Working from home is the new cubicle farm. Businesses will embrace it for the same reasons they embraced cubicles. It looks like a way to foster better culture but is really about saving money. Working from home is a lot cheaper than corporate real estate and office fit outs. But there is a way to avoid the mistakes of the past.
Today is World Productivity Day – a time to think about how to get the best out of your work day. After a few years and thousands of posts for Lifehacker Australia as well many other publications there are a bunch of things I’ve learned that work for me.
Despite our constant denials, Kathryn and I were middle-aged when we started Media-Wize. But, it turns out, the research says founders with life experience are more likely to be successful than millennials.
Through my work at Media-Wize I talk with and work with a huge number of entrepreneurs. Some have seen success while others struggle to get traction. What’s the difference?
Experience.
Like many people, I suffer from email overload. Some days, even after spending some time unsubscribing from email lists and marketing messages, I still get in excess of 150 messages per day. As a journalist, a great many of these are press releases and story pitches. The volume is so great I simply can’t write all the stories – even if there great ideas and leads. But how can I respectfully respond to all these? Should I even try?
Like many people, I suffer from email overload. Some days, even after spending some time unsubscribing from email lists and marketing messages, I still get in excess of 150 messages per day. As a journalist, a great many of these are press releases and story pitches. The volume is so great I simply can’t write all the stories – even if there great ideas and leads. But how can I respectfully respond to all these? Should I even try?
Like many people, I suffer from email overload. Some days, even after spending some time unsubscribing from email lists and marketing messages, I still get in excess of 150 messages per day. As a journalist, a great many of these are press releases and story pitches. The volume is so great I simply can’t write all the stories – even if there great ideas and leads. But how can I respectfully respond to all these? Should I even try?
The headline screams “Huge cost of Aussies working from home”. The opening paragraph tells us “Australians will be urged to get back to work at the office”. The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped society so quickly that many of us are still adjusting. And while there’s been a huge focus on the health issues (and rightly so) and now a shift towards economic recovery, it seems to be forgotten that the last couple of months have been extremely jarring. Just as we are getting used to life in isolation, we’re being asked to change again.
If the last few weeks have taught business anything it’s that disruption, that overused term that’s been flung about the business world for the last few years, can cone from anywhere. And it’s the most unexpected things – like a global pandemic – that can destroy even the most detailed and well-intentioned plans. I was recently interviewed for Computer Daily about the tech my media training company, Media-Wize, uses to keep working during the CoVID-19 lockdown.
Over the years, I’ve received a lot of pitches from PR agencies that were clearly created by people that had either never actually communicated with a journalist or were written by someone who thought their message was more important than the actual story. So what makes a great PR brief?
If the CoVID-19 pandemic has shown, it’s that we all need to take some time and invest in our mental health.
I’ve spent over a decade working from home. I stopped calling it ‘working from home’ a long time ago. For me, it’s just work. But for millions of workers, this is the first time they’ve had to commit to spending weeks on end in their home office. And many CFOs and other senior company leasers are seeing this moment of ‘reset’ as an opportunity to slash rental costs. But this period isn’t the time to make those decisions.