Working from home.
Is it the ultimate employment perk or a hidden pitfall from the luxury of.
Ditching the daily commute to the challenges of juggling work in your living space? We'll explore the highs and lows of.
This trend as more companies adopt flexible.
Work policies and employees push back on.
Back to the office mandates.
Its important to understand how this shift.
Affects our work life balance, productivity and overall well being. Im Joe, my pal right over there. Hes Kurt and we are dudes in progress.
Hello Kurt. Hey Joe. What's going on, man?
Oh, what is going on? It was a beautiful day here in Connecticut finally. Yeah. Like, I don't know what the temperature, maybe up to 80. Beautiful sunshine. We don't get this very often and it's gonna go right back to the lousiness the rest of the week. So we had to get outside and get some walking in.
I used to go up to Connecticut.
About twice a year. I can't remember the name, the name of the city, but it was, one.
Of my customers was up there and they're no longer, they're actually, interestingly enough, they're actually headquarters headquartered in Ohio now and. But I used to love flying into that little tiny airport.
Is it white Oak County, New York?
Oh, I don't know about New York.
Yeah, it's right there on the border of New York, but it's, it's right.
There on the border of New York and Connecticut. A small, tiny little airport.
West Chester airport.
West Chester. That's it.
That's it.
It's got to be Westchester county. Is that Westchester County Airport?
Very famous county.
Yeah. And then making that drive up through Connecticut.
Yeah.
Just gorgeous. Gorgeous. The trees are on fire. Not little, literally. I always tried to make it in the fall and my gosh, it's just gorgeous. So I can imagine what it's like right now.
Yeah, it's very.
One thing I noticed from doing a little bit of traveling in my working.
Life, especially that I didn't realize that I lived in a hilly place till.
I went to the midwest. Oh my gosh. And the scariest thing about that is.
When folks in the Midwest have thunder.
And lightning storms, you can actually see the lightning.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Like from miles away. I remember being in a restaurant going.
That was the most amazing light show.
I ever seen in my whole life. I was in Peoria, Illinois, and I.
And I knew it was going to.
Be a bad night of storms, sitting in the restaurant with lots of windows, and I was mesmerized by, because here you don't really see it. You see a little bit of it, but the hills all block it.
It's always up over the hill somewhere, right?
Correct.
You know, Cincinnati is like that. I mean, we're known for our seven.
Hills and we have little areas called Anderson Hills and Price Hill and Walnut hills.
And we have a lot of little.
Little either suburb or names that ends in hills.
We have a lot of hills here in the city as well. But you get outside the city and.
Man, you can see some incredible lightning.
Storms and you get through Indiana, it's completely flat. It's awesome.
It's funny, I grew up on Walnut Hill and I live on Chestnut Hill now.
You work from home, don't you, Kurt?
I do, Joe.
I have been working from home. We used to work from home at least every Friday in my current company I'm working with, which was always really nice, having that Friday to work from home. But yeah, ever since COVID I have worked from home.
Do you go into the office at all?
I do.
There was, when we started going back, I was trying to get in once a week at the beginning of the year.
I think a lot of companies did this. They reevaluated the work from home policy.
And decided that in January they would really look at a policy that was more hybrid, where they would ask people.
To come in Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday for most people as well. If you lived within 25 miles radius.
Of the home office, they wanted to.
Come in Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I am just outside of that.
No kidding?
Yeah.
You just made the cut, huh?
Really? I really just made it. And I remember I was in Disney World when I saw the policy come.
Out on an email and it wasn't.
It looked like I was outside of it. But then they started getting more information about it.
It was a radius, which, you know.
If I drove the crooked line, it was over 25, but the radius, I think. Yeah, but anyways, it ended up working out for me. I'll go in.
We'll have a team meeting.
We got a big project with lots of contractors.
If there's something that I need to.
Feel like I need to be there, I'll go in. And I do like to go in.
Every once in a while.
But for the most part, I've enjoyed the privilege of working from home.
It is a privilege.
And if you can swing it, it's.
An awesome, it's an awesome lifestyle because not only do you work from home in your regular gig, but your side stuff that you do, the Disney podcast and our show here and some of the other stuff that we do. That's all working from home, pretty much from the exact same desk that you're sitting at right now.
This is an office.
I call it also a studio. And it was my oldest son's bedroom that I converted. And it's like my little man cave.
Yeah.
Upstairs.
So I read a statistic that now, this is, as of last year, about 14% of american adults work from home full time.
That's quite a lot, if you think about it.
14% of american adults work from home. It sounds like it should be a higher percentage. But if you think about all the people who work and the different jobs, from office workers to bus drivers to construction workers to attorneys, all America. Of all Americans, american adults, 14% of those work from home. And, of course, since the pandemic, since COVID in 2020, this has almost become normalized. Although the majority of workers still operate in physical workspaces, of the 14%, 30% to 40% of those are actually self employed, which. Which kind of makes sense, right? Yeah, a big percentage of that, and 60% to 70% work for another company. People are definitely making the choice to work from home. I'm kind of up in the air about it, Kurt. I work from home for. During COVID I worked from home full time, and then I worked from home.
Full time from, I would say, may of 23 through July of 23.
For about three months. I worked from home full time, and.
I'm not sure about it. I'm not sure whether it's my thing or not. I do like variety. I do like.
I do like a sense of camaraderie.
But, man, it's.
It's nice to not have to fight traffic and not have to deal with all that stuff that you deal with, like getting dressed.
I don't know how to respond to that. Would that mean you don't get dressed when you're working from home?
Actually, when I work from home, I get. I get dressed like I'm going to work. I kind of have to. It kind of helps me put. Put myself in that mindset right now. I work from home.
I would say, let's just call it two days a week, Mondays and Fridays.
And I like those bookend days. And it's booked into bookend both ways. Bookend on. Bookend it on the weekend. Bookend it on the weekend. So I kind of have a. I don't want to call it a long weekend, but when you're working from home and you. You have your work done, maybe you can cut off a little early, right?
Or Monday comes and, and those are good days to maybe bring on, bring.
In the, the plumber that needs, needs to do some work or the cable guy that you're waiting for. And it's always nice to have that, that freedom and those days available to you.
Do you find that you're more productive from home, working from home?
I definitely do.
I feel like I've got to be.
Careful to get up and take some.
Breaks, get up off my desk. I always, I might have been different than a lot of people. I noticed that even when I'm in the office, a lot of people just anchor themselves through the desk, which I think is extremely unhealthy. I like for a lot of reasons. As we've talked about being sitting down.
They would say is worse for your.
Health than smoking cigarettes. I think I've heard a study recently, but I would definitely get up and I would try to get all my steps in while I was in the office. And there was a long corridor, there was paths I could take. I could go outside when it was.
Nice and I would get up a.
Lot and walk around.
I get interrupted a lot when I.
Was in the office.
People coming up to me or.
Yeah, definitely the last time I was in, there was a lot of chit chat going on. Maybe it's because I hadn't been in the office for a while. I ran into people I hadn't seen in a long time. But I feel like I'm really anchored.
In sitting down, working more time when I'm at home.
So we're going to talk about the benefits of working from home as well as the drawbacks of working from home. I think it's time we had this conversation.
Many companies right now are putting together.
Back to the office mandates and employees are pushing back hard against those back to the office mandates, and we're going to see how it all shakes out.
I know everybody was for it, but I think they're starting to see maybe.
Productivity wane a little bit or maybe some creativity gets lost when people work from home.
Maybe there's that, that proximity dynamic.
That's what I call it, the proximity dynamic.
When you have people that are right.
Next to you in a, in a desk or a cubicle or right down the hall where you can bounce an idea off of, you just kind of miss that. Right. So we're going to talk about the benefits of working from home and the drawbacks of working from home. Let's start with flexibility. You know, one of the biggest perks of working from home is, is indeed flexibility. You can often set your own hours as long as you're getting the work done. You can balance your work and your personal life. Like I said before, you can bring that plumber in or that contractor or that cable guy or whatever, whatever it might be, you have that flexibility. I mean, some people can drop their kids off at school, attend an exercise class in the middle of the day. Having control over your schedule by working.
From home is a huge plus.
And I'm going to, we're going to talk about that and we're going to. I'm going to intertwine some statistics in our discussion. For example, a study by our labs found that 79% of respondents cited flexible scheduling as the top benefit or as a top benefit of remote work. Allowing them to manage personal obligations alongside work commitments is more effective for their life. Do you enjoy the flexibility by working from home?
Oh yeah.
As you're explaining that, I was thinking, especially when I had kids, it was.
Really important to me that I was.
Involved in all the kids after school activities.
And we did a lot of sports. I coached three sports and all three.
Kids at the same time.
And I was the coach and I.
At that time I worked probably 30.
Minutes commute and it was really important.
To me to get out of the office and get home and get onto those activities. Now, at that time, I didn't work from home at all. That would have been really a lot easier to do those.
And it's not as taxing on you to be rushing around if you can.
Do that from home and you know, all those things you say. I love being able to just run over and pick up things that I need really quickly. And if I was my, I figured.
Out my commute really robs me about 3 hours because it's about an hour door to door.
That's two there and you just bake in.
Like you said, getting ready.
I gotta get my laptop unplugged and.
In the bag and get everything collected.
To get out the door. And then I'm walking in the parking lot when I get there. It's a big campus.
I figure 3 hours are wasted on my commute.
That's a three hour adder to your life every or five days a week. That's 15 hours a week that you get back, right?
You know, 1515 times, let's say 48 weeks in a work, typical work, that's 720 hours, dude.
Yeah, it's huge.
Divide that.
That's, that's a whole month's worth of, worth of life that you get back by working from home?
Yeah.
I mean, I used to.
That's amazing.
I used to take the bus.
That math.
I know. I didn't think of it that much. I knew it was a lot. I didn't put it into numbers. I used to take the bus into.
Work, and that wasn't too bad.
At least I could sit there and.
Do some things that I want to do, like ready or things on the.
Social media, on the phone.
That was always fun.
At least I wasn't sitting there listening to the radio.
But yeah.
I tell you, where I find the most flexibility when I work from home.
Is not only personal flexibility, but work flexibility.
There are times of the day that I just have more energy than other times of the day. There are times of the day that.
That man come 02:00 or 03:00 I'm. I'm a little.
I'm a little foggy headed man, for.
Whatever reason, and I can take a break. I can take a break.
I can take a couple hours of.
Break and maybe take a nap, maybe.
Go for a walk, maybe run a couple errands. And then. Then about 435 o'clock. And I'm an empty nester. My kids are all grown.
I can certainly kind of sit back.
Down and maybe do a couple hours.
More work or two or 3 hours.
Worth of work and really get more done. Also, when I work from home, similar.
To what you said, is I'm more productive because I get to work right away. I don't have that process.
Not only do you have the time driving to work, my. My typical commute is about 35 or 40 minutes. So if you figure 40 minutes on the high side, that's an 80 minutes.
Swing right to and from.
But it's also that time that you walk into the office, uh, you get at your desk and you turn your computer on, and you go get a cup of coffee, and you go get some water and put your lunch away and say hello to everybody. Good mornings and all that other stuff.
And before you know it, maybe another half an hour passed by for sure.
Of non work activity.
When I work from home, I've kind.
Of done all of that, the coffee and the water and the. Some of those niceties, you know, not with coworkers, but saying hello to my wife or whatever it might be. When work time comes, I'm sitting down and I'm working. Really working.
Not just at work, but I'm working.
When work time comes. So I'm actually. I actually appreciate the work flexibility as well as the personal flexibility. And I do love that.
I would have loved to have.
Well, I've always had kind of. I've always made sure I structured my. My work life where I had a lot of flexibility. But, man, working from home does make a huge difference. How. And we talked about this, and we talked about this as well. According to the US census, the average american commute time saved by working from home is 50 minutes a day. Now, ours are longer than that. Right? 50 minutes a day. That's the average. That's a heck of a lot of savings. And add it back. That's a heck a lot of savings.
Time savings that's added back to your life. Man, I. I hate traffic jams, Kurt.
I hate them. I don't.
I can't stand just sitting there in the car idle. And I'm impatient, I'm frustrated.
I'm usually tired when I'm coming home from work, so that doesn't help.
And you think about.
Think about the gas money that you.
Save and the stress that is reduced just by not commuting.
Yeah, this one's huge for me. And saving money on.
The maintenance of my car. I was at a picnic this weekend, and an old friend from high school said, whoa, what a beautiful car. Said, yeah, only got 50,000 miles on it, and it's a 2015.
This is your charger?
Yeah, I got a red charger I bought. As soon as I bought that, I.
Said, I'm going to take the bus.
To work because of the long commute. Yeah, I'm a road rager. You and I have talked about this before.
I get a lot of stress from people driving.
My commute's not really horrible, except when I get closer to the city, it just seems like someone's always nearly hitting me. I feel like I'm always on edge a little bit when I'm driving, and.
So that little bit of extra peace.
Of mind definitely is huge for me.
Like I said, I'm going to intermingle some stats and statistics and research that I found about working from home. For example, Airtasker in 2020. Now, this was right in the heart of the pandemic. Showed that people who work from home worked 1.4 more days every month or 16.8 more days every year than people who worked in an office.
Isn't that interesting?
People who work from home actually put.
In more hours than people who work in an office.
I was thinking even the commute from a building to a building or to.
Another meeting room or booking the meeting.
Room, all that stuff is gone. I could sit here right where I am. And have virtual meetings one right after the other. There doesn't have to be a break in between. I just hop right onto the next one. When I was in the office, big campus, you got to cruise around and walk to the next meeting.
So there's just so much.
Yeah. And I work with a lot of remote people. I work with people all around the country. I've worked with people all around the world, with developers that we have in India.
And there's times when, of course, they're.
In the opposite end of the world.
Their nighttime is my morning.
There's been times I've been on projects where I'm talking to them early in the morning. It's later in the evening for them.
And it's no problem.
And I don't mind doing that early in the morning because I'm a morning.
Person anyway, and it's very productive.
So half my team is in Europe.
And so many times I will have.
05:00 in the morning meetings. 06:00 in the morning meetings. I've had a couple at 330 in.
The morning that I'm willing to do. But the reason I'm willing to do.
That and the reason I'm able to do that is because I have the ability to work from home. I have my office set up. We have it. We have teams. We connect. We bring everybody on the same page. And people are. People are getting used to using teams and understanding how to make teams more productive.
No more.
No longer do I spend the first ten minutes of meeting, of a meeting listening to people say, can you hear me? Can you see me?
Can you hear me?
Can't hear you.
Hey, Bob, turn your mic off.
Bob.
John, turn your mic down.
You know, whatever it is or you.
Don'T have your mic on, that doesn't happen much anymore. People are getting pretty good at using these remote tools to have to have meetings. So I know what you're talking about. I. I do like the ability to.
Meet anybody at any time, and I.
Can even meet with a customer. Now, I've met with a customer a couple of times in the evening when.
They are there in California, and I'm able to have a meeting with them.
In the evening because of the tools.
That give us the ability to work from home.
I think about this as well, and I know we talked last, our last episode about music, a lot about music. Think about this. When I'm working from home, I can play any. I can play any music in the background that I want to play. I can have the window open. It can be my temperature. It can be my environment, truly my environment, whether I want it to be loud and full of music or whether I want it to be whisper quiet.
It's mine, and it's my environment to control.
It's my environment to create, to help.
Me become more focused.
And I can make an egg sandwich two minutes before a meeting and have.
It ready without a problem using my microwavable egg poachers.
Have it cooked and eaten before the.
Meeting even starts with bacon in the microwave.
And nobody's complaining about the smell of the bacon or the tuna or the tuna salad.
I can have salmon, leftover salmon for lunch if I want to. Joe. No one puts a note on my microwave saying, don't cook salmon in the microwave.
That's funny. So I'm definitely. I have times that I am much more productive working from home than I am at the office.
Now, I would be lying if I.
Told you that I didn't have times that.
Man, it's easy to quit early.
Man, it's easy to start later.
It's easy to, uh, you know when the.
When you're working from home and you hear the grandkids downstairs, right? One of the grandkids comes over and they're downstairs for a quick visit. Well, uh, you know how I am with grandkids, with my grandkids, and it's.
Easy just to kind of pop off.
The rest of the afternoon and hang out with them. So you, you do have to be disciplined, and you do have to have that.
That personal integrity to do the work.
That you have to do. But also, there's been times that I've.
I have just decided, hey, I'm not going to work.
It's Friday afternoon, and I'm not going to work anymore. And I have Saturday available to me if I decide I want to do that, uh, or whatever. Whatever time it is.
So, uh, but I would be.
I wouldn't.
I would be a liar if I were to tell you that I'm super.
Productive every minute working from home. I'm more productive, I believe. But there are those times that it's really easy for me to, uh, to slack off. So we're going to talk about the drawbacks of working from home. Uh, we certainly just discussed the benefits, flexibility and reduced commute and increased productivity.
But there are some drawbacks. Do you get lonely when you work from home at all, Kurt?
That's funny.
I thought about that and.
Doing this.
For so long, I thought I would.
Get a lot lonelier than I actually am.
And I don't know why that is. And my wife and I don't get.
At each other's nerves. So those are two really positive things. And I don't think I do get too lonely. I do feel like there are times when I want to get out of.
The house, and I get my fill.
Just by going grocery shopping or going through the stores around town.
But I feel like I can handle the isolation pretty well.
You tend to be introverted anyway, right?
Oh, yeah, for sure. That is my natural state.
Yeah, I'm still not sure of my.
Natural state, because sometimes I thrive around being around people, and sometimes I just. I want.
I want nothing to do with humanity in any way whatsoever.
Whatsoever.
But working from home can feel isolating, especially if you.
If you are a person that thrives on social interactions with co workers and colleagues and maybe even, you know, the people in.
In other.
Other companies that you might interact with just as a.
As a.
In the everyday of doing business. That lack of casual conversations by the water cooler or the coffee pot or in the lunch room or in the kitchen can really impact morale and collaboration. In fact, a buffer state of remote work report said that 20% of remote employees list loneliness. Loneliness is their biggest challenge. That word loneliness strikes me, man. I. There's lots of words that. There's. There are lots of words that evoke.
Deep emotion for me when I hear the word loneliness. That.
That really evokes a deep emotion with me. And 20% of remote employees list loneliness as their biggest challenge. I can say, Kurt, that I.
There are times that I get lonely.
That I'm working from home. Now. My wife was a stay at home mom for years, and she has a job now that she goes a couple days a week. But for the most part, she still stays at home and does the stuff necessary to keep our life going, staying at home. And she has her own hobbies and her own things that she likes to do as well. So she's here most of the time when I'm working. But there is that sense of loneliness, that sense of camaraderie that I miss.
Now, like I said, I work from home two days a week.
I go into the office three days a week now. But when I did work from home, I did feel a sense of loneliness, and that was a challenge for me to overcome that loneliness and kind of figure that. Figure that process out. You said you don't deal with that necessarily, but I can certainly. I can certainly feel that. Feel that sense of loneliness myself. So, isolation when you're working from home can be a. Can be a big drawback, especially a personal drawback. And work life better balance challenges.
Man, it can be hard to switch.
Off from work when you're at home, especially if you have a big project that is important to you. You know, it's right there, and you can just keep working on it. And I do have this problem sometimes when I'm working on a big project. I just got off, and we'll talk about it here in a second. I just got off of a big.
Project where I launched a large campaign.
Throughout all of North America with all of our reps and Canada and the United States.
And that was a very important project for me.
It was energizing, and there was lots of stuff that I liked about that project. And so I did find myself working long hours because I could. Because it was here. I could connect my laptop and finish putting the program together or finish the presentation for this rep in this territory.
So that work life balance, I fight.
Against that, especially if it's a project.
That I'm really working on and really.
Looking forward to in it. It's quite often where you have to work a weekend or an evening off.
Hours for the other employees to make.
Changes to software or hardware, if that's what you have. I personally don't have a lot of that now, but, yeah, you could definitely.
Say to somebody, you know what? Let's not make the change during the day. Let's make the change like, 10:00 tonight.
You know, you try not.
You try to balance that. I think with all this, you definitely have to have guardrails. I'm totally okay saying, these are my.
Hours, and when the hour is up.
It'S almost like clockwork, like it was.
When I worked in the office.
This is the time I quit.
So I have to have. I have always believed in balance in everything I do.
Work life balance has always been huge for me, and I've been fortunate. The companies I worked for have been.
Pretty supportive of that, and even more.
So now I see more of it.
In today's work than I did in years past.
And that is something that I really.
Do admire about you, Kurt, is you.
You have that ability to say, I'm done with that.
It's.
I'm done with work. I don't have a problem getting up.
And walking away from it.
And it'll be there tomorrow.
And it doesn't nag at you. It doesn't bite at you. You don't think about it before you're going to bed.
It's.
You do have that ability to.
To cut it off and. And prioritize your.
Your personal life. And I really do admire that about you because it's important. It's something that we all need to learn to do, especially people who are, for lack of a better word, high achievers and like to get things done and like to be a person that can be counted on and like to be a person that's productive.
We need that ability to cut it off.
So that is definitely a challenge for a lot of people that work life balance. I know that the Bureau of Economic Research said that 48.6% of remote workers report working nights and weekends more frequently than they worked when they were. Then they worked out when they were out in the office. I can understand this kind of.
But this also speaks to increased productivity for me because I'm able to take off a Friday or Wednesday afternoon or.
Whatever it is, knowing that, hey, listen, if something is important enough, going on is important enough right now happening, I can do that.
And I have the ability to do.
That because of the tools that I have in place to work from home.
I can work on a Saturday and.
Get my work done because, you know.
I decided to take one of the.
Grandkids to Kings island on a Wednesday. Right. But I can kind of understand that. I cannot. I can kind of understand in my case, that's why my weekend work does increase in my night. My nighttime work does increase is because I'm.
I've decided to trade three to five.
In the afternoon or two to five in the afternoon for.
For noon to three on Saturday or whatever it might be.
I've decided to make that. That decision. But I bet that a lot of people. For a lot of people, that's not the case.
I bet for a lot of people, they just work.
Right. They just work because they can work from home, and so they just work. And that happens for a wide variety of reasons. Uh, it can happen because, quite honestly, people have struggles in their personal life and work as a distraction. It can. It can happen because somebody is. Is dealing with their own personal self worth, and this is how they. This is how they gain a sense of. A sense of self worth. And there's things that people have to work out personally, and work is not a replacement for that. But if you have the ability to.
Work from home, it's very easy to just work and avoid a healthy, balanced lifestyle.
Right? Yeah.
And it workers, I think we were.
Some of the first people to get laptops to work from home because of.
The need for us to do work on off hours. So this is not, I don't think.
This fits to the it person who had this ability for many, many years.
And a need to do that work in the evening or on the weekends.
So I see it emails a lot.
That come in at 10:00 at night, 01:00 in the morning, the system's down, or we're doing this update, or we're running this test, or fill in the blank. This is your world, not mine. But I see those emails a lot.
But I never stopped to ask them, hey, did you take the next day off?
You just worked from 11:00 at night to 03:00 in the morning. Did you take the next day off or did you continue to work? Typically do it. Workers have that flexibility.
I've seen it in my work.
Like, if we had a weekend release where we're changing software over on a weekend and it goes badly, and many of us are really working hard, and it's got to be up and running.
Monday morning, and, you know, the managers.
Will say, hey, everybody, take Monday off.
Or maybe two days.
They'll catch up. We'll catch up eventually.
We've had that flexibility for forever that I can remember.
Yeah.
I tell you, I have some distractions at home. Even.
Even now with no kids at home.
I have distractions, and I'm not talking about when the grandkid comes over, because that's a welcome distraction. But there are things that I do.
In life that I would rather do.
Than my income producing or my primary income producing activity. I do some coaching, and, you know, we've talked about that, about the coaching that we do. There are some other projects that I'm working on that I like doing a lot.
And if I'm working from home and.
I have the ability to do that work instead of my primary income producing.
Work, gosh, Kurt, sometimes I find myself.
Spending a little more time working on that presentation for my next student or my next coaching session. And sometimes I find myself working a.
Little more on the ad that I'm.
Creating or the webpage that I'm creating for as I'm maybe helping my daughter build a business or helping a friend build a business and advising them on that, because I talk about my daughter, because I'm helping my daughter start a business and build a business right now.
And that's becoming fun, and it's going.
To be a lot of fun. But those distractions, wow. It's easy for me to get distracted. I'll give you a perfect example. I was working from home last week, and an Amazon package derived for some stools that I bought that I had to be. That had to be put together. Well, the first thing I did is I just wanted to check and see, make sure that all, everything was. The wood wasn't scratched and everything was in place. And while I was checking to see if the wood was scratched, I checked, wasn't scratched and, or warped or stained or anything like that. I wanted to check and make sure all the hardware was there. And, well, my gosh, if I'm going to check to make sure all the hardware that was there, need to check and make sure the hardware actually fits. So I checked to make sure the hardware fits, and before I know it, I said, well, you know, I can just, let's see how easy it is.
To, when I go to do this.
Quote unquote later, uh, let's see if I can, how easy this is just to screw this one bolt in and I screw that one bolt in, and.
Before you know it, 2 hours have passed, and I've, I'm putting these, these stools together.
And that couldn't have happened unless I was working from home. So it's those kind of distractions, chores. Maybe you have pets. Maybe you do have kids.
Man.
Managing these types of distractions really require discipline and an understanding of your workflow and your own focus and effective management of your time.
I plead the fifth on this one. After your description, I don't know how people do it with young kids in the house. That would be the hardest thing. I know.
During COVID my, my manager, I heard.
Him say, we got to get the kids over to daycare.
And I don't know how daycare was.
Open even at that time, but they just, their kids were, you know, two and four years old. It's just impossible with little ones. I don't know how they could do it.
We're fortunate, Joe and I, that we.
Don'T have little kids running around the house. That's the really the biggest thing. And.
But other than that, I don't have a lot of those distractions.
So it's, it's worked out well for me. It's a good time for me to work from home.
Well, Kurt, you have, again, this is. This is in one of those ways.
That I really do admire you.
You have those distractions. You have things.
You have. I've. I've witnessed you working on, on your bathroom and building incredible furniture out of pallets, and you have those things that.
You might rather be doing, but you.
Have the focus and the discipline and the effective time management to set that stuff aside and say, no, it's work time right now, and I'm going to work. I can't say that always happens with me. Sometimes I do let those distractions get the best of me, but also I make up, I make up for that time in other ways or at other times.
So, yeah, those distractions can certainly be.
There, and they're there for me. So I understand why distractions can be a real problem for people who work from home. And, in fact, a survey from Statista says that 15% of work from homers say that home life distractions significantly hampered.
Their ability to focus when they're working from home.
I can believe that.
Yeah, it's, it's a, it can, it can be a real problem.
So there, there are definitely some, some.
Benefits of working from home. That flexibility, that, that ability to kind of do what you want when you want to do it, as long as you're getting your work done. If you need to go to a, if you want to go to the gym in the middle of the day or drop off the kids at school or when you were coaching to be.
Able to, to be home in time.
To coach your kids, the reduced commute, not sitting there in the traffic jam, cussing out the other driver because they cut you off and saving that, saving that time for personal time. We just did the math. That math is unbelievable. What did we say, 30 days that you save in a year by not work, by not driving into the office.
And under the right circumstances, people are.
Dramatically more productive when they work from home. So flexibility, reduced commute, and increased productivity. But there are some problems, right? We know there's some problems. Isolation can be a big problem. And we talked about how to overcome isolation and make sure you, or did, we didn't really talk much about that, about overcoming isolation. Make sure you stay connected with people and human beings, and you figure out a way to make a, make a good human. You have good human interactions with real people face to face. It's important to do that sometime during your, during your day. It doesn't have to be during the.
Workday, but it's important to be purposeful on making, on having real human interaction.
So isolation can be a real problem. That work life balance challenge, it can swing both ways. That work life balance, it can easy to, it can really be easy to continue working when you probably should be enjoying your home time or your personal time if you're working from home, if.
You have that big project that's due.
It'S really easy just to continue working, continue working and continue working. It's also easy if you have some.
Personal problems about yourself and maybe your.
Home and work is a distraction and keeping you from. From attending to the important things in life. So work life balance can be a challenge. And of course, we have. We have our distractions that affect our, that can affect our productivity. But all in all, I think.
I think a good mix of work.
From home and going to the office is wise. Could I do 100% working from home?
I'm not sure about me. You're making it work, though.
I'm a little bit jealous of people like my son and my daughter who.
Recent kind of recent college graduates.
Trust me, we didn't have work from home as an option at all.
So I think the hybrid model, they are spoiled rotten with it to just.
To have Monday and Friday off. They even have casual dress attire at work.
Joe, you can wear jeans. We didn't have any of that when I started working.
The eye is not amazing.
I'm not.
I was thinking about this. It's funny you brought up this topic. It was one day this week. It was beautiful outside. I walked out onto my deck and I just had this flashback of like, 30 years ago.
Wouldn't it be cool if one day.
I could have a laptop, first of all, and I could sit out my deck and work all day with the.
Sun shining and birds chirping and just.
Very peaceful, having a coffee and getting my work done out on the deck outside.
Of course, the glare, it's not practical at all.
I can't see the damn thing on.
My laptop screen outside. But here we are, somewhat 30 years ago, and I'm not out on my.
Deck at all working. I'm always inside.
But you could, right? You could, but, yeah, I've worked in the car. I've. I've worked. I've taken my laptop outside on. On my front deck, on my front patio. I've done that before. I've taken it downstairs when I had to get something done, but I still wanted to kind of see the grandkids as they're watching cartoons or something like that.
I I've been remote even when working from home.
Remote about where I am within my home or outside my home. So that is an option.
And working from home.
We didn't mention this.
I mean, if.
If you're set up properly, man, you.
Can go to a coffee shop and do your work.
As long as you have Wi Fi, a Wi Fi connection. And your. Your company doesn't have us have certain requirements that you're connected to their system. But I think that even so, you can connect to a lot of their. I can't remember what the VPN networks and do that.
So you can, you can take your laptop and go work at a coffee shop if you want to.
So it certainly has its benefits and it certainly has its drawbacks. I personally, I do like having that, that proximity, that proximity effect when I'm.
When you're, when you have somebody right.
Across the room that you can go bounce an idea, get up from your desk and go bounce an idea and have a face to face interaction. I do like that, and I would miss that.
If I was 100% work from home, I would miss that a lot.
So is working from home a blessing or a curse? It's really dependent largely on the individual. Right, Kurt? And the circumstances, the personal and professional needs.
But isn't it great that we have that option now?
Oh, yeah, it's huge.
Yeah.
Anything does differ on the person, the.
Type of job you're doing. I was thinking, Joe, it's a lot easier for me to hide from people.
That are trying to find me when.
I was in the office. I'm a support, I support people in technology, so if someone really wanted to get me, they can walk up to me at my desk and it's really.
Hard for me to get rid of.
Them when they could do that. But if they're just sending me a chat message, I have an easier time saying, hey, can you follow the proper procedure and do this and that? We don't like to get interrupted a lot because we have a lot of project work to do.
And if you get that context switching.
Over and over again from people interrupting.
You, you can't get anything accomplished on our projects. But, yeah, it definitely depends on the type of job you're doing and do you need.
There's no question having, you know, we do get around some of these things, though. We do have a very regimented schedule of work that we're doing. We meet every single morning and discuss what we're doing today, what we did.
Yesterday, and that is a daily stand.
Up meeting that we have. So there's a lot of things that.
We do that keep us on track and track the work that we're doing.
So if work from home looks like it does now, I wonder what our.
Work life balance will be ten years.
From now and what the work experience.
Will be ten years from now.
Especially as AI starts to replace a lot of the activity and a lot of the, the basic functions of that found the basic foundational processes that we will no longer have to do because AI has taken over it. I wonder what work is going to look like ten years from now or 20 years from now, and how different it will be as we get better at working from home as the tools and technologies improve. I'm pretty excited about how it's going.
To look years from now. But as we adapt to new ways of working, I think the key is.
Just to find out what works best.
For you and embrace it and feel.
Blessed that we live in an environment and a culture and a time that.
We can, we can have these options. I dig it.
I love.
Thank you for bringing this topic, Joe. I am celebrating the options and the flexibility I have.
Me too.
And I do enjoy going in and seeing people in person. It's good that I knew them in person before I knew them virtually, so it's even more fun to go and see them.
That's definitely helpful.
It's helpful when you come out of college or whatever and come out of.
Work, come out of school and you've never had a chance to meet your.
Coworks, coworkers in person.
That's kind of odd, isn't it? We've had some of that, yeah.
Yeah.
How about a win for the week?
Well, I think this just happened at.
A good timing for this episode because I am constantly doing something in my office studio here, adding technology.
In this case, I added lots of lights. These are led string lights that I.
Put up and some of it was for decoration, but a lot of it's practical. I have a corner desk that I built, as Joe mentioned, out of pallets.
Which I really love.
I love the spot and the orientation of my desk, but it's always been kind of a dark space.
I've got lots of shelves that I.
Put up for decoration of things that I've accumulated. These led strip lights I'm really enjoying. I tried a couple of different. I had a failure.
I was. Well, first of all, you remember we.
Talked about I can't wait sometimes for something to come in. And I knew that Walmart had the same brand. And I went over and I bought a string.
I kept trying to figure out how.
Am I going to configure these the way that I wanted to, to be able to cover the shelves that I thought I was brainstorming this like crazy.
So they had a 24 footer of.
This govee RGBic pro led lights and I strung it nicely in cover of a large space. And then I had some coming in.
From Amazon, really cheaper and I found.
Out that they were cheaper and I.
Thought they were the same, but they weren't.
One was a pro and one was not from Amazon. And, you know, I was stringing up the 16 footer up above here and.
As I pulled it, there was a.
Sharp piece of aluminum that I was using and it cut the led light.
Oh, no.
And I had half of it working and half, and it wasn't. And then I ended up going back to Walmart and buying another 24 footer to finish up the job. But I'll probably return the broken one to Amazon.
Sure.
And, and then I strung one behind me. You might see it right now where my records are displayed. Put those up.
Yeah.
So I did these led aluminum channel system.
They're aluminum for some of the spots and some are just the raw led lights, but they do all kinds of things. I got an app with all kinds of colors and place the music. I can change and shut off with.
The app anytime I want.
So I'm really excited that I can really see and I probably look really brighter on the video that you're watching right now.
And I know that you listeners can't.
Can'T see it, but they do look cool, man.
They do look cool.
I'm, I might see if I can.
Integrate some led lights because they really, they brighten up the room, they brighten up the environment. They, they have a welcoming, warm look to them. I really like them a lot. And you can change colors and dim.
Them and all that, all that cool stuff.
So, yeah, I like them.
If.
Those led lights are certainly a win for the week and I'm sure it.
Helps your, helps your work environment, your.
Work from home environment, right?
Yeah, it's become a really comfortable place.
To do my podcasting and my day job.
Very cool.
My win for the week is I had over 20 individual conversations this past week with my north american reps, Canada and the continental United States, to introduce a twelve month very large scale sales campaign that's going to dramatically, if all goes right, will dramatically increase part sales throughout North America. And it's something I've been working on for a long time, putting the numbers together, putting the strategy together. And I finally had those final 20 individual conversations and sent the reps their packets and it. These guys are excited to go to work for this, for these, for this campaign.
So pretty proud of that.
That's huge.
I didn't know you were working on that.
You just like surprising me with it.
And.
How did it go over?
Yeah, the reps are excited about it now. You know, the proof is in the pudding. It all depends on how the scoreboard looks at the end of the year, at the end of this twelve months. But I'm going to do everything I can to motivate them throughout the year.
You got a resource for us?
I'll bet you I can guess what it is.
Yeah, this is the govee RGB ic pro LED lights. You can get them from Amazon. Also, I think I put a link.
In here for Joe that points.
I think I put the Amazon one, but I got them at Walmart. And this pro version has more like.
Of a gel thickness to it. It's definitely sturdier and it's brighter.
I know. That was the other thing I noticed when I tried to string up the other cheaper brand. It was on sale for like $15. It's, it said go v RGB ic, but it didn't say pro. That was the difference. So the one in the back that you're looking at, Joe, is the cheaper Amazon one.
It's, it's not too bad, but if.
You want to get a little higher.
Up, it definitely is about double the cost and.
But you know, if it's going to be here permanent. And I really liked it. I went for that.
And then I also bought these Musada.
LED aluminum channel systems.
Doing all my research in YouTube now.
You could get really more expensive led lights and the channel system would make it look like it was one continuous beam going through there. So if you wanted that kind of.
Look more in like, you know, your.
Dining room or your kitchen or something, that was.
And the research I said, I knew that my led lights were too spread.
Apart to give that kind of, mine.
Looks like more like that theater, the.
Movie theater kind of effect, which is fine for me in my office. And I'm displaying my vinyl collection above here with that. But I tried those, they were very good.
So the links will be in the show notes.
So you would recommend the pro version, the govee RGBiC pro led lights?
Yeah, I think definitely.
If you want, you know, you want.
Something brighter, something a little more durable.
I mean, if it was just your.
Kid'S bedroom and you didn't care, then I might go with the cheaper one.
But if you wanted a more professional.
Look, you definitely want to go with the pro lights and then you can get even more expensive and the space in between.
But these have a lot of features.
On both of them. Use this govee app. I mean, it's incredible.
It'll play the music, the beat of the music.
It'll do all kinds of rainbows and.
It'S even got AI.
So it's like incredible amount of different.
Colors and features that you get with it. But yeah, they all use that same app.
I'll check them out. My resource is a book that I.
Read several years ago by Daniel Pink called the surprising truth about what motivates us. And I thought about, I thought about this book as I was preparing for this episode, talking about working from home. And the book itself isn't necessarily a work from home book and it's not focused on remote work, but it does talk about what motivates us and self management that is crucial for working from home and managing yourself in a home office, in a home office setting. And it speaks about three primary needs that a human has to really move them forward.
The need for autonomy, the need for.
Mastery, and the need for purpose. And Daniel Pink does a really good job in this book and I like the book a lot. And it's a book that I'm probably going to revisit. I remember reading it and I also.
Remember reading it and listening to it.
Through an audio book subscription that I had.
This is one of those books that is better read, I believe, than listen to.
For some reason. I felt like I got a lot.
More out of it by reading a book. In fact, that might be a, that.
Might be a good discussion for us sometime. This book is called the surprising truth about what motivates us by Daniel Pink. I'd highly recommend you pick up this book.
It's awesome.
I think you should do a podcast.
Episode on those points. I very well may.
I very well may.
Better do it fast before I steal it from you. Isn't there a TED talk by him on the same subject?
I think so, yeah.
Yeah.
No, he is very insightful.
Love the ideas that he puts out.
Let's wrap up with our quote.
I know Joe likes the short ones.
This is one of those ones where maybe we've used it before. We certainly have quoted this person before.
But the best way to predict the future is to create it. Abraham Lincoln.
Oh, I love a good Abraham Lincoln quote.
You know, he has this.
Abraham Lincoln has this story that he tells that that's attributed to him about sharpening, sharpening his ax. And I'm just going to invite you to look up the story. It's awesome.
But yeah, Davraham Lincoln has some great.
Quotes and this is one of them. The best way to predict the future is to create it. And he is one that predicted his, that created his future because he came.
From very humble beginnings.
Right.
And he created his future. So he is a. He's certainly somebody that can speak to that with integrity. We did the read off his features to create. Love it.
We read his endeavors and failures. I think one time it was like a big long list. His hand at and what he failed at and what tried his condescending and what he failed all the way up to becoming accomplished states, of course, situated union and one of the coming president, probably top president.
Well, he's commonly, when people are surveyed, commonly picked as the greatest president of all time.
Oh, next to Washington, there's probably the debate is just between him and Washington.
Right, right.
I might take Thomas Jefferson. That's a different discussion.
Your bias.
My quote comes from Warren Buffett. And I love this quote because it makes you think about everything you do.
And how you're treating people and your own personal integrity. I like this quote and it reminds.
Me to you kind of always have to be aware of how you're presenting yourself to the world.
It's by Warren buffet. It takes 20 years to build a.
Reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.
Yeah.
It's really relatable to your topic because when you're working from home, I think.
You have an extra bit of responsibility and your integrity to get your work done.
Yeah.
Yeah. You have to. You have to be a truthful person.
Of integrity and honesty to work from home and do it and do it the right way and do it in.
A way that brings, still brings value to your.
To your company.
But it's so true. You can make a mistake after 20 years of building something that could take it down significantly.
What you've built.
Yep.
For sure takes a long time to build a good reputation. They have interaction with people that. Where they trust you and they value your opinion and they look to you for leadership. But just do one thing.
Just do one thing that. And that can ruin it.
That can ruin that 20 years worth of work.
Especially in today's world.
The word bad news goes fast with fast media. It certainly does. It certainly does.
Yeah.
Thanks for the discussion today, Kurt. I appreciate you hanging out with me. It's always, it's always, it's always fun to talk to you as we wrap up. Our website is dudesinprogress.com dudesinprogress.com. If you want to reach out to us, our email address is dudesinprogress.com dot. And we've mentioned a couple times that we are offering coaching services, both in podcast podcasting and other other coaching services. If you want to reach out to us about that. Dudes in progress.com. Remember, if you are working from home, you gotta continue to make progress, right? You don't have to be perfect, but you gotta make progress to prove that you are a person that can be trusted to work from home. Because progress, it's better than perfection. You gotta keep moving forward.
I'm always working, Joe. You know me. I'm gonna keep working harder next week.
Oh yeah, we sure will talk to you soon, my friend.