We originally recorded this episode in July 2019 and the discussion we had couldn’t be more salient today--remote work. Remote work, working from home, digital nomadic lifestyles and more were trending upward before the COVID-19 pandemic, and now we are grappling with the realities of the shifting world of work out of necessity. In this blissfully-unapparent-of-the-future dialog, the ProductivityCast team discusses the positives and negatives of being in the age of remote work productivity, then how to be most productive while working remotely.
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In this Cast | The Age of Remote Work Productivity
Ray Sidney-Smith
Augusto Pinaud
Art Gelwicks
Francis Wade
Show Notes | The Age of Remote Work Productivity
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
What Is Remote Work?
10 remote work statistics you should know about
Dice's 2019 Tech Salary Report
Remote Work Employee Policy Template
Example of flexwork policy
The Five-Hour Workday: Live Differently, Unlock Productivity, and Find Happiness by Stephan Aarstol
Hoteling (or, office hoteling)
Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
Focusmate (virtual coworking)
049 Virtual Coworking for Being More Productive with Taylor Jacobson, Focusmate
Raw Text Transcript | The Age of Remote Work Productivity
Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).
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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17
And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.
Augusto Pinaud 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.
Francis Wade 0:26I'm Francis Wade.
Art Gelwicks 0:27 And I'm Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26And we are back with an episode on a topic that is quite a bit in the news lately and I thought that it would be really interesting for us all to have a discussion on the topic of remote work and really how to be productive in and when you were remote working. And so, today we're going to talk about what remote work is kind of defining it and and understanding some of the the trends that are around remote work. What are the benefits and disadvantages are the advantages and disadvantages of remote working? And finally, I want us to talk about how to be most productive while working remotely. Because remote working does provide its own set of opportunities and challenges to being productive as an individual in the greater workforce. And so I thought it would be really good for us to be able to kick the idea around and have a discussion around that. So let's start off with what is remote work? How do you define remote work?
Art Gelwicks 1:26Well, I can start you with my definition. And that's it requires a benchmark and the benchmark is remote work requires you to have a designated location that you would normally work from and then not working in that location being able to be as effective in some other place that is not pre determined. Now, the problem is, is that definition immediately falls apart as you start to think about what work remote work is nowadays, but I believe when you if you were to ask Someone who is an executive or a manager, that's what they would consider the definition of remote work. You have a desk you have an office, you have some place that they expect you to be. And this is the ability to work someplace else.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:13I'm going to read from remoteyear.com They have a blog post that I'll link to in the in the show notes. It says what is remote work, and it says remote work is a working style that allows professionals to work outside of a traditional office environment. So that pretty much aligns with what you were talking about Art. Continuing, quoting. It is based on the concept that work does not need to be done in a specific place to be executed successfully. Think of it this way, instead of commuting to an office each day to work from a designated desk, remote employees can execute their projects and surpass their goals wherever they please. People have the flexibility to design their days so that their professional and personal lives can be experienced to their fullest potential and coexist. peacefully end quote. So, the idea here, at least as far as remote year is trying to explain it is that remote work is this way of being able to reconcile the conflicts between your professional work and your personal life. agree, disagree. Thoughts there,
Art Gelwicks 3:20See this is go back, this goes back to where I fight with this definition. Because just the the phrase itself means that there is some place that you are expected to be when you are quote, not remote. Well, okay, that's fine. But then you look at the second part, this is the type of work that does not require you to be in a specific location. So why is this defining an expectation that you would be in a specific location? So I think, just this terminology starts to limit what we're talking about here it braces that Oh, you're working remote. So you're not actually doing your normal work. This is something special, this isn't quite as good as polished, as perfect as if you were not remote. And I think whether that's true or not, whether that's perception or not, I think that's one of the things that gets conveyed a lot with that.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:22Yeah, and thankfully, I think today we see so many more people who really recognize remote work as a, as a hiring location, like, you know, you'll see like, you know, in in a job description, it'll say, you know, location for wherever the job might be, you know, situated and it'll just say remote. And so we're seeing more and more positions being hired directly for a remote position for remote working. And so therefore, less and less people are being concerned about the fact that there may be a headquarters and you You know even even myself you know now thinking about hiring staff we we are becoming a remote company. And I've always kind of been remote because I'm always on the road or, and and I live out you know pretty far distance away from my primary headquarters for my company. So you know the the, the idea of working remotely is very natural to me. But at the same time, I've always had staff centrally located and now to have them not do that has been a real use. I hate to use the word game changer but it's been a it's been a market amount of, of change for the company and how we normally work. It hasn't really been that much of a stretch for me working with them, but then working with each other. And now I have to think about the idea of hiring people. You know who out the gate will not have experienced the city camaraderie with the staff. So there there are some implications there for in management and business ownership, thinking about how you design a company in the remote space, in the remote working space and, and on the flip side. So I think we're kind of in in a little bit of a transition space there. I'm reading here again, remote work has some statistics that were really interesting. And again, quote, it's predicted that by 2027, the majority of the US workforce will be working remotely. So we're just shy of 10 years before, it's telling us that were eight years or so I guess, before the majority of the US workforce will be working remotely. It says the number of those will the number of those with flexible working arrangements is also growing faster than the overall us workforce. at roughly three times the rate more companies are hiring and realizing the benefits and potential that remote work can offer. End quote. So we're in a space and time where, or rather space time when we are moving toward more and more of remote work. And I'm curious, Do people really understand the definition of remote work against other terms that we've heard kind of bandied around over the last 20 years, right? We have telework, we have flex work. And those are all different things. And I'm curious whether or not you think other people really know what remote work really means to them.
Art Gelwicks 7:35Okay, I got it. I got to make one thing real clear, fast, though. Every one of these terms conveys the message that this is a special type of work. This is a benefit to you as the worker that you are getting to do something. I'm going to use special again because I can't think of another word this morning. But it's just that this is a nice thing for you because you're you know our employee and you're working here. We're gonna let you work remotely and that's a perk until it's changed until that mindset goes away that this is any different than regular office work, that they are the exact same. I don't know that that 2027 number means squat to be and I
