Being the best version of yourself while Working From Home

“Don’t expect to be motivated every day to get out there and make things happen. You won’t be. Don’t count on motivation. Count on Discipline.”

— Joko Willink - Author of Extreme Ownership and former Navy Seal

Who would like to go back to the beginning of 2020 and restart the new decade again? Who new that this brand new decade would kick off with a world-wide pandemic! For those of us who live in Australia, we were looking forward to the end of the massive bush fires ravaging the country side and destroying businesses. What we didn’t expect was for the rains to come and put out the fire, just in time for it to be replace by the pandemic landing on our shores resulting in an unprecedented lock-down.

Like me, most of your are Working From Home (WFH), and being forced to confront work / life integration rather than thinking of it as a nice concept but something we would deal with later. If you’re lucky, WFH is part of your organisation’s DNA and the technological infrastructure and end-user behaviours are there to enable remote working and video conferencing. Unfortunately, there are many in my organisation who have put off adapting to the new way of working until the pandemic forced it upon them. Some have adapted quickly, realising that it’s not actually that difficult, while some remain steadfast in their refusal to learn. Whatever the attitude, every conference call (we’ve stopped video calls to preserve capacity) is worthy of playing Conference Call Bingo (e.g. “no you go”, “sorry I cut someone off”, “ye…bu….a….see……”, “we can’t hear you”, “are you on mute”, etc.).

After several weeks of working from home, I suddenly realised that I was regressing on some of the improvements I’ve made over the last few years through the MyCorporateDiary journey. It struck me when I caught myself emotionally reacting to a peer who was being asked to update the leadership team every week on how we are responding to the pandemic. I caught myself feeling very unimportant and envious of the attention that is being heaped on him. Yet, the stupid thing was, he was leading our pandemic response committee. It’s part of his role and it’s only natural that he updates the leadership team, including myself. It was even more ridiculous when I realised that I had overlooked many of the positive feedback being given to me as my team rapidly adapt our priorities to support teams that are suddenly under pressure. The scary thing was, it had only taken a couple of weeks of working from home and missing the social cues you would normally get by being physically in the office for old habits that I thought I had suppressed to make a reappearance.

Therefore, as recovering people pleasing introverts, we need to be aware and take action to not only prevent the feeling of being socially isolated but importantly, we need to be alert and take action to preserve the improvements we have made in our journey towards becoming the best version of ourselves.

Why does WFH cause self improvement to regress

It’s the old adage, awareness is the key to fixing the problem. From my own personal experience, WFH causes regression because there is no physical change in the environment. We wake up, get ready (most people just wear casuals), walk into the study or walk to the dining table, log on, and start working. Contrast this with the normal routine of putting on work clothes, hopping on public transport, and then stepping into the lobby of a building with a crowd of people who are also professionally dressed. This change in environment triggers the brain to switch on and start recalling all the self improvement actions and behaviours that you need to apply during the day.

In addition, you don’t get to physically see your colleagues, including the office jerks. Again, your colleagues (whether you like them or not) are another visual cue for your brain to trigger a recall of how you want to be the best version of yourself. In a WFH setting, the first thing most of us see work-wise would be our emails (or the intranet page). What do emails do? They trigger the task focused side of our brain. Instead of thinking what achievements we want to deliver today, we dive straight into what tasks we need to sort out, even if they are not important. If you have a job like mine, where emails come in throughout the night (sometimes very poorly worded), then the first thing you’re tempted to do is to respond to those emails. Next thing you know, you’ve lost half the day responding to other people’s priorities instead of our own.

The solution: STRUCTURE and DISCIPLINE

Yes, the solution is obvious but like most things in life, the most obvious solution is the hardest to do. I’m willing to bet that if you’ve worked from home for a period of two weeks, you’ve probably caught yourself regressing and most likely even reminded yourself that you need to apply your self improvement steps. But then another email comes in, and away you go, getting stuck into the detail.

But we’re only human, and in times of uncertainty and change, human behaviour is to revert back to what is comfortable and familiar. That’s OK for a short period of time. We need time to adapt and respond to the immediate priorities.

BUT, working from home is likely going to be in place for much longer than just a few weeks. After a fortnight, some semblance of a new normal should be setting in. Now is the time to reclaim the improvements you’ve made in your journey. You can’t wait another week. Why? Because each day you are not applying your improvements, it means that you are regressing. And it doesn’t take long for you to regress all the way back to the negative self talk, closed off behaviours, and people pleasing habits

Therefore, take charge of this new normal and re-establish your structure and routine. Below are some of the changes I’ve made to my original routine:

• Resumed waking up at 6AM to do a quick early morning exercise. Since I don’t need to travel to the office, this is now supplemented with exercise at 6PM too.

• At 6:45AM, I do 30 minutes of reading.

• At 7:15AM, I get ready as I normally would for work. I don’t put on a suit and tie but something semi formal to trigger my brain to realise it’s a change of environment. By 7:30AM, I am at my desk as I would normally be if I was travelling into the office.

• Before I open up email, I spend 15 minutes establishing what I want to complete by the end of the day and importantly, who do I want to call to maintain contact or collect intelligence. Then I lock those calls into my diary so that I do them.

I know of some colleagues who actually get into proper work clothes (but without the suit or tie) because it helps them establish the environment change. Whatever works that helps your brain to realise that you are going to work and you need to awaken the alertness and sense of ambition to becoming the best version of yourself.

The key self-improvement techniques to maintain

It goes without saying, you need to adapt the techniques you’ve been applying. If you’re trying to maintain eye contact via a video conference, that’s obviously not going to pan out since the angle of your camera will most likely make you look weird (do you stare at their eye on screen or stare at the camera?). But in times like this, we go back to the basics of what’s needed to become the Uninhibited Introvert.

BREATHE - Like me, you probably get nervous even on a teleconference. If anything, you’re probably even more nervous since you can’t see the other people’s reactions. Then, you start to speak faster and inside, you are panicking, thinking that you’ve done a terrible job because there is just silence on the line. In fact, people are just on mute to let you finish but you brain won’t be telling you that. So recall the technique to focus on your breath before you speak. Count your breaths until you’re not feeling the nerves or practice Mel Robbins 5 Second Rule: 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.

SMILE - Believe it or not, people can hear your smile though your voice. If you’re just on a teleconference, put a smile on your face and I guarantee that people will hear it and feel it.

Important! TALK SLOWLY AND LOUDLY - I can’t emphasise this enough. Without visual cues, we naturally start to talk faster (and some people even mumble) since it’s unnatural to talk to a computer screen. In a teleconference or videoconference setting, it is even more important that we slow it down. and speak clearly and loudly. Remember to stop at key points or stop at the end of each segment. Give people a chance to ask you questions and ask people whether it’s OK to move on to the next section. It creates the sense that you are in charge of what you are saying and not just wanting to rush through it.

Important! PERSUASION - Just as important is how you structure your point. Once again, the lack of visual cues elevates the importance of providing context, being concise, and be clear on what the action is that you’re looking for.

Important! STRUCTURE YOUR COMMUNICATION - The number of emails you send and receive is likely 100x more than normal. But then this is the case for everybody else. So once again, be clear in your email communication if you’re looking for a timely response. Recall our 3 Step approach to communicating to elicit a timely response.

TAKE UP SPACE - You’re at home, take as much space as you want and expand your body. I caught myself being hunched up at my desk while speak on the phone. Not only was I physically small, I actually feel small. So expand your body, take up more space, or better yet, stand up and look out the window while speaking on the phone. It’s your home, who’s going to complain!!

So there you have it. Come Monday, take charge of your new routine in this WFH environment. Then refocus yourself on these six foundation steps and get yourself back on the self improvement journey to becoming the best version of yourself.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels