Remote work is better when you have people to talk to. Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels
It feels like we went from summer, to fire season, to back to school, to both kinds of Vancouver Fall in the space of 3 days. September was a veritable weather buffet–a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and way, way too much smoke.
In case anyone is wondering, Vancouver’s Fall comes in two flavours. Fall number one is soggy and dark, and it usually hits right after Labour Day, during the first week of school. Fall number two is crisp air, crunchy leaves, and glorious light. That’s where we’re supposed to be now, but it’s so warm I’m not sure the leaves will get a chance to change before they fall off the trees. On the other hand, the Dark and the Wet is coming, so you’ll hear no complaints from me.
There have been many articles and podcasts (like this one from NPR) floating around in the last couple of weeks, talking about preparing now for a winter with COVID. There’s a nice cartoon with some great high level tips for creating your happy place. Even I wrote a ‘find your happy things’ blog post two weeks ago. Gathering supplies to get into your personal happy place is a great idea.
It’s also a great idea to take actions that will make your remote job easier to deal with in the last months of the year. Let’s talk about that.
Relationships Are Like Bank Accounts
Yes, I do know that relationships shouldn’t be purely transactional, but stick with me on this one. Like bank accounts, relationships are healthier if you feed them on a regular basis. Second, if all you do is take, someone is going to close that account.
At some point in the winter, you’re going to feel sad and isolated at work. You’ll need someone to remind you that you aren’t alone in your home office. While you can forge connections with colleagues at any time, it’s easier if you aren’t in crisis mode. Here are some ideas to get you started.
- Attend a networking event. Most professional networking groups are now meeting online. A Google search can help you find networking groups of all stripes. Shop around until you find a group that feels like your people.
- Invite a work colleague to a zoom coffee break. Screens are definitely optional here if you’re on too many video calls. Take 30 minutes every other week or once a month to catch up.
- Play games. At my company, we’ve played Would You Rather, and board games like One Night Ultimate Alien. You would be surprised at the number of games you can play via video call.
Someone is reading this and cringing at the idea of online forced fun. Fair enough. If I never get asked to share fun facts about myself, that will be too soon. What you really need is a vehicle for people to talk while spending time together. You want to avoid inviting people to hang out, only to find that there is a lot of awkward silence because folks don’t know each other well enough to just talk.
Scheduling a few of these activities goes a long way toward forging real relationships. You only need to spend a little bit of time laughing with someone before you’re comfortable enough to reach out when you want to take a work break or need to vent. Start now, and you’ll have solid relationships to take you into (and through!) the end of the year.
What’s That Douglas Up to Now?
The last few weeks have been an odd mix of holding goodbye parties for departing colleagues, and speaking at different companies about remote work. I wrote an entire article about How to Say Goodbye When a Remote Worker Leaves. Leaving your job for any reason is hard. For remote workers, it can be doubly hard, because you just sort of close your computer at the end of your last day. Fortunately it doesn’t take much effort to do better than that. The above article assumes you’re a colleague of the person leaving. At some point I’ll write the how-to article aimed at managers.
On the comedy side of things, I have a list coming out on Wednesday called ‘2020 or Country & Western Song.’ I was thinking of that old joke that goes: What do you get if you run a country song backwards? you get your house back, you get your wife back, you get your dog back. Turns out there are a lot of parallels to the bonkers plot line that is 2020.
And finally, the big story (because I live a truly wild life) is that my eleven-year-old and I will be bullet journalling. The kid is in sixth grade and finally needs to use a planner to keep track of her stuff, and she’s artistic, so I think she’ll like it. My job is concluding at the end of December, and my freelance work is ticking up, so I’m also feeling the need to keep track of all the things.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
