If you have watched the major news channels lately, you will notice that many of the hosts and guests are now broadcasting from their homes. The million-dollar studio sets are now gone and instead we are now literally staring into their own homes – for all to see! But this isn’t just happening to the folks on TV for nearly everybody in American is dealing with this new reality every day. The only difference is you probably don’t have professionals helping you out with your home office like the TV folks do.
The recent COVID shutdown has forced many businesses and professionals to have to work from home – many of which for the first time. As a result, many people are now having to learn this new way of working which can have both its advantages and disadvantages.
There are three major “structural” changes that are resulting from the COVID shutdown that will likely change how you do business forever. These include the ubiquitous use of E-Signatures for document signing, decentralization and planning of all work environments, and the more common use of virtual meetings and collaboration moving forward. Each of these I will touch on in the points below. Based on recent studies, fully 37% of all US jobs can be performed as home compared to the roughly 5.3% of Americans who, prior to COVID, work mostly from home. So what may be temporary now for some will likely become more permanent down the road.
I have maintained a home office for well over two decades now and like many of you, had to learn what works best when it comes to working from home. So below I have outlined 7 tips that I have learned over the decades that will help you better work from your home office…
1.CREATE A DESIGNATED / DEDICATED WORK SPACEIf you haven’t done so already, the ideal world is to start by creating a “dedicated” room in your home as your home office. I realize this not easy to do in places like smaller apartments and “filled” homes but it is something you should take into consideration in every place you now buy, rent and live in. Does your new home and/or apartment have an extra room for an office? These are questions you need to consider moving forward – well beyond COVID.
If you have a room designated, try to make sure it has a door and let your family members know that when the door to your office is closed, it means DO NOT DISTURB…PERIOD. If it helps, please a “WORKING” sign on the door when closed to remind them. They have to know their boundaries in your home, especially when it comes to your work getting done.
2. SCHEDULE TIMES “AWAY” FROM YOUR HOME OFFICEWorking at home can be great but it can also require new types of “social distancing” to help balance you out. When working from home, I tend to prefer to go out for lunch (when the shutdown allows) and I always take periodic breaks to take a walk and clear my head – even if this means a simple 15 minutes break outside WITHOUT my phone.
3. PUT UP WHITE BOARDS TO CREATE AND TRACK DAILY GOALSIf you are challenged at times with self-discipline, the best way I have found to help stay focused and highly productive in a home office is to use whiteboards. Start with two boards and every morning before you start your day, write down your goals and to-do items and cross them out (don’t erase them) until your day is completed. Place these so they are always staring back at you and easy to update throughout the day. Once the day is done, take time to look at and reflect on what you completed, erase your board, and start your planning for tomorrow. Date the board/s each day to help create a habit of doing this daily Trust me, some days you may feel like “nothing is getting done” but once the day is done, your board/s might tell you otherwise. You can buy these cheap at Costco and online or you can go fancy with glass board writing surfaces.
4. SETUP YOUR OFFICE FOR VITUAL MEETINGSBy now, most American’s know what a “zoom” meeting is. Over the past month alone, Zoom has gone from just another cheap player in the video conferencing space to a new verb in our daily vernacular. But just jumping on a video conference is the first of many steps you should take in order to do this correctly in your business dealings. And here are some of the ways you can get started doing this well.
First, setup a video conferencing account. Some of my favorite services include: MS Teams, join.me, and of course Zoom. Expect to pay for these services even though many offer free versions – the paid services offer better services such as recording capabilities, unlimited timing, participants and calls, changes to your backgrounds, etc. Expect to pay around $10-$30/mo. for this – most offer their best prices by paying 12 months in advance. So try them out and pull the trigger on the one that works best for you.
Second, get a webcam, speakers, and microphone if you don’t have them already. Most modern laptops have these build-in but if you have a stationary PC, you may need to add these to your machine. Most are relatively inexpensive on Amazon.com and worse case, you can always try using your earbuds as speakers in a pinch.
Third, make sure to place lighting in front of you – not behind! Videos with lighting and/or windows in the background will blur out the shots. In the perfect word, you will have a 3-point lighting setup at your 11 and 2 O’clock positions with the third located above your head. Ideally, you want to be facing the light but not have it too bright that you have to squint when looking forward. This can be solved by defusing the lights you use with soft light blubs, shades, and by using dedicated LED lights designed for video conferencing. Some affordable options can by found on Amazon.com by clicking here.
Fourth, make sure you become very familiar with how to hide yourself, mute, etc. when on video calls. Nothing can be more embarrassing and distracting when those sudden moments happen that require you to quickly remove your visuals and audios from a call. Trust me – it will happen to you too…just wait. So practice and be ready for it.
Finally, make sure to setup your office to make the best impression on video calls. This means having a backdrop behind you on your camera that looks clean, professional, and impressive. Think about it – what is the first thing you notice when you walk into somebody’s office? Well, with virtual meetings, you are walking into each other’s office at the same time so prepare for it now! This also applies to how you personally appear on camera as well. Many people think working at home means working in your underwear but I can assure you, the more video calls you are doing, the more people will make judgements about how you dress and appear on camera as well. So, treat each working day at home with the same grooming standards you would expect at the office and you won’t get caught off guard by that sudden and unexpected request for a video call with that important somebody on the other end while you look like you just rolled out of bed. I also recommend connecting to video calls around 5-10 minutes early just in case there is a delay in downloading and using a video service on your end. Let the other person look bad for being late – not you.
5. MANAGE YOUR WIFI BETTEREver noticed when your kids are stuck at home with you that your internet seems to slow down? That is because your kids are likely hogging up the bandwidth of your home’s wifi network. And if your kids are into gaming, you are heading for trouble fast! Here are a few ways to better manage this problem:
First, have your kids stay off your home internet connection during working hours. Now, if they are “home learning” this will likely be the exception but for everything else, you can request they stay off the home internet during working hours.
Second, make sure your router is up-to-date. As a general rule, if your router and nodes are more than 5 years old, it is time to replace them with a newer one. This is especially true if your router is not centrally located in your house. One of the best and easiest options on the market today is to buy an Orbi router with one or more satellites to deploy throughout your house as needed. They are simple to setup and work great!
Finally, if you want to get the best connection from your router, I also recommend connecting directly to your router for best performance. This means connecting with a ethernet, USB, etc. cable between your computer and your router.
6. REDEPLOY YOUR SMALLER TV’S AS EXTRA COMPUTUR MONITORSWorking from home can mean you can have as large of a desk as you now want. This also means you can deploy multiple monitors off of your computer to allow you to better multi-task and not have to do everything on one small screen anymore. If you don’t have extra monitors, another option is to redeploy smaller TV’s from your house to your desk. Older TV’s and PC’s will commonly have VGA connections, it is best to use more modern TV’s that support HDMI connections for your computer instead. This will help reduce the potential effects of “input lag” which is the delay you can sometimes see between when you move your mouse and type and when it displays on your monitor.
7. START UTILIZING VIRTUAL TOOLS TO BETTER OPERATE FROM HOME
Working from home should not be limited to doing video calls, conference calls, and sending emails. Now that people are becoming increasing “decentralized” in their work environments, your systems need to better support this change as well. Here are a few tools to help:
First, non-video conference calls are increasing. Even though video service providers can support this, there are still people and meetings that will only require a simple conference call to complete. There are many good options out there but the one that I tend to use the most is FreeConferenceCall.com which, as they name denotes, is free.
Second, if you are still emailing internally to all your fellow co-workers, then you need to stop. There are better collaboration tools out there today that will help cut down on the email-hell and allow you to better collaborate – especially remotely. The two most common tools for this are SLACK and MS Teams. Both are similar in many respects but so it may come down to whether you are a Microsoft lover or not. Both provide free trials to help you determine which one is best for you.
Finally, get used to signing documents through e-signatures moving forward. You can now create legally binding contracts with a simple e-signature that can be signed in seconds on a PC and smart phone. Many states are now moving to virtual notaries as well for signed documents and COVID will likely be the kick in the ass to those remaining states that are behind on this. The best e-signature service in my opinion is Docusign and you can signup for a 12 month account for $300. This may seem expensive to some but trust me, if you use the service even a little, it will pay for itself many times over for most people.
I am sure there any many other thoughts and suggestions on this matter so if you want to add to the list, please comment below for all the read. Either way, I am confident that most people will get something they can take away from these suggestions and we can all benefit from it.
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