Working From Home
O'Summertime 2020
I bet you feel it too - Zoom fatigue and a modest sense of disassociation. The novelty of video gatherings has worn off and the fun of no commute has turned to extra hours staring listlessly at your computer screen. Never fear, there are solutions to this feeling!
We have had Jeddy Ngarah and Chris Parkinson, our virtual summer interns, do a review of techniques and ideas for keeping this WFH environment fresh. Take a look at their blog and let us know what your ideas are for making this time more productive and engaging. Any of your ideas are welcome to MCasady@VestigoVentures.com.
We are finding the following techniques have worked for us. They are:
- Force yourself to make personal time to break away from work and refresh perspectives.
- Stay connected as a team with regular, short video group meetings.
- Meet people where they are, not physically but psychologically as you never know how others are dealing with this situation.
- Take staycations to truly disconnect. While working takes the mind off the crisis and produces tangible results, you need downtime to reconnect with family, read a book (see our last month’s issue for suggestions) and recharge. Yes, this means that your machine stays off.
Finally, the most important way to be in charge of your destiny and impactful is to give back where you can. We all have seen the issues of food insecurity and financial issues that are heartbreaking. Any amount you can give makes a difference and gives you a tangible way to help our community. We are all in this together and those of us who have been fortunate to have secure jobs need to help those who do not have that in their lives.
We are both optimists and see this time as a necessary reset of priorities and ideas. We are both experienced enough to have seen bad times lead to good ones. We believe this is a significant moment of reflection that all of us need to understand what is truly important - each other.
—Mark & Dave
Envisions Interview
Working From Home
w/ Pat Larsen, CEO and Co-Founder at ZenLedger
WFH Best Practices
Now that working from home has taken the world by storm, everyone seems to be scrambling to figure out the best way to balance productivity and creativity with physical and mental health, all while quarantining. As companies and as individuals, it becomes a puzzle to decide which aspects of the office setting we want to emulate in our homes and which aspects we feel comfortable abandoning. With no universal game plan, but rather only unique insights and preferences, there are certain ideas on which everyone agrees and others where there are real differences of opinion. You can go deeper on this topic by clicking the highlighted area to read more.
As with any new normal, creating this productive environment comes down to getting used to a new routine. For some that means the old routine but now at home. They still want that 9 to 5 day, in the hopes that the old normal helps them adjust to the new one. While others, especially if they are caring for kids or parents or pets, might not be able to manage a traditional work day. Working from home allows unorthodox hours to be a viable solution. The bottom line is understanding that while colleagues might no longer be on the same schedule as each other, they are still working towards the same goal.
Even with a routine, working from home very clearly blurs the line of work and relaxation. As a result, establishing a boundary between the two becomes critical to productivity. Whether it be taking a shower and getting dressed up in the morning as usual, or designating a work room, or removing readily available distractions, or all of the above, each individual must find a way to separate work and play during a time when the two are living in the same house. This not only allows you to work when it’s time to work, but stop when you need to do so.
While productivity is the goal, in trying to prove it, people tend to overwork. It is vital; however, to take little healthy breaks from laptops and the stream of notifications. As they say, the brain is like any other muscle, it needs to rest. Going for a walk, stretching out, getting some exercise, and even a power nap are some of the recommended activities that one can do to relax the brain.
Loneliness and disconnection are common issues with WFH setup. Extroverts might be the most affected. Staying connected is a great way to combat loneliness. Applications like Slack provide opportunities to socialize, colleagues can talk on chat channels about similar interests, and even after Covid-19 plans and meetups. These online communications keep hope up, build positivity and maintain the feeling of camaraderie between co-workers. We all hope, and wish for a “normal” again.
Above all else, the best thing one can do is to figure what works for them. Supportive colleagues, motivation from friends in the same boat, a little routine change, or constant check ins with the boss, whatever works for you, do it!
—Jeddy & Chris
Summer internship at Vestigo Ventures
The summer of 2020 has been the most exciting and challenging by far. This season has always been associated with an opportunity to rest and recharge, but the tension and unease of this year have made that respite a bit harder to find. But that being said, it does not come without silver linings. For when else would the opportunity arise for Jeddy, stationed in Canton, NY, and Chris, holed up on Cape Cod, MA, to be able to collaborate and find a place at a VC firm out of Cambridge, MA? Earlier this year, as universities hastily pushed the work out of the classroom, we made the transition to remote learning and had some experience with normalizing our routines. But it still surprises us how comfortable we are talking to and working with people that we’ve never met in person.
With everyone at home, the need for constant communication cannot be understated. We tend to take the casual interactions in an office or a classroom setting for granted, being able to ask a quick question or make a clarification or even just make small talk. That’s significantly harder when no two people are in the same building, but still absolutely necessary for the cohesion of a team. Enter Zoom, Slack, CloseIO, GitHub, Outlook, and however many others - nothing short of an armada of digital communication platforms are now being used for those daily interactions.
On a normal day (pre-Covid), in addition to doing their jobs, interns would get a chance to have their own adventures with workshops, events, networking opportunities, etc. This summer, however, things are pretty different. Working from home has eliminated the in-office aspects of the internship program. Our desks are our dining tables, and our pets are our co-workers. Nevertheless, we find time to communicate with each other. Our supervisor, Frazer, can keep tabs on our projects via Slack, and we also have standup meetings three times a week. Morning Zoom check-ins have been useful too. The Vestigo Ventures team has been a wonderful resource and mentor. So even though we don’t get the same everyday facetime with colleagues as we would under normal circumstances, we have supplemented that with Zoom meetings.
Working from home has its own fair share of silver linings. Our commutes have been cut to the time it takes us to boot up our computers; we save money and time. Also, no road rage. We get to make our food, and coffee, not to say that office coffee isn’t good (I have never had it). We can make our workstations as comfortable as we would like them to be, and never worry about getting home late.
In many aspects, balancing the difficult with the convenient, this year has been nothing that anyone could have planned for. Yet, its unpredictability has required us to be ready to change on the fly, demonstrating the versatility that is so often needed in the world beyond school. And that unique experience is precisely why we came. We look forward to what the rest of the summer will bring.
— Jeddy & Chris
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Interesting Reads
Danny Nelson
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