Pandemic Productivity: Controlling The Controllable

How to work remotely, practice wellness, and be productive

The call for work from home (WFH) tools, techniques, and the need for camaraderie and collaboration have never been so loud.

How you and your team function today has a direct impact on the company’s profitability for tomorrow. Working from home can open new streams of revenue, creativity and fun team collaboration, but if not managed correctly, it can cause stress.

Relying on rituals, (habits) to provide a framework for success imperative in the WFH world. According to HBR and Mike Norton, a professor at Harvard Business School “rituals help us cope with anxiety and grief which is experienced with the current pandemic.” 

We may not think of a ritual as coinciding with setting a daily schedule, but when diving a little deeper, that’s a major component. Rituals are acts that are performed in a sequence, and these sequences become some form of a daily habit. 

While it might be easy to sleep a little later and throw off your routine, consider how maintaining your habits can help make your home office professional, productive, and positive. Here are 5 things to consider when planning your day. 

One of the best ways to immediately plug into productivity comes from using paper as one of the first tasks in the morning routine. Start the day using a notebook, journal or a sheet of paper to prioritize the top three goals, projects or tasks you need to start, prep or finish for that day. This morning ritual will put you on track to accomplishing what you need to do for the day without being inundated by pop up notifications and emails. 

In fact, The 2019 Workplace Productivity Report from the Paper & Packaging Board discovered that “75% of those in the workplace think it’s important to have the option to use paper whenever they want.” This may be a little difficult for bigger projects since many workers don’t have printers at home.

Reach for paper tools to get organized before looking at your phone or opening your computer. Share this tip with the team and ask them to post their “Top 3 Morning Hacks” on Slack or any other tool your business may use. This helps everyone to stay on track and be accountable for the day’s commitments.    

Set yourself up for proactivity as opposed to reactivity. It’s frustrating when we can’t find something and worse when we must get up every 2-3 minutes embarking on a scavenger hunt to look for a necessary item that needs to be on the desk. Organize your desk before sitting down to work which will lead to the path of productivity.

Every time there’s an interruption to the flow of work it takes 23 minutes to get back into the project or task. Digital and other distractions impact and derail our productivity, Gloria Mark at University of California, Irvine states that distractions have negative emotional effects on us as well. This means discarding everything on the desk that isn’t necessary for the tasks at hand. Clutter kills creativity and productivity. 

Remote Recruiting: This can be a real asset to see how a potential new member of the team handles pressure. It’s impossible to control when a child screams from the other room or when the dog decides to make a cameo appearance on video – either way, this is real life and these unplanned moments allow for the opportunity to understand how a candidate can regroup and pivot when under pressure.

Remote recruiting will be a little less challenging when using video to gauge body language and non-verbal cues. After all, there are many cues we can’t hear over the phone. Hearing intonation and seeing the person respond and react takes the guess work out of the interview and allows you to stay present. 

Schedule video interviews in the morning as opposed to later in the day when everyone is worn out and possibly napping. This isn’t about tricking a candidate; it’s about understanding how they may react under pressure and uncontrollable conditions. It’s critical to know how people handle pressure, unexpected circumstances, and what they do when life doesn’t go as planned. This isn’t about finding, or even expecting perfection, because this situation is far from that reality, but then again, since perfection is a myth let’s see what they’ve got to offer.  

My book Consciously Connecting states “we need to disconnect from technology in order to reconnect to ourselves and each other.” Mental focus is difficult when we’re on devices all day long. “87% of office professionals say they spend the majority of their workday staring at screens an average of 7 hours a day.”

One of the best tools to reconnect to our creativity is giving our eyes a break from screens. We blink less when looking at screens, therefore our eyes get dry, we feel fatigued, experience brain fog, and can get headaches. Take micro-breaks by looking out the window at a tree or some grass, and if a city view doesn’t offer any greenery then let the eyes drink green by placing a small plant on the edge of your desk. 

For a greater refresh and recharge to further increase and fuel creativity, head outside and drink some green for 15-20 minutes. The Mayo Clinic’s research has shown that spending time in nature helps our mental health. This technique really helps in the middle of the day for a quick reboot.   

If the weather isn’t permitting any time outside, consider using a pad of paper or notebook to do some doodling. It’s another option to relax the eyes and open the neural pathways to unexpected creativity. Adding colored pens or pencils to this break makes it a lot more fun.   

It can be tempting to check in on the news while sitting at the desk mid-day or even at the beginning of the day. Don’t do it! Once down the rabbit hole of the negative news cycles the brain's negativity bias has officially been activated at full speed. Rick Hanson, Ph.D. states that it takes 5 positives to normalize one negative. If listening to the news becomes a morning ritual or an afternoon pick me up, the brain is focusing on negativity as opposed to positivity. This sets the tone for the entire day and every interaction during the day.    

It’s more difficult to activate and engage the team when the general feeling is one of pessimism and panic. This is a time to call on your inner cheerleader, for yourself and for the team.. Start team Zoom calls with icebreakers to get the oxytocin (the socially bonding brain chemical) pulsing though everyone’s brains by having some fun. What are the wins, who’s got the best plant on their desk, what day can there be a happy hour with pets? 
This helps to bond and build our team while conducting business in a mostly virtual world. 
Using these tools and techniques will help everyone WFH successfully and serve the team long after traditional in-office work resumes. Quality of work is derived from setting the structure of good habits, or rituals, that can be relied upon whether working from New York City or Nepal, Paris or Patagonia.