Esther
Good morning and welcome to the Monday morning working podcast. I'm Esther.
Melanie
And I'm Melanie.
Esther
And today we're talking about working from home. We all have to do it at some point at the minute during coronavirus to some degree or another. How are you finding it, Melanie?
Melanie
Not easy. How is it in your little shed?
Esther
OK, so Melanie thinks that I don't work from home, in my own garden, in my house, so I do work from home, the kids are here 24/7 and everything is as normal, the kettle is not too far away, the washing machine, everything that can distract us when working at home is right outside my shed of an office, so I'm working from home is not easy at the best of times, but now that we've well, I would say what Ninety-nine percent of us have been thrown into it at the deep end, we can find it a bit more challenging.
Melanie
Yeah. Working from home, even when you don't have the kids screaming, fighting or just generally happy playing in the background is going to be an issue, I mean, I've always struggled, Esther, truthfully, I've always struggled to work from home, even when I first started, I would end up going to hotel lobbies or cafes or that sort of thing just to get myself away, to distract myself from TV, distract myself from my two lovely cats and the home essentials that was needed doing. And I know my husband works from home, I do not know how he does it, I don't.
Esther
Well, maybe men have a different switch, I don't know that just you know, they see dishes piled up in just pass them without needing to wash them or stack the dishwasher if you have if you're lucky enough to have one, you know, maybe they just don't feel the need to wash the clothes on a bright, sunny day, you know, maybe that's more of a maternal thing that we have.
Melanie
I don't know, but I've never managed to do it successfully, so as soon as I could afford to, I got myself an office and you know, it's been just over two years now, I've had the office and thank heavens, otherwise my productivity would just disappear into oblivion.
Esther
Well, right now, I mean, right now you're recording this from your office, but there's nobody else there.
Melanie
I'm completely alone, there's been nobody in this office for, I suppose, a couple of weeks now, apart from, let me emphasize, there's an extremely good to zoned alarm here, OK? And we also have security guards. So, you know, I'm little worried about coming to the office at all, but, you know, I'm alone, so I feel perfectly safe at the moment.
Esther
Yeah, and if you're at home, like you say, your husband works from home the whole time, so obviously your Internet must be really good at home.
Melanie
Oh, it's brilliant fiber.
Esther
Yeah, we have fiber here as well. But I just feel sorry for those that have been thrown into the home office situation and they don't have good Internet.
Melanie
Or desk space.
Esther
Yes, desk space is essential, I mean, working from your kitchen table.
Melanie
Or your shed.
Esther
Yes, working from your shed all has its limitations, I mean, yes, when we started, we worked from one of our bedrooms and we have a three bedroom house and the kids were in one room and we were in the other, so we used the third one, but that's not ideal either, because you don't really switch off at the end of the day., you don't really get started either, you can't hold nine to five hours while working from home, do you find that?
Melanie
Oh, absolutely. When especially in the first few years, as you building up and developing, you don't want to stop, that's part of the issue, and the other part is you feel if you don't put in the time at the beginning, there's going to be no return, now, please don't get me wrong, I'm still putting in effort hours in the weekends and in the evenings, but there's less need for me to do it, so now, because I'm better organized, I've got strategies in place, scheduling in place, I know roughly when I'm going to be starting and finishing my blog, that sort of thing is basically a different kettle of fish when you first start a business, which you're literally throwing yourself in at the deep end and you are the CEO, the accountant, the window washer, you know, the tea maker, your anything, you are absolutely everything at the beginning. Yeah.
Esther
And and you have to you have to be online or you feel at least that you have to be online, 24/7, so that people can see you and people can get to know who you are. Once you're more established and people go looking for you, then you start to ease off of it, but do you find that clients these days have also moved their work schedule to different?
Melanie
Definitely. I've noticed more and more people are changing their hours, especially the the people with families. A part of my head was going to say the women, but it isn't just the women, it's the men as well. So people have got kids at home, I find are invariably only available in the afternoons, and, you know, that's men and women, and that's because they're making themselves available to the kids, because the kids need to be looked after first and as their mental health, we have to worry about as well, and their education, of course.
Esther
Yeah, not to mention the school, the things being sent from school, let's not talk about that.
Melanie
That's one more by itself fairness. But no, I honestly think the best way for businesses to work from home now is to give themselves bite size times slots, if you like, for certain types of work, so, OK, I need to get my account sorted out, I need to get my feet ready for the end of the month, so let's say or I've also got some quotes to get out to people, some blocks to write, if you can try and commit yourself to maybe chunks of time, so two hours for this, two hours for that, or even if you really like to change, maybe one hour to do one thing schalkwyk and then another hour to do something else, and I find just really, really small micro goals, you know, ticking them off as you do them really helps, I mean, what's working for you, working from your shed?
Esther
Working from home in my garden, well, it's it's great now, at the minute, the weather has been so good that I can at least, you know, the kids can be out in the garden and I can see them from the door of my office in the garden, and I can be watching over them, but I can still be getting a bit of things done, you know, it can it can be sending those quotes, I break it down even further and just do half hour slots because my kids are younger, and so they need a little bit more, I generally find that every half hour they're asking for a snack anyway, so, you know, they also help me to break up the day, but I think one of the things that I would really, really sort of emphasize for people who are not who are not used to working from home is that don't beat yourself up over it, if you don't get all the work done that you would normally have done in your office, whether it's in your garden or in a physical office in a town or city, don't beat yourself up over it because it's just not possible, it's not the same environment, it's not the same time frame that you should be given yourselves, and there's other people that can get everything that they would have done in an eight hour day done in three, so they're finding it, you know, they're more productive at the minute.
Melanie
God, if only that was me. I was condensed into three hours. Well, I suppose you kind of have to be now because you're not getting the phone calls, you see, you're certainly not getting people walking off the street if, you know, if were in a shop in off the street, so maybe some people can actually finish their work in a few hours per day, you know?
Esther
Yeah. And I think a lot of people might not even go back to their physical offices after this is all over because they'll have figured that, yeah, I can do so much more from home, whether it's in your pajamas or fully dressed, but they might find that they can actually get more done and be more productive and save money by not paying the rent and not buying the coffees, lattes and everything in the boat, so, I mean, it might be a win, that's obviously if they have good Internet.
Melanie
Well, if they've got good Internet, I mean, I've save money on parking, on snacks and meals out and travel, obviously, because I'm not traveling anywhere now. So I generally think this trend of working from home, people will be forced to get used to it and they will adapt, and people you know, there'll be more and more people buying stuff to go out into their garden. Yeah, more sheds.
Esther
Absolutely, more sheds, I highly recommend it, but as well, I would also like to say to those bosses that are going through this for the first time that are working with remote teams and stuff, don't stress it, there are plenty of platforms out there that can help with the productivity and plenty of things that we've talked about in other episodes of things that we use all the time, we're not affiliated with any we don't promote, we're not getting paid by them, we pay them anything, should be getting paid for it, really. But find what works for you, don't stress the little things and just roll with it, it's all we can do right now.
Melanie
Yeah, I essentially we're all struggling, but it is a way of life that we've had to adapt and there is still a way to market safely and effectively from home. So please don't give up.
Esther
Absolutely. Thanks so much for joining us this week. We'll be back next week for more Monday morning marketing
Melanie
Bye for now.