First days working remote!

I know no one is reading this blog, so I can pretty much say whatever I want.

My whole company went "Work From Home" (WFH) last Friday.  Management is panicking about the effect on productivity.  Employees were complicit in leaving the premises immediately; probably due to the hype the news media is drumming up.  Not downplaying the crisis here, but the metrics so far don't justify the hysteria.

So I'm 4 days into working remote.  Here's the net net.

• I'm at a near perfect "Inbox Zero" with only flagged messages that I need to follow up on.
• I've faithfully attended and contributed to every meeting I've been scheduled into.
• Caught up 100% on all my 'to do' tasks and forward planning.
• Using holes in my calendar to schedule 1:1 meetings with my team.
• I'm rather perplexed that others are canceling meetings due to "conflicts" and "declines" - my hypothesis is that folks are adjusting to the distractions of working remote (like young children or competing for toilet paper).

On a personal level.

• We've been eating like the upper echelons of the bourgeois - all meals have been hand prepared with no undue urgency.
• I have slept really well because there is less urgency to get up and enter the traffic window at the "right" time.
• I've traded my 3 hour commute to do things like super clean my home office, organize small bundles of misfit items, make a proper breakfast, I rode my bike with my daughter to the local hilltop ... and I've been able to work a little bit more without the added stress of sitting in a car in traffic 3 hours a day.
• Important point here, I am not trading commute hours to "work harder" but rather trading them to "balance life better" and it has been rather enjoyable.

So far these have been my keys to success.

• Established a working agreement with the family, who are also voluntarily quarantined due to the school system going remote.  Four days in, it's going great.
• Amazing job by the local private Catholic and District school systems in establishing a remote framework that the students have been transitioning into.
• Structuring my calendar and being prepared for meetings like never before.
• Ensuring a quiet, internet-connected, clean working area free from interruptions.

It can't all be rosy though, here are some risks I see.

• No spontaneous interactions - everything is programmed - there's something to be said about a hallway rendezvous that moves the ball down the field an inch.  Those inches add up.
• Large meetings will be tough - I mean they are anyway and most large meetings are a waste of time - but now they will be a supernova waste of time with most people tuning out.
• Confrontation will be virtually nil.  We need confrontation to make decisions faster and get people working.  "Collaboration" mediums disincentivize the kind of confrontation that contributes to tangible productivity.
• There's a note in here about forward planning, but I can't put my finger on it just yet.  I prefer to be in front of people when I get their commitment, but that might just be me.  I will have to adjust here.

Let's see what the next few days and weeks give us!

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