Working from home changed a lot of paradigms on productivity, efficiency and time management.
In some ways the Covid lockdowns - let's not get political here, but if you've read my posts before then you know I was always against destroying entire economies for the sake of stopping a virus that while very real it was definitely not as aggressive as the mainstream media wanted us to believe, especially in economies of the third world where people needed to generate money on a daily basis to literally not starve to death - helped society push the fast forward button in terms of research and development on every front that involved working from home.
It worked, many people ended up being much more efficient, productive and found a balance between their work life, family business, and leisure time. In fact, there are countless polls were white collar working people in general were much more happy with how working from home came to be on a daily basis.
But once the threat was not as big as we thought it was, governments on every corner of the world decided to slowly open up shop, to lift the lockdowns, restart the economies in their own terms, and basically bring everyone back in.
I have no idea if it was because of the vaccines, or because the real estate business was about to collapse, or because the companies and the system that be felt like they were losing grip and not controlling the workforce enough, but they decided to kill the whole WFH (working from home) concept.
Enter productivity
I've been working from home for the past two years. If you follow my steps then you know where, why and how I work from home for a Hive company.
The truth, and this is what people never tell you, is that working from home is extremely hard: You need to have discipline, create models, design frameworks, have a system, and ultimately you have to know how to work and get shit done even when there is nobody behind you pulling the whips of the company.
You need to find your own balance between your personal life, the time you dedicate to work, the moments you dedicate to clear your mind, and how to not work all the time.
I have to be honest: It's been two years and I still I haven't found this balance.
I work too much, and whenever I am not working, I am thinking of work.
They say that you need to have your desk in a separate room from where you sleep and chill, otherwise your brain starts to get confused. It's the same precept of wearing shoes when you are working, because if you wear slippers then your brain thinks it's TV time. Same idea, you need to hack your brain to be more productive.
My personal hacks
I am not always feeling it.
Sometimes I need to force my way to get shit done, especially because I work in a self directed position where I basically have to come up with my own ambitious goals, set plans, design strategies, create short term tactics, and then I have to implement, operate and execute them in order to reach the objectives of the position.
In the end, the company doesn't care how you achieve it, as long as you achieve it.
I've always said that when I have my own company I will not give two craps about what people do with their time and how they achieve their goals as long as their framework aligns with my own moral compass and work ethic.
I was ambitious enough to find a company and a founder that had the same mindset. I say ambitious enough because the job I have is one that I wanted. I wasn't going to work for any company just to make money - I don't desperately need money, I am well off, or at least enough to be picky with how I spend my time.
I am not saying this to flex, but to make a point that I wasn't just going to work whatever bullshit job just to pay the bills, but more that I wanted to do something productive with my time and strive towards reaching goals that I resonate with.
But anyway, I digress.
The point is, today I wasn't feeling it. I just wasn't in the zone, I didn't feel my mojo. I wasn't able to focus or to make progress.
That's when another little life hack comes into play: When you can't get high impact tasks done, focus on small, easy to finish tasks that will give you a sense of accomplishment and a feeling of progress, so your brain feels like you are being productive and your whole mindset makes a 180 twist.
We all have a to-do list - If you don't have one, you are playing the life game in hard mode, fren - so whenever you are just not feeling it, get petty crap done, convince your brain that you are being efficient and get some quick dopamine fixes from crossing out elements in your list.
Then go to bed. There's no point in staying up late trying to get stuff done when anything will take you twice or thrice the time to finish, that is if you every finish the high impact stuff in your list.
So here I am, 10pm, ready to go to bed and call it a day, just so that I can wake up early tomorrow morning and use that momentum I created today through crossing out petty elements of my list, and hopefully tomorrow will be a more efficient and productive day for me.
Hopefully, tomorrow I will be feeling it.