Sticky Learning Lunches #1: How to Be More Productive Whilst Working From Home

Find out how to manage yourself better with 'M' - The first of 7 best practices from the M.I.N.D.S.E.T model for working remotely and how to be more productive whilst working from home.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Amazing. So we're just, we're a couple of minutes early, we're just seeing who's arriving. Let's make sure we're setting ourselves up for success. Give this a few minutes just while other people are starting to come in. This is the first day back from the Easter weekend. I definitely feel like it's the first day back at school. Good to see you guys coming in. Like, as I've said before, let's make sure we've got drinks available. Let's make sure we've got clean notepads and pens before we dive into this.

Nathan Simmonds:

Gonna make sure I've got some pens in the pockets. Colin, great to see you again. Andy. Thanks for being here. Few of the last people coming in. 30 more seconds. I'm watching the clock. 30 more seconds and then we're gonna dive into this and cover some key things around your workspace, especially when you're working from home. There's gonna be some key points here that you may not be thinking about.

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Nathan Simmonds:

There's gonna be some things that you know you might be thinking about and we're gonna try and tweak those and, and make them a little bit more, um, a little bit more clear for you and take 'em off another level to really support you, that you are getting the best out, the spaces that you are working in, right? I said drinks, pens, and papers. We will do questions through this. First of all, first question, while we're waiting for any last couple of people to join in, did everyone have a good Easter?

Nathan Simmonds:

Yes. We've got some yeses coming in. My question box is not working very well. Bear with me. Real thanks. Yeah, no, thanks for asking. So I appreciate it. I had a glorious one. The weather here was phenomenal. We're down in Hastings and it was beautiful for some reason. I have, I can only see one question. It's doing weird things on my question box. So I may have some challenges with that later, but we'll work that out later.

Nathan Simmonds:

Yeah, so I spent the, uh, a couple of days on the vegetable patch, growing vegetables and, and tidying things up, right? We're all here. I think this is good to go. We're gonna go in, gonna share some ideas. Welcome all. This is the Sticky Learning Lunches from Nathan Simmons here at MBM Making Business Matter. We are the home, well we are the leadership, uh, and soft skills providers to the UK grocery and manufacturing industry.

Nathan Simmonds:

And right now, while we're in this lockdown situation and we're working from home in these changing dynamics in this brave new world we're in, we're gonna be sharing 20 minutes of learning with you every single workday, uh, for as long as you guys need it. And sharing some core concepts and leadership skills that are gonna help you to be the best possible version of yourself while you can be while you are working in these new spaces.

Nathan Simmonds:

Bear with me just trying to find, fix some final elements of my question boxes. 'cause it is not playing the game. Right guys, let's do this. I'm gonna come off the screen share. So you've just got, uh, the background of me

Nathan Simmonds:

And dive into this. Come on, play the game, right? We're good. We're live, we're in. So today what we're gonna do is we're gonna continue to focus on the mindset model. Last week we already picked up on, um, managing some of our routines and our, and certain elements of our working from home. We also talked about isolation. The, the symptoms of cabin fever. We talked about work wear, how to make sure you are dressing for where you are mentally and physically. And also talks about deliverables.

Nathan Simmonds:

Today what we're gonna be doing is we're gonna be focusing in now on our space and about how you can make sure that you are getting the most out of where you are working in the nicest possible way. We didn't choose to work from home. We're being forced into this space. What it's about is maximizing what it is you are doing, where you are working, and how that's working for you. For the first part, number one, he says

Nathan Simmonds:

The spelling might be out. I think, uh, association, we'll work that out later. The law of association. What does this mean? This means that when you do something and you build a habit over a course of time in a certain environment, you'll start to associate that environment with that behavior.

Nathan Simmonds:

Often when people are being taught meditation, they're taught not to meditate while lying down in bed. Why? Open question to you guys. What's the one thing we do most of the time in our beds? And I say most of the time to make sure we keep the answers clean in the chat boxes. What do we do? I'm having a terrible time technically with this

Nathan Simmonds:

Sleep. Exactly this. If you start to relax and you start to meditate and bring your breathing down, actually when you are laying, laying in bed and starting to do this, the natural reaction and response is to fall asleep. Okay? This is a great meditation. However, you're not reaping the full benefits of uh, focusing your attention on that. So when we're doing our work, we have to create a space that we can associate with our work. Now, depending on the environment you are living in, that the space you've got available will depend on how you create that space. Okay?

Nathan Simmonds:

So one of the first things I'm gonna recommend is an absolute categoric. Do and do not is don't. If you have the option, make that workspace in your bedroom. Okay? Something I learned from homeschooling and working with children is very often as parents, and I know myself and I'd love to hear from you guys, when we got home from school with our homework, we were told to go to our room to do our homework. So we were out of the way.

Nathan Simmonds:

What happened though is we started to associate that place where we're meant to be resting with doing the work. So either the work didn't get done because we were relaxing or we weren't relaxing 'cause we were too busy focusing on the work. We didn't create the divide for ourselves.

Nathan Simmonds:

This is the same for your work as well. Working from home. Do not do that work in the bedroom. If you have a choice, go and create an individual space, whether it's in the corner of your lounge or the corner of the kitchen or the edge of the dining room, whatever it is, separate the spaces out. So it might be that if you do have a dining room area that maybe that becomes the home office just for a little while, while you're doing this and the kitchen becomes the eating space. Recommend there.

Nathan Simmonds:

Separate your dynamics out so you can get focused on your thinking. The other side of things, what's gonna happen into your relation or it's your own health. First of all, if you're going into those spaces and you're always thinking about work where you would be relaxing, think about what's gonna happen when you try and go to sleep.

Nathan Simmonds:

If you are working in in your bedroom, it's gonna have a really disruptive effect on you. It's called the law of association. Now what are the things that we can do then to support this? The next elements over here, one separate. Separate the space. Absolutely key. Two, set up a desk if you have space to do this. As I said, if it's the corner of the kitchen, if it's the corner of a dining room, create a little pocket of workspace for yourself, okay?

Nathan Simmonds:

Make sure you, and then get your own setup there. So remember the things that you had on your desk while you were working in your office and maybe you have a cacti, maybe you have a plant, maybe you have some of your stationary. Create that little section of where you work in. So when you go there, you can do the thing you need to do.

Nathan Simmonds:

Get your own kit, get your own stationary available. Make sure it's accessible to you. I'm lucky because I have an office here. I have desks, I have drawers, I have all my own equipment, I have everything I need so I can grab it when I need to. I'm not distracted, I'm not worrying about it.

Nathan Simmonds:

I'm not trying to order it. It's there. It's available for when I need it. Do not disturb. This is vital. I have a 7-year-old who here has got children who here have got their children getting involved in their work. Gimme a yes, yes or no in the box. They see who here has got children available.

Nathan Simmonds:

What I do know is from myself, the wife is the biggest issue. Kids too busy on. Yes. Why? Because there's a novelty to being here and being available. There's a novelty to being con you know, a hundred percent available in proximity to your children rather than at work or working away or whatever it is we're doing as a result of this. It's very easy for those children or our partners. They have a question. Um, something else will come out or they just want a hug.

Nathan Simmonds:

You know, I might be sitting here doing work, my 7-year-old daughter and we, you know, we have great relationship and she'll just come up 'cause she wants a hug. She just wants to say hello 'cause she knows I'm here and she's got the opportunity to do it 'cause I'm not working away from home. At the same time though, I'm delivering content right now, so I have to have some sort of, um, a boundary, almost an expectation.

Nathan Simmonds:

When the door is shut, do not disturb. It means I'm working. I also create spaces where they're clearly aware of when I'm doing live broadcast or when I'm doing interviews with, with, with some of our connections, our network so that in the nicest pop possible way,