August 2015

Is Dealing with Technological Nightmares Ruining Your Day? Some of us are really adept at technology, others are not. Some can set up thing a ma bobs to automate their workday, others have a difficult time just figuring out how to turn the darned laptop on, let alone get onto a Zoom meeting When working from home, it is essential that your team learn how to navigate yourself through the sea of technology.  Here are 5 essentials: 1) Up to date technology:  If your team members are using 15-year-old laptops that are still running Windows XP, they are going to have problems.  They will be wasting valuable time while their apps load, let alone the loss of production due to the frustrations involved.  Make sure that your team has the best possible Laptops and equipment.  I have checked on several different websites and they all seem to recommend the following minimum hardware requirements.  If you have no idea what I am talking about, your first step is to hire someone who does: Processor: Intel Core i5 or i7 or AMD equivalent Display: 13” or larger Memory: 8GB or higher for PC / 16GB or higher for MAC Hard Drive: 256GB SSD or higher I/O ports: Two USB 3.0 ports Video out: HDMI or DisplayPort Wireless: AC preferred, N minimum OS: Windows 10 (preferred) for PC / Sierra for Mac (Catalina is better, Big Sur… even better yet!) 2) You must have a good internet connection.  In today’s world, often you have both spouses and several children using the same internet connection.  Just like when there are more people on the freeway, you can’t drive as fast, when there are more people on the wifi, you can’t surf as fast. This can cause a page that would normally take seconds to load, take minutes, increase frustration, and decrease production.  With a poor internet connection, your Zoom meetings degenerate into “I couldn’t hear what you said”, and “You’re frozen!”  So your gonna want to get the best internet connection available. 3) You must standardize your software packages.  If some of your team is using Go to Meeting, some on Google, some on Zoom, and some guy out in Peoria using a video conferencing app his brother in law developed… not much is going to get done.  Everybody has a preference and you are not going to please everyone.  Pick an app and that is what your team uses for work.  They can use other stuff for things outside of work. 4) Training, Training, Training!  We’re playing a new game here and we have to learn.  Video conferencing is new, people have to learn about breakout rooms, and hosts, and all that stuff. Provide the training, it saves you in the long run… and even the short run!   There are many courses you can take from the privacy of your own home to learn technology.  There are You-Tube Videos, there are self-directed classes, you can have an instructor walk you through it all.  It depends on your learning style.  Click here for a consultation, scroll to the bottom of the page, and check out some of our courses. 5) Patience.  You have to be willing to play around, to have something not work.  Remember, this is new.  Now if you use a good consultant, like Dr. Work from home, you will not need as much patience, because I spent several years doing the research… so you won’t need as much patience. To encourage you in your patience, I am offering a limited-time no charge, no-obligation discovery coaching session.  Just click on the link, answer the questions and I will make sure you are taken care of https://calendly.com/dr_work_from_home/30min?month=2020-09

The Honey-Do List Strikes Again So Picture this. You are in your home office at 1:30 PM.  You are struggling through a project that you have to have to your boss or your client by 3:30 PM.  Your significant other comes barging in to your home office asking you if you can change the kitty litter. Mind you, if you were working away from your home, this person, who you love more than anyone else in the world would never ever dream of asking you to change the kitty litter while you were working at the office, but somehow the fact that you are both working from home makes it ok.  In a work from home system, the impingement of the relationship on the job and vice-versa is magnified. The question becomes, how do you handle The Honey-Do List while keeping your employment and relationship intact? I have encountered this situation as a remote worker myself, and also among employees working from home that I have talked to.  There is no getting ’round the Honey-Do-List but in most cases, it does not take a marriage counselor or heaven forbid, a divorce attorney to deal with this. Ideas for dealing with the honey-do-list 1) Use a system such as Google Calendar,  Share your calendar with your significant other and allow them to put the tasks on your calendar.  Your spouse can put the task on your calendar during the allotted time.  Then you see that your significant other has put on your calendar to go to Whole Foods and buy some fish for dinner.  You can either accept, reject, or propose a new time.  Keeping your word and doing what the calendar says is very important for this to work. 2) Set times throughout the day to deal with the honey-dos and other personal activities.  Let’s face it, the honey-dos need to be done.  Kitty litter needs to be changed, Garbage needs to be taken out, and the chores need to be done.  Schedule the time in your calendar to get them done and then do them when they need to be done.  Of course, then you need to actually do the honey-dos and not suddenly have some emergency come up and not do them.  Your significant other would probably lose trust in you after something like that happens, so to keep your credibility intact, follow the damned calendar. 3) Hire a handy-person to come and do them.  I am sure that several people in your neighborhood would love to come and do your chores (for a small fee, of course).  It may be worth your while to just pay someone to come and do the darned things!  When my wife and I were both working long hours, out of the house, we would pay someone in our neighborhood to come and feed the cats. There is no reason why, while working from home, we cannot have someone continue to do that if needed. 4) You may need to see a relationship coach or counselor to get things all sorted out.  Sometimes, a knowledgeable person with no skin in the game is required to help establish the rules and work things out.  If this is the case, I strongly advise you to do so. This may sound more expensive, but it is cheap compared to the price of a divorce attorney. Relationship issues are never good for the job, it is essential to keep both the relationship and the job functional.  It is especially true that in a work-from-home paradigm, the impingement of work and the relationship is magnified, and one of the ways this shows itself is via the honey-do list.  It, therefore, becomes especially important to manage this with the utmost importance. If you are an entrepreneur, business owner, or executive, please be sure to book your free  1/2 hour huddle with Dr. Jeff:   https://calendly.com/dr_work_from_home/30min?month=2020-09 To find out more about me, click here