The ProductivityCast team decided to make a special appearance 😂 at Remote Work Productivity Conference 2020 and we recorded a live show...with a live audience. It was a lot of fun discussing remote work productivity and our reflections after our episode, The Age of Remote Work Productivity.

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In this Cast | ProductivityCast Live from Remote Work Productivity Conference 2020

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Francis Wade

Art Gelwicks

Show Notes

Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

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Raw Text Transcript | ProductivityCast Live from Remote Work Productivity Conference 2020

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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 And welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:27I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:29 And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:31Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to everybody who is both watching us live but also listening in the podcast. Today we're doing something really interesting and I think it's gonna be fun. We are actually live at remote work productivity conference 2020. And if you missed it, you can head over to remote work productivity .co and check out the video replays. But what we're going to do today is we're going to have a conversation both as the panel here but also with live audience about remote work productivity. And I'd like to move it in three parts, as I've done in actually a panel discussion this morning that we had, but as well in just any discussion, I like to talk about strategies to the technology, and then collaboration, all three sets of practices that really pull together the functions of remote work productivity. And I'm going to start off with some of the my own thoughts here in terms of whether or not I've gotten all the pieces. So I asked this of the panelists this morning, and I'm actually curious what you gentlemen have to think is, as I said, strategies, technology collaboration, Did I get it right? Is it all the pieces and or are they the right buckets? Or, you know, what are the other ones? Now note that the panelists actually agreed with me. So I will start off right now.

Art Gelwicks 1:56You know, that's not how this works.

Unknown Speaker 2:00All right, so what were the buckets again?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:05strategies, technology, collaboration.

Art Gelwicks 2:09I would add probably a fourth one. And I don't have a really good name for it. So I'm going to call it psychology. Because it's it's the mentality and the mindset that has to go along with it. So you can lay out all the strategies you want, you can have the tech, but if you're not sensitive to the emotional and dq layer of it, the rest of its going to fall apart, because you're going to have a bigger issue.

Francis Wade 2:40I would add well being as well, I think, I think the ones we're adding could be probably collected on the strategies, different kinds of strategies. And that's how I really got all encompassing.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:51And that's what I really tend to think is that you know, strategies is a pretty large encompassing broad category of all of the productivity and organizational and biological strategies that we use toward having really performance, high performance in a remote work productivity environment.

Art Gelwicks 3:08Now, are we talking about it from the standpoint of as an individual working in that environment? Or are we looking at it from the perspective of a team of people working in that environment that you're part of, or a team of people that you're responsible for? Because to me, there's three different perspectives there.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:28Yeah, I would put all of the other things that are team based under collaboration, whether that's management or, okay, pure, pure, you know, pure leadership in essence, but you know, modeling yourself and that kind of thing. Yep.

Augusto Pinaud 3:43That's, that's how I understand it, you know, the part of, of the strategies is more closely related to the personal productivity, the part of collaboration, it is more to that team environment. As I said, the problem with technology is that technology is really a support tool. It evolves way too fast to be anything else than support. And, you know, if you look at the technology you were using five years ago, okay, versus what you're using now there's, in most cases, not even a comparison. So if it is more how you really set those strategies on can adjust doses, try to choose how you can in embrace collaboration and use the technology as a support for all those.

Francis Wade 4:31Yeah, but I would, I would, I would also add almost a caveat or a warning, which is that as new technology comes in, it disrupts people's concept of support. So a lot of people who are using zoom, for example, never used it before, who didn't want to you never wanted to use it before, who are being essentially forced to use it. And they've had to go through a learning curve that they didn't anticipate ever going through. And so technology for those people who are already requiring a certain level of support is a nuisance and an imposition. And it's a new learning curve. And I've got to adapt to it. So it's not, it's not support, it's a challenge. I will add that

Art Gelwicks 5:14caveat. And I'm going to build on that. Because when you are in a non remote working environment, you have, for lack of a better term, a level playing field. Everybody has the same conference room, they have access to the same materials, the same resources if they're working in the same building that type of thing. In this type of remote working environment, we're not on the same playing field anymore. I'm in a very comfortable office that I have set up with my recording gear and multiple monitors and I'm in my happy place. Other people are sitting at the dining room table with the dog chewing on one leg and the two year old chewing on the other. So we have to be cognizant of the fact of where we have previously assumed that everybody was operating at the same level. That's nothing The case anymore. And that has to be taken into consideration as one of those best practices to to be more empathetic and sympathetic to people's situations that they are trying to accomplish the work in that they were they were previously doing next to you, in many cases,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:18I have a real difficulty with the poor internet of people who without my meeting, you know, I just have that difficulty of like, Oh, you know, I can't understand you, I can't whatever. And you're absolutely right aren't that you have to like, take a step back, and like, take a deep breath and understand that it's not their fault. It's not a moral failing of the individual that their technology is failing them. You know, it's really just a fact that it's an imposition for them to have to work from home. In many cases, as France noted, no one prepared for this. We're going to get to a point though, I think as we make our way through this, where some of these pieces are going to be expected of people that you know, it's not their fault now. And john is noting here actually in the chat that sometimes it is their fault, bad Wi Fi, bad placement, no hard line. You're absolutely right, john. And but at the same time at this, at this kind of juncture people haven't really been educated about that. And I think it behooves all of us who are productivity minded, who are who are peer leaders, and are capable of helping people understand that these things exist, that the technology is actually rather difficult. You just have to really get over the fact that it's difficult and then move toward helping people understand that you know what Wi Fi, your Wi Fi router, is what connects you to the internet, if you are going to have a meeting, you need to make sure that you are potentially plugged into it physically like I am, I'm always physically plugged into the internet when I'm having a meeting like this because I don't want to deal with internet connectivity issues with the Wi Fi going down and otherwise and I actually have a fairly strong mesh network in my in my home office in my office in general. So you know like, we have to We're gonna I think we're going to go from a place of being okay with it to a place of being not okay with it. I'm curious if, if all of you think the same about that, or what do you think will happen as people start to feel like, okay, we've been in this for a while now, even after this lockdown is over and folks come out of, of a remote work productivity environment and start going back to the office and are working preferentially from home on occas