The Career Consigliere

Episode 34: A Healthy Relationship with Remote Work

• America's White Collar Wise Guy • Episode 34

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Starting around the early 2000s, remote work grew steadily in popularity.  Then, for obvious reasons, it went off the charts in 2020.  Odds are it's not going anywhere, and that's good news for many in the corporate world.  But, all blessings can become curses if they're not properly managed.

Today, you'll learn a bunch of different ways to maintain a healthy relationship with remote work.  You'll get some firsthand insight on setting up your physical workspace, how to structure the workday, and how to control the environment around you to keep yourself healthy and productive.  Enjoy!

Reference:
Shorter Office Leases: Pandemic's Impact on NYC Tenants

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Whaddaya hear, whaddya say?  Welcome to episode 34 of the Career Consigliere podcast: your no frills, no BS forum for navigating the corporate job scene.  We’re back with you once again for what we hope to be a highly informative and engaging half an hour, or so!  Today’s episode will dive a bit further into a hot topic that came up in the last few episode:  remote work.  Remote work, or some version of it, is here to stay, and will only become more and more prevalent as time goes on.  Unfortunately, when you have the ability to work from wherever you’re at, it can easily start interfering with other aspects of your life.  As with anything else, planning, structure, and discipline will be your best friends in maintaining a healthy relationship with remote work, so today we’re going to cover a bunch of different ways you can do that to keep your job, and your life, in healthy harmony with one another.  Lots to learn today, so podcast land:  let’s get on it!

To set the stage for what I want to cover in this episode, let’s first revisit some statistics that were covered back in Episode 32.  If you heard that one, you might remember a report from the US Career Institute that 32.8% of employers do not offer any remote work capabilities.  While that might seem surprising, it means that 67.2% DO, so you still have a 2/3 majority on that.  All the details are there for you, so if you haven’t yet, go back and check out episode 32 to get all the grotesque details on the numbers behind remote work.  

Why do I bring this up again?  For one, as you just saw, a significant majority of corporations do offer remote work capabilities.  Not always completely remote, in fact it’s usually a hybrid set-up, but roughly 2 out of every 3 people in the corporate world will have at least some remote capabilities.  And I predict that number to increase even more with time, and here’s why.  I found an article from Metro Manhattan that echoes a suspicion that I’ve had for quite some time around commercial real estate.  In the article, it explains that it’s very common for large corporations to sign leases of 10, 15, or even 20 years.  You can get all the details in the article, so I’ll link that in the episode description for you.  The article is very New York focused, but I’m pretty sure you can extrapolate this to most other big cities or major metro areas where the same general trends play out.  

But there’s one specific example in the article that I want to focus on:  I won’t mention the name, but back in 2014, a large, very well-known corporation signed a 25-year lease granting them occupancy of 21 floors in the One World Trade center tower in lower Manhattan.  This example is very relevant to the point I want to make:  at the exact same time, I myself was working only a few blocks from there.  And that was right when remote/hybrid work was really just starting to catch on and become common.  More and more companies were trying it out, but it wasn’t widespread or “trusted” enough yet to become a permanent fixture.  So corporations like the one referenced in this article were still making significant investments in office space.  I don’t know what they paid, but I can promise you that 21 floors in one of the most high-profile office buildings in the world can’t possibly be cheap, and they’re on the hook until 2039.

So fast-forward a few years, and we all know what happened in 2020:  in my opinion, that whole situation probably advanced remote work 10-15 years ahead of its time.  But think about this:  if mega companies like this one still have huge lease obligations, or maybe even own their own buildings, then there are many, many others of all shapes and sizes in similar situations.  Eventually those leases will end, or the properties will be sold, but technological and societal trends towards remote/hybrid work will continue advancing in all this time.  So while companies are still paying to maintain office space, you can bet dollars to donuts they’re going to require people to be there at least some of the time to justify the crazy expenses they’re paying to maintain that space.  I would venture a guess that the 32.8% of companies that don’t offer remote work probably have MASSIVE real estate obligations they’re tied to.  

But as these obligations expire or get turned over, my prediction is that you’ll see a lot of these companies downsize to much, much smaller real estate holdings, especially for office-based workers.  They’ll continue needing production, warehouse, and distribution space, but a lot of these companies will seize the opportunity to reduce costs by favoring remote work options more and more.  Even for the big companies, I think we’ll see much smaller office portfolios that will be used mostly for client meetings, executive presence, more high-profile situations like that.  So, for the average employee, you can sum all this up by saying that remote work is here to stay, and will only get more and more prevalent.  And due to that, it’s very important to make sure that you’re relationship with remote work is a healthy one, so let’s get into what that looks like.

Space and set-up

It all starts with the right kind of space and setup to work from.  When you work in the office, they provide all this stuff for you, but you don’t really think about it when you’re working remotely until it’s too late.  Take it from a guy with lower back issues that the doctors blame on years of bad office ergonomics:  I can’t stress enough the importance of a good desk/chair setup.  You’ll want a chair with a good lumbar support that takes pressure off your spine.  Consider this a PSA:  there was one day where I went to stand up from my desk, and I couldn’t.  And it took several months of chiropractor visits and physical therapy before I could even walk correctly again:  all from sitting on a bad chair.  You might also want to get one of those motorized sit-to-stand desks that you can adjust the height on and switch back and forth from sitting to standing.  Even if you have the best chair in the world, sitting for 7,8,9,10 hours a day just isn’t good for you:  humans were made to be active, and eventually your lower back, hips, neck/shoulders are going to rebel against you if you’re in one position for too long, so a mix of sitting and standing is your best bet.  You can get a decent sit/stand desk online for under $200, and you’ll feel much better as a result.    

When it comes to equipment, I’m a big fan of the dual monitor display.  My work was always a ton of spreadsheets, web portals, a whole bunch of things open at the same time, so I was always a big fan of having my email/communication apps on one screen, and the actual work on the other.  Your call however you want to rig it up, but you might find it helpful to build yourself a similar set-up at home that you’ll find in the office.  With this, you might also want to get an external USB keyboard/mouse setup:  I always found it way more comfortable than trying to do everything on the actual laptop itself.  Just make sure you get wrist rests for both:  otherwise, your wrists will take a beating and you’ll most likely wind up with an orthopedic issue from it.   Get yourself some good sound equipment too:  I’m a fan of those USB speakers that also double as a microphone so that you’re not constantly messing with your audio/voice settings all day long.  

Basically, set yourself up with a dedicated, comfortable space to work from that’s got the right kind of ergonomic setup.  There are people that drag their computer all over the house with them, but I don’t recommend it.  Go with one space that’s dedicated to work:  not only will it benefit you physically, but there’s also a psychological element to it.  If you associate one particular space with work, you’re likely to be more productive in that space.  Remember, this is your home:  you want it to be a place of peace and serenity, so I recommend letting your job infiltrate as little of your personal real estate as possible.  Do your work in one spot, and then live, relax, sleep, and exist in all the others. (17:48)

One other point on the space and set-up:  a good internet connection is CRITICAL.  Don’t try to cheap out on this:  if you’re doing a lot of remote work, go with the highest possible speed that your internet service provider offers.  You’re going to be doing lots of video calls, sending huge files around, downloading/uploading stuff, and your life will be MISERABLE if you have sub-par internet.  It also sends a bad message to your colleagues if your voice is constantly cutting out on calls and your video is constantly freezing up.  Even though you’re working remotely, the company is expecting you to be present and fully capable just as if you were there, so I PROMISE: the extra $40-50 a month is well worth it.  This is especially true if you have other people living in the house with you working, doing schoolwork, streaming, or anything else that sucks internet bandwidth.  The more robust your connection, the better it’ll be for you and anyone else you’re sharing it with.

Structure your day

So once you have the physical environment all figured out, next comes how you spend the actual day.  It might seem obvious:  duh, I’m spending the day working, right?  But think about how it would go if you were working in an office.  You’d work for a little bit, get up to use the bathroom.  Then maybe after an hour you get up for coffee, then an hour later it’s lunchtime.  And all during this you’re running into people, getting into conversations, possible impromptu meetings, however the social dynamic plays out.  But when you’re working remotely, it’s usually just you, and whoever you might live with:  you lose the whole physical element of your day and all the chance things that happen as a result. If you added up all the time you spent AWAY from your desk during a given day at the office, the total would probably surprise you.  

But when you’re working remotely, all that goes away.  And even if you love your job, and you’re highly engaged in your work, you’re still human, and humans were not meant to be in one place all day:  you’ll wind up going crazy.  So one thing I always did to break the day up and keep the scenery fresh, was to avoid working for more than 2-3 hours at a time.  8am tends to be the typical start time for most corporate gigs, so here’s how a day could look following the Consigliere formula.  Wake up at 7:30, fire up the hardware, get your coffee ready, whatever other morning ritual you go through, then start actually working at 8.  Hammer away for two hours, then take a 30-minute break at 10 for breakfast.  You’re back working again by 10:30, and work until 1.  Then you break for lunch, maybe go run a quick errand, go for a walk if it’s nice out, or watch a little TV, and get back at it at 2.  Then you work the rest of the day, and finish up at 5.  

Let’s point out a few things here.  For one, it won’t always work exactly like this. Even though you’re working remotely, you’ll still have meetings at all different times, the phone will still ring, you’ll still have to pickup the kids from the bus, and you won’t be able to adhere to the letter of this.  But use it as a general guideline:  however you play it, the main message here is to break the day up into “segments”.  From a psychological standpoint, isn’t it easier to look at an 8-hour day in three smaller chunks, than in one massive thing?  That always helped me, and I highly recommend it.  You’ll look forward to these breaks throughout the day, and 30-45 minutes, I always found, is just enough to calm you down from the intensity of the job and “reset” a little bit before you go back at it.  

And, the most important point here:  when 5pm hits, shut the computer down completely.  By this point, you’ve been awake and at it for 9 ½ hours, and that’s more than enough.  I’ll give you a little bit of leeway if you had something like a doctor’s appointment that pulled you away from your desk for a significant portion of the day, or if it was a day of wall-to-wall meetings or some other outlying factor that prevented you from getting a normal amount of work done.  In a case like that, I’ll give you an extra hour, until 6pm, to clean up your emails and get things in a place where you can pick back up tomorrow.  But DO NOT sit there and work into the night.  

Even if you’re single, live alone, and have nobody else there that needs you, it’s just not a healthy habit to get into.  You need your personal time to relax and do all the other things you do in your life (and if you DON’T do anything else, then find some stuff!)  Not only that, but remember from previous episodes that, chances are, you work with a bunch of maniacs that DO stay online to all hours of the night.  You don’t want to be one of them, and staying online with them will give the impression that you’re okay with giving the company your evenings as well.  It’s all about boundaries:  when the end of the day comes, shut it down, and pick it up again tomorrow.  It’s funny how the incredibly stressful thing bothering you at 4:41 pm always seems a lot more benign come 6:23 after you’ve been away from it for a while.   Very, very important to unplug:  it’ll all be there waiting for you tomorrow, I promise.

Control the Environment

All this talk about structure leads me nicely into the final point I want to bring up about virtual work, which is keeping control of the environment around you.  Most people who work remotely do so from their house, and IN their house is the entire rest of their lives.  There are TONS of things that could potentially distract you from the task at hand:  housework, laundry/dishes, clutter, deliveries, or any of the other 87,000 things that you’re bound to come across in a given day at home.  But your organization is expecting the work to be done at the same level of quality that it would be if you were in the office.  So how do you keep the distractions out and stay on-task?

For one, keep a clean house.  There have been countless studies that show people feel better, and just function better overall, when they’re in a clean, organized environment.  Next, minimize the unnecessary noise.  Turn the TV off – no streaming movies in the background.  Wanna keep some music on?  Listen to a podcast like this one?  Go for it:  just don’t do anything that’s going to require a crazy amount of focus or hijack more of your sensory capabilities than you can afford to lose while you’re working.  I’m personally a big fan of those “focus music” videos that you can get on YouTube.  In fact, that’s usually what I throw on in the background when I’m writing these episodes for you:  it’s easy listening type stuff that calms you down, drowns out any annoying background noises, and helps you focus.   Also, make sure that whoever else you might share your living space with respects the fact that you’re working.  Ideally, you’ll be in a dedicated office space with the door closed and nobody will bother you, but that’s not always the case:  anyone that you live with might ALSO be working, or doing things that might distract you.  So, you’ll want to be proactive on this and make sure that you work a schedule out with whoever that is:  spouse, kids, roommates, your mother-in-law who comes to visit for a weekend and winds up staying a month, whoever – just make sure that you set expectations and some ground rules to respect the peace while you’re trying to work.   

Now, another piece of environmental advice that I’m going to give you, and this is one I’m willing to bet you didn’t see coming.  If you’re working from home, what ELSE do you have access to that you wouldn’t while you’re in an office?  Your refrigerator, your pantry, and wherever else in your house that you stash the goods.  Go look at health statistics from the pandemic lockdown: I won’t cite any here, but I can promise you:  there is a TON of data to support the phenomenon that when people are home more, they tend to eat and drink more, and guess what happens as a result:  their pants don’t fit anymore, their bloodwork starts coming back bad, and you know the rest.  

I’m no doctor, I’m no nutritionist, and I’m nobody that should be giving you any dietary advice.  But I do know this:  self-control and discipline is what keeps you healthy and productive in EVERY aspect of life.  So just because you’re in your house with all the comforts of the fridge at your disposal, do your best to resist the urge to start RAIDING said fridge on a whim.  Remember how I talked earlier about taking scheduled breaks during the day?  You should only be eating during those times.  And I’ll challenge you even further:  if you’re working remotely a lot and aren’t spending too much time commuting, try and find some time to focus more on meal prep.  Sunday has always been (and still is) my meal prep day, and that’s when I get everything cooked, portioned, and lined up for the week.  Eat your meals during your scheduled breaks throughout the day, and limit the snacking in the interim.  

Why is this important?  Obviously, following a disciplined diet will help keep you in better physical shape.  But, if you’re eating neat and clean throughout the day, your body will function better, and that will also make you better at your job.  Think about it:  remember those days in the office when they ordered in heavy, greasy food for lunch?  Remember trying desperately not to fall asleep in the next meeting, and feeling sluggish and lethargic the whole rest of the day, not to mention the 5 extra trips you had to make to the bathroom?  If you let the diet get out of hand while you’re working from home, this can wind up being EVERY day, and that’ll throw not only your health, but also your productivity, way out of whack.   As for what to cook and how to work all that, I will say no more.  Just make sure you get yourself on a healthy eating schedule when you’re working remotely, whatever that looks like for you.

People:  we’ve covered a lot today about managing remote work.  So let’s sum it all up and send you on your way with today’s……Consigliere curtain call.  I think it’s pretty obvious, and inevitable, that remote work is here to stay.  And one of the big reason’s why it’s not even MORE ubiquitous today, in my honest opinion, is due to a lot of pre-pandemic real estate obligations that a lot of corporations are still under.  As these expire, or as properties get sold, remote work will only become more and more common, so it’s important to have a healthy relationship with it, and there is a lot to consider with that, more than the average person probably realizes.

For one, you want good ergonomics.  Careful with your posture and how much time you spend sitting – your hips and lower back will thank you later in life.  You’ll also want good equipment:  get your home office set up as close as you possibly can to what you’d have in the company office.  Some companies even offer reimbursement for home office supplies, so check with your manager and find out what your options are.  Also, don’t underestimate the power of a good internet connection.  Make sure what you’re working with is rock solid – it’ll save you a lot of unnecessary, very avoidable headache throughout your day.

Next, structure your day.  8 hours is an ETERNITY to spend sitting in front of your computer in your house.  But, you can break up the monotony and keep yourself accountable by breaking the day into smaller chunks.  I’ve always done the “three chunk” formula, never working more than 2-3 hours at a clip.  Not only will this make the day go by faster, it’ll also motivate you to try and finish certain tasks before your next break, so if you’re an organized person it may even make you more productive.  But however you choose to approach the day, don’t’ work into the night.  You’re working from home, so there’s no commute to blame:  be efficient and effective with your time, and shut off the computer when the business day is done.  Everyone needs the time to relax and recharge, and you’ll function way better on all levels if you unplug when the time comes.

And finally, control the environment around you.  Minimize distractions, and do things that help you focus and keep you more engaged in your work.  Work out a schedule and ensure mutual respect with anyone you share your space with:  don’t let someone else’s job or day-to-day interfere with your ability to get things done.  And last, but certainly not least, watch what you eat and drink while working remotely.  Having access to the fridge and the pantry all day can be dangerous for an undisciplined person, so use the time savings you get from remote work to be more diligent about meal prep and planning when to eat throughout the day.  Not only will your doctor be proud of you, but you’ll feel way better and as a result, you’ll be more productive and effective on the job.

Sadly folks, that’s all the time we have for today.  But have no fears, and shed no tears, because I’ll be back with a new episode very soon.  As they say in the industry:  no listeners, no show, so do me a favor, and stay loyal!  If you find value in my content, please leave me a nice review, tell all your friends, and don’t forget to like, subscribe, and follow on whatever platform you use to get your podcasts.   Beyond the confines of your headphones, speakers, TV screen, or any other crazy contraption with the ability to stream audio, I also provide one-on-one career assistance, so visit my website at career-consigliere.net to learn more about me, book me for a private consult, join my email list, or explore some of the other career services I offer.  And to all of you out there in podcast land, remember this:  Who’s the boss in your career?  You, nobody else.