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Good practices for WFH and work life balance
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I can pretty much get out of bed, have a shower, grab a coffee, walk into my office, and I can transition into work pretty quickly. I find it harder to transition out of work and get back into the the family environment, which is and I was doing a pretty bad job of that. I was trying, but I was doing a bad job over 2020, 2021. And the reason is is because I was taking calls and I was on calls right up until 5, 5:30, 6 o'clock some nights. And then I would come off a call, I'd be jazzed, I'd be thinking, I'd walk out, I'd have dinner with the family, and I'd be like, and my wife is completely exhausted managing the two kids, and she's like, Here, can you do something useful? And I'm like, Wow, but what about this? And you know, I've got these my brain was going 100 miles an hour, which is why now I give myself that time between two o'clock to get out of the house, go for a swim, do some exercise, do whatever I need to do to clear my head. So by the time I'm being in the home, I've let go of working in the home.
SPEAKER_01If you have a vision for the agency you want to build, then we want to help you build it. Welcome to the Agency Hour Podcast, brought to you by Agency Mavericks.
SPEAKER_02We've been asking you guys what you want to uh the kind of conversations and the topics and the guests that you want to have here on the agency hour. And I don't know who submitted this, but some of the feedback was that you guys What's his name? You guys want to talk about uh some strategies for working from home. I've got an office here, I get out of the house a few days a week because otherwise I go a bit batshit crazy. Pete, you work from home and have for a long time, right?
SPEAKER_03So I've uh this is right in my wheelhouse, man. I I've been working from home since 1999. 23 years. Yeah, 23 years. Most of my career at this point has been working from home. Um so yeah, I'm loving it. So it was hard at first, but uh we'll we'll get to all that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Jaden Navaret works from home. Margaret Tihan works from home. Uh, anonymous Facebook user works from home. Another anonymous Facebook user works from office, but have my laptop. I was working from home for years, and then I got out and and got an office two or three days a week, and then gradually spent more and more time in the office. And then by the time the pandemic happened at the start of 2020, I was working the office full-time. We had six people in the office. It was a it was a you know real vibe in here. We had a great uh kind of thing going on. Then the pandemic hit and we all went home. And I worked from home for the best part of two years, really. Um, and what I found at the end of 2021 is that I was mentally cooked because typically, when you work from home, there are two things that happen. One is you either struggle to get motivated, and so you go and do the washing, you wash the dishes, you might watch a bit of daytime television, you might do whatever, anything but work, right? You might sleep in, you might have a bath in the middle of the day, whatever. The other end of that spectrum is that you can't switch off. And so you find yourself working to all hours of the night. Now, I got two little kids, so I don't um work till all hours of the night. I switch off, you know, when I was working from home, switch off at about five o'clock, come out, do dinner, you know, bath, bed, all that kind of stuff. But then the problem was I couldn't stop thinking about the business, right? I would be thinking about it 24 hours a day. Um, I would wake up on uh, you know, the weekend and my office is in a spare, it's in like this, we have this like kind of parents' retreat in the house. And I would so I'd walk out of the lounge room and the parents' retreat is straight there, even though the door was closed. My work was kind of polluting my home life and my uh my my you know home space, my living space. So by the end of 2021, I was cooked, and as soon as we were allowed to come back into the office, I moved back into the office, and now I'm kind of balancing. I work Mondays and Tuesdays from home and spend the rest of the week here in the office. Um, Mondays and Tuesdays, the kids are at Kindy and there's no one there. And I kind of try not to just work in the office, I try and do a bit on the dining table, a bit in the backyard, on the deck, yeah, uh, and try and mix it up a little bit.
SPEAKER_03I think that's important. Yep. Yep.
SPEAKER_02Do you do you spend all of your time in your home office, Pete?
SPEAKER_03No. So um, like I said, 23 years. So years ago, I found out that I need to move around a lot. So I get I I'm pretty productive when I'm here in this office. Um, and I probably work 80% of the time in this office. But when there's not a pandemic going on, I tend to spend my first hour and a half or so at a local coffee shop. Um, and that's where I do a lot of my answering my agency emails um and answering a lot of Slack with with coaching, you know, who whoever I'm coaching or or through you guys and you and Emily and Max and whoever. So I'm I'm kind of doing like busy work at the nothing that requires like serious, serious focus at a coffee shop. And then I'll come back here and I'll do a lot of work here. Um again, in a non-pandemic situation, I'll spend a little bit less time in my actual office and I'll go down on the couch or I'll go down on the dining room table or the pick kitchen table or whatever, or in good weather out on the patio. But right now, um, at various times, my wife is also working from home. My son, who lives in Manhattan, um, is staying up here a lot. His longtime girlfriend, whatever we want to call her, um, she's like a daughter to me. She is working, she's here now, she's in the next bedroom over working from home. So, you know, we kind of we kind of keep out of each other's way because they can be on calls at any time. So I'm spending an awful lot of time in my office again. Yeah. Which, you know, has pros and cons.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, totally. Um, so uh what now we we it's interesting because we launched a, and this is not a pitch by the way, but we launched a course. Get ready, you get your credit cards out. We launched a course uh in the middle of 2020 called the client acquisition formula. And one of the things that I talk about in the very first module of that is working from home. Originally, that course was going to be called getting clients from home, because that's what you guys wanted. We polled you and you said, Hey, I'm working from home now. I feel like an imposter, I feel like I'm just like a dude in the bedroom with a laptop. Um, Jaden Naverett, shout out to you, uh, kid with a laptop. Um, how do I how do I get clients to take me seriously? And so we did this whole thing around working from home. But I want to talk about a couple of things, a couple of practical things that you can do. And I want to share some of the things that Pete and I have done to make your home office feel like a workspace and not just another room in the house. Um, what what else do you use your home office for when you're not if you're not working, what else do you use it for? Two things work and playing bass.
SPEAKER_03That's it. That's literally the only the only thing that happens in here.
SPEAKER_02Right. Um, so which is interesting. So it's kind of uh and and same for me. My home office is like a music room. So we have a piano there, we have a couple of guitars, we have the computer desk set up, uh, we've got some sound treatment in the room. Um, and we use it uh when I was in there full time, I would just use it as an office, and then occasionally we might go in there on the weekend and play music with the kids, and my wife might do some piano practice. Um, but we didn't hang out in there on like we didn't watch TV in there, we didn't hang out in there and read books. It wasn't like a it wasn't a it wasn't part of the normal living space. In fact, we could close the door and we could not go in there all weekend, it would just be like, well, that's dad's office, so we just don't go in there, right? And having that separation, I think is really important. I have actually worked from my bedroom. When I first started out building websites, I was living, I had a flatmate, I was in a two-bedroom apartment, I had a flatmate. So I had to work from my bedroom. I didn't really have a space in the apartment where I could work, so I would get out of bed, you know, swing my feet onto the ground, stand up, and literally put my bum in the seat and be in front of the computer, right? Bad idea.
SPEAKER_03That's that's that's that's literally my I wrote down some rules. It's literally rule number one a designated office space.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And that office space should really be mostly, if not completely, just for work.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And if you can, I mean, if you can't have a door on the room to block it off, then I would suggest getting one of those Japanese screens, like a you know, like a concertina screen, and just like putting that around so that when you're in the lounge room or the dining room or you're having dinner or whatever in the kitchen, you're not looking at work. Right. So try and separate your workspace. If you're working from home, try and separate it as much as possible. Um the other thing that I've done and that Pete has done as well, is you might notice, is that we've made our workspace as pleasant as we possibly can. And we've really created an environment where when I walk in here and I turn the lights on and I've got the fancy cameras and stuff, I it like instantly my headspace is well, and I had this set up at home, by the way. If you in fact, if you look at the video for the client acquisition formula course, the the marketing video we put together, the promo video for it, it's all done in my home office there. But I had the fancy lights, I had the good cameras, the microphones. So when I walked into that room, it helped me transition. And in fact, one of the things we talk about in client acquisition formula is the transition between working in the home and being in the home, right? Yeah. So this, all this, and I'm not saying you need to have fancy lights and you need to have fancy equipment to do this, but I think what you what is important is that you create an environment which is separate from your living environment. Even as I said, even if you've got a couple of Japanese screens around to section it off, when you go behind those screens, you've got a uh you've got you've got some clues there, some things there that remind you and to get your head into the fact that you are now at work and that you are focusing on work and that the laundry is in the laundry and the unopened mail is on the kitchen table, and that's all fine. I'm not looking at that right now. I'm focused on what I'm doing here, which is being productive for the business and work, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that definitely that definitely works. Um, and it it actually gets easier to turn off work as as you do like when but 23 years in, I'm not having a problem anymore. But the first couple years it was tough. So that's definitely rule number one. Rule number two, which is related, is um have specific working hours, like hours that you work, and then the rest of the hours you are not working. And of course, you know, I always coach people don't work on the weekends, don't work in the evenings, unless that's how it works for you. Like some people have to work in the evenings, I get that. But for me, for instance, it's 8 a.m. to well, now really kind of to 6 p.m. That's my working hours because I'm I'm basically working two jobs, right? So I'm working with my agency and I'm working for you. So between the two of them, I get it, I get it worked into between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. my time. Um I think that that's just as important as having a designated space as having designated time. Because otherwise you're picking up the you're you're you're finishing dinner and grabbing the laptop, and then you're putting the kids to bed and you're grabbing the laptop, and then you're waking up in the morning and you're answering Slack from the phone in bed. That's right. Yeah, which I tend I tend to do every now and then still. But yeah, you gotta have just set working hours and build the rest of your life around that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So here's another couple of things I want to talk about. Is um, so Pete's right on on uh, by the way, just before we dive into this, let us know in the comments what's the biggest problem you have working from home? Right? What's the biggest challenge you have working from home? Is it that you can't get motivated? Is it you can't switch off? Is it the the the kind of uh mixing of work in the family home? Like talk us through that. What's the biggest challenge you have working from home? And we'll try and address that on this call. Uh couple of other things. Pete talked about time. So I have I have I literally blocked time in my calendar where I'm not available, right? So now, 2022, I mean, I've worked my face off the last two years during the pandemic, right? And and frankly, by the end of 2021, I was cooked. I was in a I was grumpy. I was like just cranky because you were no fun around quick, I can tell you. No fun. Yeah, thanks. We'd been I'd been in lockdown for two years. Whoever said this was gonna be fun, crispy butter. Uh, my middle name's Grumpy Shit, right? Troy Grumpy Shit Dean. Isn't that my my pseudonym these days? That's why we get along. So uh by the end of 2021, I was like, I need to get out of this house, I need to like stop looking at the internet, I need to stop looking at a computer because I'm fried, right? As much as I love you guys, I was just completely cooked. And so what I've done now this year, uh, I've spoken to my team a lot about this and I've put some boundaries around my time. Now, just a little bit of context. I've realized that I do not make, I do not do my best thinking or make my best decisions while I'm looking at the computer. And I also have a team who can do a lot of the heavy lifting for me and with me. So I can afford to not look at the computer as much as I was over the last two years, thank God. Right. So this year, 2022, I basically don't take any meetings on a Monday except with my business coach or my CFO working on the business. I don't talk to my team really on Mondays. I don't join in the daily huddle on Mondays, I don't, you know, have meetings with clients on Mondays. Mondays are a slow day for me, right? I take the kids to school. Like you cannot book in my calendar on a Monday. I take the kids to Kindi, I come home, I ease into things, I have a look at what I need to get done. At two o'clock in the afternoon, I go for a swim. Uh, you know, by sort of 3:30, I'm done for the day. I go pick the kids up from Kindi. I come home, I cook dinner. Tuesday through Friday, I'm usually on at about 7 a.m. So I'm up at six and I'm on by seven o'clock because I have a sales huddle with our team in the States, and then I'm into calls, live streams, coaching calls Tuesday through Friday. I work, I'm I start early and I work pretty hard until about 2 p.m. And then after 2 p.m., I'm done. Like my calendar's not available. I try and leave the office, go for a swim, go to the gym, do whatever I need to do, go and play guitar. I might do some guitar practice and then go for a swim and again try and get home, you know, in time to help with dinner and you know, be there with when the kids get home from Kindi, or I pick them up from Kindi on the way home. So even if even when I work from home now on a Monday and a Tuesday, I typically work from home, I've still got that time blocked out in my calendar. You cannot get in my calendar after 2 p.m. You can't get in my calendar Mondays, and after 2 p.m. Tuesday, you can't get in my calendar. So what I'm doing now is instead of having people book in my calendar, I'm asking them for their calendar. And then I can choose if I want to take a call after 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. Like yesterday, we had some new agency join Mavericks Club. They're in my squadron. I had their first flight planning call with them yesterday. They're based in Sydney. We started at 2:30. That was my choice. I wanted to do that. Uh, they didn't book in my calendar. I booked in and um I structured that time with them, right? So the so key is is looking at your week and going, where do I do my best work around my like my energy levels? Uh, I'm really good in the morning. After two o'clock, I realized that I actually wasn't doing getting anything done anyway. I was just breaking stuff. I was just like, you know, faffing about on the internet and I would go down rabbit holes and I would break shit and I would create a whole bunch of work for the team. So I'm like, all right, I'm out now. And I'm still, frankly, finding it a little bit difficult around about that two o'clock time. I find myself sitting in front of the computer going, I feel like I should be doing something. And now I'm checking in, going, right, this is that moment where you step away from the computer and do something else because it gives you space and time to think about the business and not be stuck looking down this rabbit hole, right? So not only saying, Well, you know, this is these are the hours I want to work, but actually blocking it out in your calendar and letting your family, if you're working from home, letting your family know, or whoever else you work with, letting them know, hey, two o'clock, man, or whatever your time is, I'm done. Um, and I'm, you know, and then I'm not gonna work anymore. Okay. So blocking time in your calendar is is absolutely key. Yeah, the other thing I just want to mention briefly is the transition between working from home and being at home, right? The rule number one for me is I can pretty much get out of bed, have a shower, grab a coffee, walk into my office, and I can transition into work pretty quickly. I find it harder to transition out of work and get back into the family environment, which is, and I was doing a pretty bad job of that. I was trying, but I was doing a bad job over 2020, 2021. And the reason is is because I was taking calls and I was on calls right up until 5, 5:30, 6 o'clock some nights. And then I would come off a call, I'd be jazzed, I'd be thinking, I'd walk out, I'd have dinner with the family, and I'd be like, and my wife is completely exhausted managing the two kids, and she's like, Here, can you do something useful? And I'm like, Wow, but what about this? And you know, I've got always my brain was going 100 miles an hour, which is why now I give myself that time between two o'clock to get out of the house, go for a swim, do some exercise, do whatever I need to do to clear my head. So by the time I'm being in the home, I've let go of working in the home, right? And that's a really key distinction. That's something that's working really well for me. And my wife's noticed that she's like, oh my God, you're a completely different person to who you were last year. You know, I'm cooking dinner three days a week, which for her is like, holy shit, I'm having an out-of-body experience. This is like incredible. Who are you? What have you done with my husband? And um, so so just blocking that time in the calendar and then actually forcing yourself to do whatever you need to do to transition out of that work environment to being from home, even if it's a walk around the block, even if it's picking up the bass guitar for half an hour and doing some bass practice, whatever it is. I know Adam does some drum practice before he leaves and goes into the house. So um, what is it that you can do to transition from working from home to being at home? Just let me know in the chat uh what what you're doing there.
SPEAKER_03So one of the things that I'm doing now um to help with that transition is actually um, well, I you know, I do a morning routine, which helps to the last thing in my morning routine is plan my day. Um, and then I do an it's not evening because it's when I'm shutting down work, but I do a closing down work routine. I don't know what the hell you would want to call it, but um, and that's that's what I do. Like I I document what my wins were for that day, and I document um a few other things, and I maybe kind of jot a couple notes about what I need to focus on tomorrow, and then it helps me to turn the switch off and walk out that door and go downstairs and be part of the family. So that definitely helps. Um, you know, I I've just been inspired by your glasses, and I thought I'd just I'm wondering about are the glasses a everybody in the chat, are the glasses a yes or a no?
SPEAKER_02Like I like them. Are they are they blue light glasses or are they just are they blue light glasses?
SPEAKER_03I like them. So now I have to go back and forth between my blue light and my readers because I didn't get blue light readers because I don't need blue light, I don't need readers for the screen, I need readers for the paper.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, getting old sucks, man.
SPEAKER_02It does. So I wear contact lenses, but I need I put readers on at night to read my Kindle with my contact lenses, right? Um, and then uh I'm using these for blue light, which I don't think do anything. I think these are a complete placebo. I think they're a complete I think these are complete crap, but I'm banking on the fact that they make me look smarter. Yeah, and uh that's why I'm putting them on. They're a fashion statement. Um, so the the best self planner um is uh something I mentioned in the client acquisition formula. The best self-planner is a great book, it's a great device for doing that morning routine and that end-of-day routine. Now, you don't need a planner, fancy planner to do it. You can just do it on a napkin if you like, or a piece of paper. You can do it on a piece of paper and then throw it in the recycling. It doesn't matter. The fact is you get it out of your head.
SPEAKER_03That's right.
SPEAKER_02You don't go back and read it. You do it and you get it out of your head. And I like the and in the best self planner, one of the things uh they do is um your gratitude in the morning. Something that you walked us through in San Diego. At the very first Mavcon, you walked us through a gratitude, a gratitude exercise. I'll never forget that. Uh, three things you're grateful for in the morning. This is so this is just a really good transition exercise to do to get your head into work. Like three things you're grateful for, and then plan your day. What are the Mission critical tasks you need to get done today based on your quarterly focus. And then at the end of the day, your wins, what went well, what did you learn? And uh, and then you know, have a look at tomorrow and go, well, you know, I'm gonna trans transfer these things that I didn't get done today onto um the things for tomorrow, and also then another gratitude practice, three things you're grateful for at the end of the day, also helps you transition out from work into the home environment.
SPEAKER_03And you know, some of the things that help you work from home, help you work from anywhere, really. I mean, like simple things that like morning routine. I mentioned a morning routine. You have to have a morning routine, you have to you have to just jumpstart your day in some way. Um, mine is mine is the four B's. Simon, Simon Kelly actually taught me this one, the four B's something for your body, something for your brain, something for your balance, meaning and something for your business. So that's my I I do a morning routine, but then the other thing, um I forgot what I was gonna say. Totally forgot what I was gonna say.
SPEAKER_04That's okay.
SPEAKER_03Oh, the the the planning of the day part is the one rock, three, three stones, five pebbles.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you have to have to know what you want to get done that day. That helps you work from home if you know what you want to get done. And Pomodoro helps me a lot.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, these are things you can do at the office or at home.
SPEAKER_02Like that's right, that's right. We do this all, we talk about all this in client acquisition formula, by the way. If you don't have client acquisition formula, you should definitely get it. It's a great program. And also it walks you through how to do all this stuff. The Pomodoro Sprint is is really such a powerful exercise. Um yeah, yeah, the double, which is 50 minutes of focus work and then a 10-minute break. Um the uh so I I used to have an app on my, and I want to talk about an app in a minute on the phone, uh, which will help you set some boundaries. Um, I used to have an app on my computer called Time Out. That's a Mac based thing. And it what would happen is you can program it that every 50 minutes or whatever time works for you. I used to have program it that every 50 minutes it would just shut my computer down and play some music and have like a screensaver. And I couldn't use it for 10 minutes. I had to actually leave the get it off the computer for 10 minutes, go and do something, come back, and then 10 minutes later it would let me back in, right? And that was a way of helping me stay um productive without getting stuck looking at the computer too much. The other thing, the other app I want to talk about is on your phone, if you have an iPhone, if you use an Android device, I'm sorry your life is so horrible and I can't help you. If you use an iPhone, uh the there's an app called um downtime. There's a function on the iPhone called downtime. And what it allows you to do is it allows you to set which. So what the way I do this is I say from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m., there's a bunch of apps on my phone that I'm just not allowed to use. Right? So at 8 p.m. every night, my phone just goes, we're in downtime. I can't, I click on Facebook and it goes, eh, computer says no. Sorry, you have to wait until six o'clock tomorrow morning. I click, I push on Slack and I'm like, eh, sorry, computer says no. There you go, Max. There's a little grab for you for, you know, eh. Computer says no. Uh, you have to wait until six o'clock tomorrow morning uh before you can use Slack again. Because here's so here's the thing that I learned from Pete recently. I haven't had my phone in my bedroom for six years, right? My phone does not live in my bedroom. Before I go to bed at night, I put my phone in my office. I have this little um wooden thing which has got all these little charges on it. It's a beautiful little um kind of piece of furniture, really, that allows us to charge all our devices. I stick my phone on that, I go to bed. Pete said, Yeah, that's great, but wait until you've got kids that are grown up and they're out and about. You want to have your phone with. And so what happens is if my wife goes out at night uh with her friends, uh, I will, and she's not home when I go to bed. I have my phone next to me when I go to bed, just in case she needs to call me and she's a bit drunk and she wants to call me and tell me how much she loves me, right? I like to have to take those calls. Um so the problem is then you wake up first thing in the morning and your phone's right next to you, and you go, Oh, I'm just gonna check my email, right? Which is not good for your headspace. So the downtime feature on the phone is like, well, you can have your phone in the bedroom. If someone rings, it's gonna work, right? And you're gonna get the call if it's an emergency. But you wake up in the morning and you've got to check your email and it says, no, you can't do that yet because it's not the time, right? So whatever time works for you, you can set it from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Those apps just don't work. I promise you, if you're sitting on the couch at night watching TV and scrolling Facebook, you're doing brain, you're gonna end up with brain damage.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you're hurting.
SPEAKER_02I promise you. I promise you, you are gonna end your eyes with brain damage. Yeah, and you're hurting your eyes. Yeah, yeah. You should sit on the couch.
SPEAKER_03You're not doing much for your social life.
SPEAKER_02That's right, exactly. Right? Don't sit on the couch at night scrolling Facebook or the all the Instagram, right? You just you're wasting your your now. The other option is you I almost did this, is just have a separate phone with your phone number and no apps on it. It's just a phone, and don't put any apps on it and have that phone with you, and then have your business phone in the office on charge, and then you can use that business out. But as soon as you leave the office, you leave it in the in the in the office, and you've just got a phone with a phone number, so you can make calls and send texts, right?
unknownYep.
SPEAKER_02Apparently, it's available on Android Twitter.
SPEAKER_03By the way, that's another boundary. That's another boundary thing is to have if you don't have a separate business phone, you absolutely have to have a separate business line because that will kill your boundaries if you if you're allowing your your clients to call you or text you or whatever, um, off hours. Like you have to keep those boundaries.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and you can even get like a virtual phone number that redirects to your you know, you can get some virtual phone numbers with with and then you can set a time. You can go, well, if someone calls between these hours, redirect it to my mobile. If they're outside these hours, just send them to voicemail, right? Right. Um, something like that's gonna cost you maybe 15 or 20 bucks a month. Yeah, I pay $18 a month, yeah. Yeah, right, for a service like that that's gonna just protect your boundaries, yeah. Uh um Martin Sanders says that would have been amazing. 6 a.m. client call this week for WordPress updates. What? Man, I hope you sent them a very big invoice, Martin. Max says this feature's available on Android 2. Do you know if you can you take photos on an Android phone yet? Have they rolled that feature out too? You can you're allowed to, yeah, you can take that's amazing. Well done. Um I'm just playing with it. As an Apple, as an Apple stockholder, I thank you for that comment. Uh hey, uh, what is the biggest challenge that you guys have working from home? What is the biggest challenge you guys have?
SPEAKER_03We had a couple go by up there. Um, Carrie Loving said staying focused on the priorities that she set. Um that's a good one.
SPEAKER_02I'm not sure that's I'm not sure that's specific to working from home.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's not necessarily specific. Like, well, it's it it depends on what you let it what you're allowing to distract you. If it's if it's the laundry and the dog and the kids, then yes, that is about working from home. But if it's just you know, you're going on Facebook or like shopping on Amazon, then you can do that from any place.
SPEAKER_02That's right. Shopping on Amazon is one of my quarterly priorities, Pete. So directly in alignment with my my to-do list is to shop on Amazon because that's my job here in the business, is to make sure the team's got everything they need to succeed, and of course, that requires me to do a lot of internet shopping. Uh, excuse me. Um uh so um, Terry, what what do what is it give us more information? What is it that you're finding that's distracting you? Or what is it that uh do you know what your quarterly priorities are? So I think a lot of the challenge is for a lot of people is that they don't exactly know what their quarterly priorities are, and so therefore they end up just reacting to, you know, notifications is another thing that's very distracting, Pete. Uh, is that um they end up reacting to what happens on the internet and in their inbox, right? And they don't have a quarterly focus, so they're not exactly sure what they're supposed to do. And if you don't have a plan, right, then you just end up being part of everyone else's plan. That's right. And and they their plans don't they don't have much planned for you because their plans are all about them, right? So if you I I kind of think about you if you don't have a very clear plan on what you're supposed to be doing, you end up like a being you end up getting knocked around like a pinball inside a pinball machine, but you're not controlling the levers. Other people are just whacking you around and you're responding to their agenda and to their demands. Whereas if you get a very clear plan, I got an email this morning from someone who wanted to pay me money to drop an ad in our email newsletter. And I looked at it for a moment and I thought, you couldn't pay me enough to just respond to this email. Unless you're gonna offer me, unless you're offering me $20,000 to send an ad to my email newsletter subscribers, you're a waste of my time. This is a distraction. Delete, didn't even respond. Delete. That's their agenda. It's got nothing to do with me. So because guess what? On our quarterly plan, nowhere does it say fine sponsors for our email newsletter, does it, Max? Nowhere does it say sponsorship for newsletter, not on our agenda. So that email just gets deleted, done, out the door. Now there would have been a time years ago where I would have gone, oh, this is an interesting opportunity, and I would have responded and I would have got on a call with them at six o'clock in the morning and gone down that rabbit hole and then realized that they wanted to pay me 250 bucks to send an email.
SPEAKER_03Right? Computer shows no.
SPEAKER_02Correct. So, Terry, what is the challenge that you've got? Is it that you don't know exactly what you're supposed to be doing at any given time of the day, any given day of the week? Or is it that you have a plan, but other things are getting in the way? John Garrett says, I mark as spam all unsolicited emails. I'm sorry, John, if our emails have ended up in our emails as spam. I do apologize for that. We do send a lot of emails. We send a lot of emails. We do. Rory Flynn, communicating with my team overseas in their time zone. Again, I'm not sure that's specific to working from home. That would be a challenge no matter where you are. So, Rory, where where are you? Where are your team and how do you currently communicate with them? Because again, I'm not sure this is specific to working from home, but I'm happy to talk about it. Uh and James Murgatroy says using the, I think that's supposed to be Eat the Frog.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, eat the frog.
SPEAKER_02Yes, V-A-T is close to W A Y on the keyboard. Using the eat the frog method has helped a lot this year. Eat the Frog is a great book by Brian Tracy. I mean, basically the too long didn't read version is, you know, like if you're gonna eat a frog, do it first thing in the morning. So therefore the rest of your day just gets easier. Because if you can eat the frog first thing in the morning, you go, well, nothing else is gonna be as bad as that. So, what is the one thing that you have to do today that is the most painful? The thing that you don't want to do, the one big chunky thing that you don't want to do today because you're afraid or you don't have a framework for it, or you knew at it, or you think it's gonna suck, or you think it or it's awkward, it's a difficult conversation, do that first thing in the morning, the rest of the day gets easier, right? Uh, so I don't and uh we're just looking through the comments here. So if you're I'm I'm conscious of the people that are listening to this as a podcast, going, what the hell are they doing? We are going through the comments here in the Facebook group and answering people's questions. So if you're not in the Facebook group, come and join the Digital Mavericks Facebook group where we help digital marketing agencies and freelancers grow. Uh, go to Facebook.com, search for Digital Mavericks, and join the group, and we will approve you. And then you can come in and hang out and join in the fun. Rory Flynn has a team in India and they do tasks until about 11 p.m., I'm imagining. Uh, often need quick responses to keep ticking along. Okay. This is uh um, again, not not specific to working from home. This is a challenge for anyone who has a remote team. And Rory, I can tell you the way to mitigate this is and I think we've talked about this. If not, we will do a deep dive uh on the job scorecard at some point. Uh, but come into the Facebook group and search for job scorecard, because I'm sure we've talked about this on the agency hour before. The way to mitigate this is to instead of delegating tasks right to remote team members or other any team members, regardless of where they live. The problem with delegating tasks is that a team member who's doing tasks generally doesn't have the context around why the task is important. And so therefore they will come back to you and ask questions when they get stuck. The idea is to delegate outcomes to team members, not tasks. And if you delegate an outcome to a team member, they will typically then figure out the tasks that need to happen to achieve that outcome, right? And empowering them and giving them the responsibility to make decisions without you, A, is good for them because they feel like they've got a bit more responsibility and you trust them a bit, which is great for the relationship. And two, it frees you up because you don't have to micromanage or approve every single thing, right? So the so let's let's just why let's just go a step back and say, well, how do you like practically how do you implement this? The first thing is you've got to get really clear about the outcome that you want your team to achieve and write the success criteria for that outcome. So let's say you're you've got a design, you send it over to your team, and they're gonna develop that into a website. What is the outcome? The outcome is uh not that you have a website built from the design, that's not the outcome. The outcome is that the designs are turned into a website, it's installed uh as a WordPress child theme of whatever. Um, it uses our must-have plugins that we use on every website. It's set up on a staging server on this particular hosting environment. Uh, the login details are shared with you, Rory, so that you can log in and check it when it's done. And that the website is has been through our pre-launch checklist and is ready for Rory to run his eyes over it and approve it before we send it to the client. And part of the success criteria is that it must achieve a certain page speed and and you know, meet the W3C compliance, you know, audit or whatever it is, right? Whatever your success criteria is. And that Rory is not involved in the process until the development team have decided that this website is ready to go to the client. And then Rory comes in, runs his eyes over it, checks it all off, runs through the pre-launch checklist again, make sure it's ready to go and sends it to the client. Now, it might take three or four projects for the development team to get their head around that and actually get it to that stage, right? But if you're just delegating tasks and they don't understand the outcome, then they're gonna constantly come back to you and ask questions. Right. And so the way I always think about two examples when delegating outcomes. Think about a sporting team. So what's the what's the success criteria for a sporting team? We're gonna win the playoffs. That's the ultimate outcome for a sporting team, is gonna win the championship. Now, there's gonna be a whole bunch of decisions that need to be made between the start of the season and winning the championship. But let's be clear the outcome is to win the championship. The other example I like is hey, we're gonna go camping with a bunch of family friends. There's three families going camping. Um, the campsite is a five-hour drive from our house, and we all have children under the age of seven. Guess what? The outcome is to get to the campsite and have the tents pitched and the food cooking before 5 p.m. Otherwise, the kids are gonna go batshit crazy. We're gonna enter the witching hour, and all of a sudden it's gonna be eight o'clock, and I'm still pitching a tent in the dark, and that ain't fun for anyone. So the outcome is we are having dinner, tents are done, everyone's got a place to sleep before 5 p.m. Let's work backwards from that and go, well, it's a five-hour drive. We can't have the kids in the car for five hours because they go crazy. So we're gonna have to stop for 45 minutes somewhere and have lunch, which means if I work this back and it's gonna take us an hour and a half to set up the campsite, we're gonna get there at 3:30. We need to leave home at 8 a.m. The amount of times we've gone camping and haven't really had that conversation, left home at 11, and like I'm an hour into the drive, and I'm like, we're pitching a tent in the dark, man. This is gonna drive me crazy because we're not conscious, we're not clear about the outcome. We're we're kind of thinking about the tasks that need to happen. We haven't been clear about the success criteria of the outcome. Okay. So get super clear about the success criteria of the outcome, and then let your team figure out how to get there.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_03That's exactly the exercise they should do, is work backwards from the outcome. Like, what do we, what's everything we have to do to get there, whatever that project is. Yeah. I like the camping one. I like the camping analogy.
SPEAKER_02That's a good one. Uh, this is by the way, this is this is part of for those of you that watched the live stream of the podcast last week. I think it was the flight plan last week that we kind of uh that we that we gave away. Uh, this is part of that, like you know, not only client projects, but any projects that you're working on to develop your business, if you're working on your sales process, if you're working on hiring team members, if you're bringing on a new project manager, what is the success criteria of any project that you're working on? What's the outcome look like? And what is the success criteria? How will we know when it is done? Uh get clear about that before you do anything. Yeah. Tip from John Garrett. I also use clear context defer feature in Outlook for all non-urgent emails, right? Yeah. I defer by three hours everything that's not critical each morning. Gives me clarity to focus on the critical stuff first, right? So this is, you know, this kind of comes from David Allen's work in getting things done. He has the four D's uh to help you manage the sheer volume of stuff coming at you, right? Um, the four D's uh if you can do it yourself in less than two minutes, just do it. That's the first D. You know, can I just do this now in less than two minutes? Great, just do it. Can I can I delegate this to someone? If you can, delegate it. I delegate stuff all the time because I I can't deal with this. I'm not the best person to deal with this. I delegate it to a team member. That's the second D. Delegate. Can I defer this and do it later, which is what John's doing now? He's deferring this by three hours. I use poly mail. It has a remind me function. So I just go, you know what? I'm just remind me about this next week because I know I can't deal with it right now. And the fourth one is delete it. Can I just delete this? Do I need is this something I actually need? No, delete. Right? In fact, that's like the first that's the first D for me. Like, can I delete this? No. Can I do it now? No. Just remind me next week or delegate it. So do it, defer it, delegate, or delete it. Yeah? Getting things done, David Allen. That's uh his uh his that's the you know the bones of his methodology, really. Uh again, not specific to working from home, but uh, but you know, super helpful. Uh we've talked about setting boundaries uh from home. We've talked about having a dedicated workspace at home. We've talked about having dedicated hours that you work from home, and we've talked about blocking time in the calendar. We've also talked about setting up your work environment at home so that it's distinct from the rest of the living space. So having a nice environment where you go and you kind of get your head into uh into work. We've talked about transitioning from working from home to being in the home. Uh, we've also talked about using things like the double pomodoro to keep you focused for you know 50 minutes and then taking a 10-minute break. And we've talked about some apps, the timeout app on your computer and also downtime on your downtime.
SPEAKER_03I like, I didn't know about that one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, downtime's great. Um, talked about the you know having a separate business line so that when people call the business line, it doesn't just call your phone on a weekend, for example.
SPEAKER_03Uh I think one more piece of advice is uh get get out of the office, get out of the environment at various times throughout the day. Move your ass, basically. Get up, walk around, make sure you're drinking plenty of water, all that healthy stuff. But just get up and go for a walk and leave it behind you for a couple minutes. You you suggested recently even the three-hour chunk in the middle of the week where you just are not working, like that kind of thing. Stop working for a little while. That's what those Pomodoro, when the Pomodoro thing goes off and you got your 10-minute break, don't go on Facebook. No, it's don't don't answer emails, don't just change to a different task. No, you know, yeah, get out and move your butt.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Um the the no one says you have to work from eight nine to five or eight till six. Like that's just horseshit, right? That's just a construct that we've all bought into, and really it's about uh the because the kids are in school, right? Right. Uh so it you can work evenings if you want. You can if you can work from nine till two, right? And then work from you know, eight till ten if you want, right? But between two and eight, go and do something else, go play golf or take up a hobby, uh engage your brain in something else, right? I've taken up scrapbooking recently. I know, nerd. Um, because yeah, I've taken up scrapbooking. Yeah, no shit. Because we have so many memories of the kids just laying around the house, like swimming certificates on the fridge and photos in photo albums. And I'm like, you know what? I want to bring all this stuff together and create a book of memories for you know for my kids. So every now and then, I didn't get a chance to do this very often, but every now and then I just sit down at the dining room table and I'll spend a couple of hours building a page in a in one of my scrapbooking albums and you know, putting on all the little embellishments and being a complete nerd. By the way, I'm in some of the scrapbooking Facebook groups. I think I'm the only dude in any of those groups. There's like eight million mums doing scrapbooking for their kids, and then I pop up and I'm like, oh, what are we, you know? Can someone give an idea of it? And um, there's a whole ecosystem around.
SPEAKER_03There's another subculture. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02There are, you know, I'd spend time on Etsy buying scrapbooking templates. It's amazing. I love it. And the point is, I'm engaging a different part of my brain. And sometimes while I'm scrapbooking, something will just come to me about the business because I'm not thinking about it, and I'm giving myself space and time to get some distance from it. Uh just check out scrapbooking coach. I'm not going to coach you guys on scrapbooking. There's no course coming, but just check out scrapbooking coach. She's awesome, she's got a bunch of stuff, and I'm I'm one of her students. So there you go.
SPEAKER_03It'll be it's a 2023 product for us, guys. That's 2023, is what my prediction is. Troy has to really be around it first. Um, so I don't know who said it because it just says Facebook user, but do you suggest changing working space every once in a while? Yes, we talked about that very early. Maybe you joined in late. Um absolutely switch it up, even if it means just going down to the dining room table or on the couch or whatever. Um, you do have to get out of the office. It it just kind of sets a new mindset for the whole thing. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um and I would say, I would say if you're going to a coffee shop, sorry, Troy, if you're going to a coffee shop, have a set thing that you do when you go to the coffee shop. So what I was saying is that's my time for checking Slack for agency Mavericks and with my team and also answering emails. And then that I don't answer emails again until the next morning, really. Um, and then I come home and go to work. Like, do my do my then I start my pomodoros of all right, I've got to work on this content or I've got to work on this sales stuff or whatever.
SPEAKER_02A couple of things here. James Murgatroyd said Wordle has been a good brain workout in the AM to get the mind working. Love it. I wasn't familiar with it. I've just looked it up. Wordle looks amazing. Thank you so much, Murgatroid. I'm down that rabbit hole. That looks like fun. Uh, it's just a word game. And um, what is your name? Come on, give StreamYard permission, please, John. So I don't have to keep going back to uh here we go. John Garrett, this is super important. I find dressing well for work when working from home helps my mindset. Definitely no pajamas. Yes. Absolutely, I agree. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Um, even putting on, even putting on some nice work shoes and sitting, you know, wearing shoes in the house uh can just get you into a different mindset. So yeah, I don't I don't work. Um I don't work in my pajamas either.
SPEAKER_03Uh naked is fine, but not in your pajamas.
SPEAKER_02Naked is fine, but not in your pajamas. Um, there we go. James Mugatron says Wordle has just been bought by the New York Times, so may not be free for too long. Ug boots are fine for work. I mean, Ug boots are the official work from home safety boots. They are standard issue. So uh working from home in your Ug boots is totally fine. They are a an official work from home boot here at Agency Mavericks. Uh, all right. Any uh any other any other thoughts about working from home? Any other questions you guys have? Any other strategies that you want to share? Um uh and also what I'm curious about is anyone here working from home who is in the process of trying to find an external office or move out. I know Adam Silverman, one of our Mavericks, has been working from home for a couple of years now. He's on a farm and he's got this big, essentially it's a barn that he's turned into a drum studio and his office, and it looks amazing. He's just signed a lease on a new office in town because he has like four or five team members coming to his farm every day to work from the barn, and he's like, you know what? I don't want to do this on my farm anymore. I want to actually get into an office and um and kind of be a bit more grown-up about it. And uh, so he's just signed a lease on an office, which is good for him. I think he's gonna have the flexibility to still work from home a couple of days a week if he wants to, but the team is gonna be placed in the office.
SPEAKER_03When you get to a certain point, um you want your team in one place and you in another, maybe sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes.
SPEAKER_02Totally. Um, so any any of you guys looking at moving out of home and getting an external office. Uh, Paul Torman, have a look at the link near this live stream. In the description of this live stream, there should be a link that says uh before leaving a comment, please grant StreamYard permission to see your name. Um, and you just go streamyard.com slash Facebook, streamyard.com slash Facebook. And as long as you're logged into Facebook, you can give StreamYard permission to know who you are so that we can see your name and your face. Oh, Christopher Stratman, I'm terribly sorry, man. I'm stuck in lockdown working at home due to chronic leukemia, not getting along with COVID. Oh, dude. I move around the house, office, kitchen, spare bedroom, and front porch, back patio when the weather is right. Good headphones have been to Godsend. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Christopher, where where do you live, Christopher?
SPEAKER_02He's in the States, I think.
SPEAKER_03So if it's if it's warm enough, get yourself outside on the patio or something and and do that too. Yeah, make sure you get some fresh air.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Says the guy literally hasn't left the house in three days.
SPEAKER_02I tend to do my copywriting. If I have to do any writing, I tend to go out in the back deck and look at the backyard. And if it's hot, like in summer at the moment, it's hot. So I put the umbrella up over me and give myself a bit of shade, make myself a soda water, and sit out in the backyard, listen to the birds, and listen to the neighbors fighting next door and and and do my writing. Uh, it's just a good break to you know being looking at the same four walls, looking at the internet. All right, gang. Hey, this has been fun. This is uh the agency almost hour uh here live in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group. As I said, this is a podcast. We're turning this into a podcast which we're launching in a few weeks. So if you're listening to this, come and join the Digital Mavericks Facebook group and be a part of the conversation. Thank you, Pete, Crispy Butter, Perry, for being a part of it. And um I wish you all the best. I wish all of you all the best in your continued ventures working from home. Keep the conversation going. If you have any questions or any comments about this, let us know uh in the comments underneath this episode and we'll come back and keep the conversation going. And if you know anyone who would benefit from listening to this or being a part of it, please share it with them. Tell them to join the Digital Mavericks Facebook group. We just want to get this message in front of as many digital marketing agencies and freelancers as possible to help you guys be more productive no matter where you're at. If you're just starting out or if you've got a team or you're scaling your team or your, you know, whatever your revenue figures are, uh get it get amongst the group and get around our free content. We're here to help you along that journey no matter where you are. All right. Thanks, Pete. We'll see you next week. We've got Mavcon next week, which is super exciting. Our live event for our Mavericks Club members, that's happening next week. So uh next week, we'll probably give you a little bit of a post-mortem on that and let you know how that went. Um and let us know the kinds of conversations and guests that you want to see here and here on the agency hour. Let us know in the group and we'll do our best to reach out to people and bring in the guests that you want to see. All right. All right, man. See you next week. Bye for now, guys. Take care.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for listening to the Agency Hour Podcast. Subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcast, Audible, and wherever you'd like to listen. You can catch all of the Agency Hour episodes on our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash agencymaverics. Or you can get involved. Check out our free Digital Mavericks Facebook group, where we broadcast these episodes live to our community every week, along with a ton of free people. We'll see you there.