really good on that. Mm hmm. And I explain, yeah, you know, I do some shows and some voice acting and stuff like that. And I figure I’ve invested in this equipment, and this is the only way you get to interact with me. It is worth my time and effort to make sure that this time you spend with me is enjoyable and that you’re not listening to Do me through a tiny little pewter microphone or laptop mic

you don’t need all that like no,

Yeah, you’ve got the pop filter and Stan because again you know we we try to take the development of the show seriously, but you could just stick the Blue Yeti on your desk and get to use blue Yeti and get the low end Yeti is 60 bucks I think and they make some like the snowball. Yeah, any of those like just for the purposes of remote working and and being on a conference call. You don’t need to spend $100 on a microphone, getting something decent us USB microphone, that’s all Yes. Yeah. And it’s well worth it and people will notice that’s the other that’s the other part of that is folks do notice when your audio quality is good. And yeah, and they take note of it. Yeah. The other thing that’s I think really important right is talking about the way your desk is set up. Yes. And I straight I use for what it’s worth on my screens. I run flux on them now full time. Yeah,

Yeah, cuz I Staring at a screen all day I used to use the gunner glasses Have you seen those? Yeah

I know these things and I still to this day sit here and I realize how much damage I’ve done to myself. Hmm I’ve gone so far as I don’t just use a laptop riser. My desk is a sit stand desk, nice motorized so I can literally hit a button and raise my computer to the exact height that is comfortable for me. In a given situation,

given the cost of these kind of desks. I would say, you know, if you’re just working remotely occasionally, working from home, you probably don’t need to invest in that. But if you’re going to work remotely as your career, it’s these steps are worth it the chair. Oh, yeah, I dumped $600 on my chair.

Yeah, I know. I gotta get it out of the show constantly.

are comfortable but they make terrible work chairs,

Yeah. And we alluded to this already. Get up, go outside, walk around. Hmm do it a couple times a day. Take 10 minutes. 15 minutes. Take your smoke break basically, the one thing about working remotely is if you vanished for 10 or 15 minutes probably nobody’s going to notice but you need and it’s it goes along with this idea of having the sit stand desk a little bit. You need to get up once in a while and when you are working in an office, if you really think about how many times you get up and you walk around the office or go you know to the door next door or whatever, if you’re in a factory, you’re up constantly moving around, you take for granted how much you move around until you are in your home, sitting in your office. And just at your computer all day. So yeah, if you got a smartwatch or your phone or whatever set an alarm 10 o’clock, get up, go lunch, get up, go three o’clock Get up, you’ve got a dog, perfect. Take the dog, go for a quick walk out in your front yard or something that’s I’ve been trying to do that more lately.

That should be going to the water cooler.

Yeah. Then the last part of this is this work life balance thing. And you do have to know when five o’clock comes. You are done working? Yeah, generally speaking. Yeah, I know that’s different for everybody depending on what your responsibilities are, but for the normal person, when works done, work needs to be done. You need to be able to understand you know, this idea of the separation between where your workspaces your life spaces, you know, having an office I don’t have to see when I’m in the rest of my house, that is a work life balance decision for me. Okay,

Well, I work remotely. My whole team certainly doesn’t and are like our part of the company. We’ve got about 30 folks who are in our staffing technology group as a whole. And most of them work in one of our offices. As part of our transition to all of us working remotely during this time. Our company has basically set up at five o’clock every day on the calendar, there’s an hour happy hour meeting that you can go to, you don’t have to go to it every day. You don’t have to go to it at all. But it’s it’s there to give you some camaraderie and help you have that casual time with your co workers that you miss by not being in the office together. You know, remembering that we So human beings are social creatures being locked up in your house all day working from home. And I could go on the psychology about that for a whole lot longer than this episode is going to allow. But you know, that aspect of it is about helping that work life balance because you still feel engaged with those people so that when you are finished and you leave your work for the day, you still feel like you’ve had some of that social fulfillment that you’ve been missing.

Yeah, yeah. And I’ve got to talk to a lot of people that I don’t normally talk to either. You know, in my normal meetings, I interact with the people I’m working with directly my stakeholders, my co workers, but I say our team or our entire crew is very big. And a lot of them are like, our ML guys are brilliant dudes, but their work has nothing to do with what I’m doing. I’m a front end developer. They’re building products for the future of our company and all this stuff. They’re incredibly smart guys, and they’re incredibly fun to sit down and talk with to. It’s it’s a very casual, but it really does help the claustrophobic nature of remote working, because that is that is a real thing. It is a very real thing.

So let’s get into distractions because that’s one of the big problems and one of the big differences between working remotely versus working from home. When you work from home, you deal with distractions. We’ve seen we’ve all seen the little funny clips on YouTube about the kids walking into the newscasters room and getting pulled out and like distractions happen and distractions take on a lot of forms. I’m not going to go into all of them, but I’ll highlight a couple one. Do not turn on the TV in your office.

I actually have one I have at my battle station here. In a worst case scenario, I could have four screens going at once. One of those For though, is just a monitor I have set up to the side that has a fire stick in it. Okay, but it is black until five o’clock, right at five o’clock then if I’m in here doing something or playing a game, I might throw Netflix on it or YouTube on it or something like that, but it is it’s not up to my computer, but it’s also never on before five o’clock.

Yeah, and TV is something that draws not just your ears, but your eyes. Yeah, music that’s why people can listen to music and work, right. We can listen to the audio or listen to podcasts.