Working from (everywhere but) home
Welcome to Adnaan's world of remote work.
They say scarcity drives value, so I decided to fuck off for a little bit.
And honestly, it has. Personal value, professional value and one other third thing probably, because rules of threes.
This is a story about remote work, one that started out as hiatus to Australia for a couple of months, but ended up sending me to the other side of the world on an opposite timezone to 95% of my colleagues for an indefinite amount of time. The thrill.
I’ve always been one to roll my eyes at anyone suggesting I should ‘get out there and see the world’. To me the thought of leaving your context and inserting yourself into a different one seemed so extra, so self indulgent and frankly so outright embarrassing that for the last couple of years even, I couldn’t imagine myself out of Tāmaki Makaurau, ever - and then we were all sent to our rooms.
Post-lockdown room-sitting had me feeling like I was slowly calcifying. Every day was a tiring re-run of a sitcom — one you realise is problematic but continue to watch anyway like Friends or Sex and the City — and so after voluntarily staying in my room for an hour too long at the tail end of 2021, I decided to sell out and go to Melbourne for a couple of months. Six months later, I’m in Köln trying to find something for dinner that’s not a fried potato or bratwurst. Life is a movie, it’s just not the documentary Ratatouille. Not till I head to France tomorrow anyway.
This is a story about remote work, one that started out as hiatus to Australia for a couple of months, but ended up sending me to the other side of the world on an opposite timezone to 95% of my colleagues for an indefinite amount of time. The thrill.
It seems like everyone these days is writing a think piece about the benefits of remote work and why it’s right for everyone. I definitely can’t speak for everyone, for the benefits you might experience, or the drawbacks you might expect. But what I can say with certainty is that there are definite changes, and whether or not they work depends entirely on you, and more importantly the systems you have in place to support yourself - for me they’re made with Love and Money.
Charl invited me Norway to teach Europe a thing or two about memes, showcasing our Memetic Branding Framework™. That was dope. What I didn’t initially realise was that an invitation was also the permission I needed to go away - to not think so deeply about it. To make it simple. To get out of my own way.
I have to fly 28 hours to the other side of the world.
I have to do it for Love and Money.
So I did, and some stuff happened.
Highlights include:
Moved city every two weeks-ish
Worked 2 hour days
Worked 20 hour days
Spent days with people IRL
Spent days with people URL
Spent days with me
Taken calls at 2 AM (camera on)
Taken calls at 2 PM (camera off)
Workshopped from a tiny hotel room
Presented work from a foodcourt
Written scripts on a train
Drawn sitemaps in The World’s Shittiest Will Ferrell Museum
Recorded videos in an apartment that was perfectly too big/nice
Woken in the night to check Slack every other hour
Stood clients up because I needed another hour of sleep
Since my first project here our team has gone from 6 to 26, from a strict 6 hour schedule to a goal based one. Marathons of meetings have been replaced by windows of opportunity. We continue to change so we can maximise room for the magic in each other, which is strange given up until 8 months ago I’d only met 3 people I work with everyday in real life. It was nice, but fleeting given I’m now on the opposite timezone to most of them.
Personal benefits, art, food, pals, train rides, food poisoning and general (comparative) small to big town energy aside; working in this way has been really liberating. There are times where I’ve burned the candle down to wick, and others where my cup has been so full that I’ve choked on delight.
Working remotely – this remotely – is challenging. It’s fun. Fulfilling too. It can make business sense. But making it work for both yourself and your organisation requires both parties to fully recognise that it’s a bumpy ride. People always have shit going on, especially if you’re trading in your regular hours for a gnarly view or new favourite meal. There’s definitely a cost of admin and times where overlap becomes overload, so over communication is key.
Work doesn’t need to be treated seperate to life, in fact, the two things can be symbiotic. They can be integrated. If you invite your work and collaborators in, you have the opportunity to co-design a system (one that of course is always in beta), that not only works, but can be transformative. First hand, it can change someone’s life. It can also transform a business.
See, I never wanted to leave for the fuck of it. Although dramatic, it wasn’t a good enough reason. Instead, I always wanted to be pulled away for a better reason - for Love and Money.
It’s funny how life pranks you with puns.
Hot Tips
To make this system work, we’ve had some organisational OS updates and had to take some personal responsibility for doing our jobs.
Each hemisphere has its own Stand Up so there’s someone to talk to every day and hold accountability to
Everyone posts their Stand Up (goals, needs and projects) into Slack at the start of their day, and communicates a Packdown (daily retrospective and review) once they’re done
Make the most of the brief moments you are online with other colleagues
Don’t wait to the system to make room for you, make room for it and each other (I have a twice daily window to handover and review work, it’s always early or late for someone)
Do favours
Cash in on said favours
Make hay while the sun shines
Work really fucking hard
Live your life on the sleepy days
Be a time traveller, don’t be out of time
Crack jokes when they come to mind
Voice memos are your friend
With all of these changes to how we work, we know that all of this is entirely possible. Whether it’s right or not is for you to decide, to test. It’s one thing to be invited to the party, it’s another to be asked to dance.
Give each other the opportunity to move, and to move around. It could change everything. For better or for worse, fuck off for a little bit. Let us know how you go.
Like this stuff? Want others to know you have good taste? Go on…
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