Summary

The web content discusses the inefficiencies and pitfalls of remote working tools, emphasizing that while these tools are widely used due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they can lead to decreased productivity if not used correctly.

Abstract

The article highlights the irony that although remote working tools have become essential due to the pandemic, they can contribute to a decrease in productivity, often referred to as 'insecurity work'. This term, coined by Scott Belsky, describes activities that feel productive in the moment but don't contribute to long-term goals. The author argues that excessive meetings, notifications, and multitasking can lead to significant productivity losses, with research suggesting it takes about 23 minutes to regain focus after a distraction. The piece suggests that to be truly productive at home, individuals must overcome their natural tendency to opt for the easiest tasks, avoid the distractions present in a home environment, and use remote working tools more effectively. Transitioning to a more asynchronous way of working and utilizing project management tools like Monday can help facilitate this shift. The author, Steve Glaveski, provides further insights into effective remote work through additional resources and encourages readers to adopt better working habits to overcome the challenges of working from home during COVID-19.

Opinions

The author believes that an overreliance on remote working tools can result in a false sense of productivity, with workers spending their days in unimportant meetings and responding to emails and notifications.
It is noted that despite the availability of collaborative tools, many companies have only started to fully utilize them due to the pandemic, indicating a reluctance to change traditional workplace practices.
The article suggests that the digital transformation of work processes may not improve productivity if the underlying processes are flawed to begin with.
The author emphasizes that the key to productive remote work lies not just in the tools used but in the discipline and intentionality with which we use them, advocating for a shift towards asynchronous communication and focused work.
Human beings' natural inclination towards taking the path of least resistance is seen as a significant barrier to efficient remote work, compounded by the distractions available at home.
The author promotes the idea of moving towards higher levels of remote work maturity, where teams work more independently and results are valued over the perceived busyness of collaboration tools.

Beware: Remote Working Tools May Be Ruining Your Productivity

Now that we’re in the early stages of COVID-19-inspired working from home, the internet is flush with giddy professionals posting group selfies, like the one above.

It seems that organisations are finally discovering, or at least making use of what were — outside of the startup ecosystem anyway— previously neglected collaboration tools.

Large companies have a way of anchoring to the past, and it has taken a global pandemic to get them to try what are not so new ways of working. It has taken a global pandemic to effectively demonstrate that perhaps the entire notion of everybody going to a central meeting point, every day of the week, is redundant.

Note from the author: Hide your private meeting ID when you’re sharing these selfies online dummies!

Tools are only as good as how you use them

For some organisations, the transition has been a somewhat seamless one on the back of multi-million dollar investments into mobility and collaboration infrastructure (let’s forego the fact that numerous secure off-the-shelf tools exist for a fraction of the price and in some cases for no cost at all).

But despite all of this, what leaders at these organisations and what a lot of the remote working ideas suddenly flooding the internet seem to forget, is that a tool is only as good as how you use it.

It’s easy to spend your entire work from home day sitting in back-to-back, hour-long and unimportant Zoom calls with a cast of thousands while you respond to non-consequential emails and notifications on your smartphone, and chat with colleagues via Slack — it’s no different to a typical day at the office for many folks!

Some might even be engaging in extra-curricular activities like young Calum here.

But none of this — especially not the extra-curricular activities — makes you even remotely productive…excuse the pun.

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Insecurity work is like junk food

All of this insecurity work (a term coined by Scott Belsky) is kind of like junk food — it might make you feel good and productive in the moment, but afterwards you’re left feeling like crap for the lack of genuine achievement moving you no closer to your goals.

Used poorly, instant messaging, email, videoconferencing software and other collaboration tools can actually become serious distractions as opposed to enablers of good work.

When we’re distracted, it can take us about 23 minutes to get back in ‘the zone’. Even the slightest distraction, such as the 1/10th of a second it takes to glance at a notification on your smartphone, can add up to a 40% productivity loss if you do lots of this throughout your day. This is why task switching is to be avoided at all costs.

Paradoxically, we can actually become more productive when we turn these tools off.

We are our own worst enemies

It’s not a lack of tools that get in our way of being productive from home — it’s us that gets in our way.

Human beings are programmed to take the path of least effort — or doing the easiest and least valuable thing — in order to conserve energy, with our brains tricking us into thinking that the lowest hanging fruit really is the ripest.

Not only are we battling biological predispositions that helped us survive on the African savanna, our homes are also full of distractions — there’s the internet to play with on our desktops (sans colleagues peering over our shoulder) with its rabbit-hole wonders of YouTube and Reddit, there’s Netflix and other streaming services, our fellow residents to engage with, and of course, the refrigerator.

The wrong things done right?

As with so many billion-dollar ‘digital transformation’ initiatives, if you digitise a broken process, the process is till broken. So too with remote work — a pointless one hour meeting is still a pointless one hour meeting, regardless of whether it takes place on Google Hangouts or in conference room 17B.

While there is definitely utility in connecting face-to-face during this time of social distancing, there is a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it — 5pm videocalls seem to be popular ways to connect socially without distracting you during your workday.

In order to truly become productive and effective at home, we need to shift the conversation from what we work with to how we work, because as Peter Drucker put it, there’s nothing worse than the wrong things done right.

Moving up the five levels of remote work towards a more asynchronous organization is key to effective remote work, and project management tools like Monday help facilitate that transition.

For more on how to actually work effectively from home, check out the article below.

13 Tips to Crush Working From Home During COVID-19

Overcome distractions and become more productive than you’ve ever been before.

medium.com

Steve Glaveski is the co-founder of Collective Campus, author of Time Rich, Employee to Entrepreneur and host of the Future Squared podcast. He’s a chronic autodidact, and he’s into everything from 80s metal and high-intensity workouts to attempting to surf and do standup comedy.