Keep in touch with others (whether you work from home or not)

By on January 19, 2021   /   Career Development, Working from Home   /   Leave a comment

by Karen Adamedes

Keeping in touch ensures that you stay ‘top of mind’ when you work from home. This is particularly important with time-poor managers and clients who must make decisions in a hurry or when they are under pressure. You want them to think about you! For your career to develop or your client list to grow it’s essential that you are visible.

It’s important to be ‘top of mind’

Being top of mind, or at least remembered, when there are opportunities can be important to being successful in your work. Office-based associates, who may have greater access to people and information, or those who have a higher profile may be thought of first. This is important to consider when you work at home. But it is just as important for those who are working from an office or business.

Staying in contact with colleagues, clients, and your network helps them remember you when it comes to new opportunities. It can also keep you informed about things you need to know to do your job. Staying top of mind will help your achievements be recognized and build your profile and reputation. Both of which will be helpful to the achievement of your business and career objectives.

How it helps

If others know about you, what you do and what you are capable of, there’s more chance that you’ll be on their radar when decisions are being made about resources, promotions, bonuses or new business.

Your reputation is your most valuable career asset. To build it up, you need to remind others (or in fact let them know) that you exist, the good work you are doing and how you would help them.

Tips to build your profile

So how do you step out from behind your excellent work to build your profile and become top of mind?

Some ideas include:

    • being available
    • checking in regularly
    • staying in touch with your manager
    • using video to stay in touch so people can see your smiling face
    • picking up the phone to call
    • taking time to build rapport
    • going to the office (sometimes it it’s safe)

These all provide opportunities to share your achievements, connect with people, and get involved. Most of all they can help you build all-important relationships. These tips will be the topics of future blogs to give you some ideas.

Keep in touch with people and stay top of mind. All from the comfort of your own home!

Enjoy your day (and call someone!)

 

 

 

 

This tip is based on ‘Keep in Touch…how to stay top of mind‘ from Professional in Pajamas: 101 Tips for Working from Home.

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Agree boundaries with your household (when you work from home)

By on January 12, 2021   /   Work & Home Balance, Working from Home   /   1 Comment

by Karen Adamedes

Unless you live alone, your home is not just your home. You might share it with family, friends or housemates. They might not be there all the time while you are working. But chances are they’ll be in the house at some stage when you are trying to work. And if you are living under stay-at-home orders they might be there ALL the time.

When you work from home, you know what you need from the people you live with. They need to be quiet, not interrupt you (particularly while you are on the phone), not play the TV too loud, and if they bring you the occasional cup of coffee, tea or a snack – that would be an added bonus.

The complication is that it’s their home, too, and it has to work for everyone. When anyone works from home there needs to be a clear understanding of how the two worlds can work together.

Have a discussion

It’s imperative to have a discussion and agree how work and home in the same place will work. Your children may not understand why they can’t burst in and tell you what just happened to Baby Shark, or ask for help with their homework when you’re paying a perfectly good babysitter to look after them. But they will (mostly) understand that a shut door means that you are working and shouldn’t be disturbed. It’s not foolproof but it can help. Having a discussion about when you need to not be disturbed and how you will let others know (like a closed door) is a good step towards successfully working and living with others.

Mind you, a closed door didn’t help Professor Robert E. Kelly when his children burst into his office while he was being interviewed live on the BBC about South Korean politics in 2017. Simply not locking his door before going on-air led to the family becoming an internet sensation. And much debate about the challenges of working from home.

When things go wrong – go with it

You may not be doing a live TV interview but things will go wrong from time to time. That’s when you really need to go with the flow of being at home.

You might not end up with your call being dissected in the international media like the Professor. But handling tricky situations, like unscheduled family appearances on a zoom call, with a sense of humor and a quick apology is often the best way to go. Particularly as so many more people are working from home, your colleagues will understand when your home life becomes part of a business call. It can happen to them too!

What else to agree on

Setting expectations about the hours that you are going to work can also be helpful. If the people you live with know when you are going to be available it will help them work around your requirements.

Another issue to be clear about is how much household work you will be able to get done in a day. An occasional load of washing or unstacking the dishwasher is one thing. Painting a room or a spring clean is another.

An upfront conversation with people who go out to work about what you need to do in your work day will help manage the potentially unrealistic assumption that when they get home from work you will have a three-course dinner on the table (with no involvement from a meal delivery service!).

You can help by how you work

On the other hand there are some things you can do that will help out your family or housemates and respect their needs. Staying in your dedicated office space when other people are home allows them be free to live in the rest of the house or apartment and not need to work around you. Save the walking while you are talking on the phone, or working in the living room for a change of scene, to the times when you are home alone.

IT Sales Director Richard Webbe, who mainly works from home, has some tips that work for him. Richard and his wife, who works from an office, have two small children and family life can be hectic. He works around this by not scheduling conference calls or work-focused activities during ‘high traffic’ times at home. Richard said to me, “Do not try to do both – work and home work – at the same time. Disaster”

It just makes sense that when children are going to or coming from school there is going to be more noise than when they are settled doing an activity. Telling them to ‘shush’ while you are talking to a client is highly unlikely to be successful. It can remove a lot of stress for everyone if you can schedule your work time or breaks around these peak events.

Be present when you are with your household

An adult is unlikely to react any better to children if they are ‘shushed’ and waved away because you are busy. Even if you only have other adults in the house be present when you are with them (i.e. do not be checking your phone every 2 minutes). Take a minute to say goodbye and send them off in the morning. Stop work and say hello when they return. Or stop for a coffee with them during the day if they are at home. These small gestures are nice ways that also help you keep the balance between work and home.

Agreeing the boundaries with the people in your house about how you will mix your work with their (and your) home life is important for everyone.

Enjoy your day

 

 

 

 

This tip is based on Tip No. 21 ‘Agree boundaries with your household’ from Professional in Pajamas: 101 Tips for Working from Home.

 

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Working from Home? Know what you want to achieve.

By on January 5, 2021   /   Productivity, Working from Home   /   Leave a comment

by Karen Adamedes

Welcome to 2021…where working from home remains a thing.

Whether you like it or not, there’s a good chance that your commute to work, at least at the beginning of this year will be from the kitchen to your laptop. If you like working from home, that’s great! If you don’t…then let me help you make the best of it. This year I will be sharing some tips from my book Professional in Pajamas: 101 Tips for Working from home, to help make it work for you.

To start with, let’s talk about productivity. It really doesn’t matter if you work from home or at an office – if you don’t know what you want to achieve in a day, you’re not going to know if you’ve had a successful day or not.

Working from home can be a lot less structured than an office environment. There isn’t anyone else but you to set the pace of the day. And no one else will know if you are working on what’s most important.

When you’re on a deadline for a client or a project, it’s potentially stressful but can certainly make you focused and clear about what you have to achieve. However, there can be many days when you have the flexibility to choose what you want to work on. Unless you particularly enjoy working in a last-minute panic, prioritizing your time will help ensure you are working on the right things, first.

Know what you want to achieve

Knowing what you want to achieve in a day will help you determine your priorities for the day. If you make a not-so-quick check of social media here, order some shoes online (oh wait, that might be just me), and reply to a couple of text messages, you can find that hours have mysteriously vanished.

Duncan Young, Head of Workplace Health & Wellbeing at Lendlease in Australia, says, “Small positive steps make can make a big difference over time. Be intentional with your time.” Duncan recommends spending some time each morning planning.

A plan will help you work out what you have to get done, what you’d like to work on, and the ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if I could do this too’ priorities for the day. Know what your goals are and how much you have to do. This can help you refocus after interruptions and drag yourself back to your most important tasks after other distractions (phone calls, emails, and meetings that you can’t avoid).

Set your priorities

This may fall in to the too-much-information category, but I find having my morning shower is a good time to decide what my top priorities are for the day. For others, taking a morning walk or getting dressed for the day are equally good times to think through the day ahead. Whatever works for you!

I’ve also found that writing a ‘Top Priorities’ list before I finish work for the day can set me up well for the following day. I know I am not going to forget anything important. This also helps me separate from work at the end of the day, and I don’t spend the evening thinking (quite so much) about the next day. I have a clear plan of what I need to be focused on when I start work the next morning.

One tip from the Chief Operating Officer of a start-up, who gets constantly interrupted when at the office, is to make sure that on the days you work from home, you have specific tasks to complete or conference calls scheduled. This helps, they said, to take advantage of the quiet and avoid the distractions of being at home.

Focus on the outcomes

Working from home is not a full-time gig for everyone. You may only work from home on the days that you need some peace and quiet away from the office or to fit in with personal commitments. Or at the moment there might not be a lot of choice.

Those of us who can work from home at the moment are fortunate to have that option to keep us and our families safe.

No matter why or how often you work from home, it pays to focus on the outcomes you want to achieve each day. You will better prioritize your time, help you avoid distractions, and at the end of the day (literally!) you will know you have been successful. You can quit for the day feeling satisfied, pat yourself on the back, and know that you achieved what you wanted.

Enjoy your day!

 

 

 

 

This tip is based on Tip No. 1 ‘Know what you want to achieve’ from Professional in Pajamas: 101 Tips for Working from Home.

 

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