E1: Remote Work 101: 3 Tips to Set up Your Space For Success

Episode #1: Remote Work 101: Top 3 Tips to Set up Your Space For Success

 [00:00:00] This is episode number one. Very exciting. And I'm going to kick this podcast off with an episode that gives you my top tips for working your space. How do you set up your remote workspace so that it works for you? It sets you up for success.

I've been working remote since 2019 and in that time. I've had some hard lessons on what it takes to properly create a space that functions and makes work smooth and efficient. And so today I'm going to share those lessons with you because when you're working, you need to show up, you've got to work it in your conversations, in your work product, with your team, with your customers.

And so you need a space that sets you up [00:01:00] for success. Think of it like a kitchen. Have you ever been to an Airbnb or a hotel kitchen and you've walked in and you just need to make a bowl of cereal, but there are no spoons or there is no bowl, or you don't know where the cereal is, right?

You need things in places to set you up to do even the simplest of tasks. So we're going to think of your office like a kitchen and that you have all the tools. Where you need them so that you can do what you need to do. Okay. So these are three tips. I'm going to start with tip number one, which is make sure you're plugged into your ethernet.

Are you the person who's asking on the call? Can you hear me? Can you see me now? Is my video going in and out? If that's you, then chances are is that you are probably not plugged in hardwired to your ethernet. Okay. Thanks. It took me two years, [00:02:00] yes, two years to figure this out. Two years I had been working on Wi Fi and I was constantly the person on the call that was having connection issues.

And then finally, someone who I spoke to quite a bit said, you know, you might want to check your Ethernet. And I thought my Ethernet. That sounds so familiar and like a really good idea and I realized while I had a docking station I had not plugged in the Ethernet wire.

It was not part of how I set up my space I mean, I'm a Wi Fi gal right by the time I got to college laptops were ubiquitous . I've never owned a desktop computer.

So while I was familiar with what Ethernet was, I had not applied that to my work situation. And look, the reality is, is that when we're working remote, we are typically stationed in one place. So, there's good reason to have an Ethernet. The ethernet enables you to show up with the best connection possible so that you can have a smooth video [00:03:00] experience.

And let's face it, when you are primarily communicating on video, , you need to show up polished and you need to show up consistently. And when you constantly have connection issues, it can reflect negatively on your professionalism. Okay, tip number one super basic like I said, but really the essential of working remotely and unfortunately It took me a long time to figure that out So I'm led to believe there must be others out there who could use this tip to to make their remote work Experience smoother easier better faster clearer all the things above Okay, second tip get the gear If you're working remotely, you need to get the gear.

Don't be cheap. This is so easy for us to do when we're working from home. We think, okay, I'm working from home. I can work from my dining room table, right? But the truth is, is that those tables were not created for you to do work.

So while you can eat a meal at them. You might not be that [00:04:00] comfortable working for eight hours in that same chair at that same table. And so if you're going to be working remote on a consistent basis, , you need to invest in the proper gear and think about all the things you need in an office.

bringing them into your home office. So I'm going to share my top pieces of gear that I think are absolutely essential to me working. Of course, there are a lot of others, but here's my top three. The first is a webcam. Video is essential. The only way you are showing up to your peers, your boss, your clients, your stakeholders at work.

And so you need to come in clear and you got to work the camera, right? You got to show up your best because that is the image that people see of you. Your laptop camera is not doing it and I think that we've now gotten to a place where people recognize this but every once in a while I will still see somebody who's joining a call on their laptop [00:05:00] camera and that can work every once in a while, but the best practice is really to invest in a proper webcam that's going to stream your video clearly crisply so that you can show up professional and show up really the way that you want to, which is your best.

Okay. So webcam number two, the proper chair, those beautiful chairs we see on Pinterest are just that they are beautiful chairs, but they are not. ergonomically correct. They are not supporting your back and hip health, your foot health, all the things that we need to support ourselves when we're sitting for long periods of time.

I've invested in a still case chair. There's also Herman Miller, there's lots of other great brands out there. That make ergonomically correct chairs to support you. I will share the link for the chair that I use and all the stuff that I use in the notes. But whatever it is, find something, test it, go to the store, feel it out, see that it works for you, that you have the [00:06:00] right swivel, that it's the right height, that you can, you know, rest your arms comfortably so that you're supported while you sit.

In the same tone, right, your desk, make sure that you have a desk that supports the type of equipment that you need, right? It's big enough to support the monitors, the phones, the laptop, whatever gear that you have, you have a desk that is the right size for the work. And what I have, I just got this, um, recently and I love is an uplift desk.

So previously I had been using the attachment that goes on top of my desk. They're really, cost effective and I'd put my laptop on that. And then when I'd want to stand, I'd raise that attachment on my desk. And then, you know, I could lower it whenever I wanted to sit back down.

And that was a great solution and it worked for me for a long time. But recently I invested in an uplift desk where the desk itself is moving. And so everything moves up with it, including, you know, if I have a cup of [00:07:00] coffee on my desk, whatever's on my desk moves up with me and there are other options out there, but I have been using this desk, , for a short period of time now, and I absolutely.

I love it. So the chair desk environment is my number two piece of gear that is worth the investment. The last piece of gear that I strongly recommend to set up your workspace is a printer. It's a printer because I cannot think of a work environment where I have not had access to a printer. So why would I have a work environment in my home where I don't have access to a printer?

To me, it's about replicating that office experience and the things that I would normally print in the office. I now have access to print at home and it does help me for a couple of reasons to have a printer. The first is that I see things much better. imprint. And so I have found over time that when I rely too much on the digital copy of something, I can just [00:08:00] miss some of the details.

So it helps me for that reason. And that's a personal preference. The other reason is that it gives my eyes a rest. Looking at that bright screen all day long is it's I mean, I can sometimes end the day with headaches. So having a printout really helps. my eyes, just give it a little bit of a rest so I can look at something different.

And then, hey, look, I can take that printout, I can move around the house, and I don't need to necessarily do all of my work at my desk. I can sit on the porch , and read something. I can sit on the couch and mark something up, right? So it gives me a little more flexibility and movement in my day. And the other reason why I like printouts is because it allows me to be more present.

Present when I'm speaking to someone through video. So if I'm in a meeting and I am speaking to someone through the webcam and I'm looking at a digital document, then I'm usually toggling my screens and look that I do that a lot. [00:09:00] It happens. It's just the way that we work today. And I think people are now used to that, but there are some occasions where I really want to be a little more present and I don't want the distraction of the toggling or even the screen disruptions that can happen with pings.

And so I print out whatever the thing is, and it just allows me to have more focus during the conversation and be more present and Show up the way would show up in the office, which is if I were going to a meeting about something in particular I probably would print it out and have a live discussion about it, right?

So it just takes the things that we do in the office and brings them home Now, there's lots of other equipment that you can get. There's lights and there's monitors and, you know, there's headphones and all of those things are important too. But those are my top three. Okay. So first tip, make sure you're plugged into your hardwire Ethernet. Second tip, get the gear. My third tip is to create a protected working space, Cause we're talking about [00:10:00] working it, working remote and how to do that. so that you can show up your best. And it's really hard to show up your best when you are prone to distractions and interruptions during the day. And when you don't have a protected working space, that is exactly what ends up happening, 

you don't exercise in your kitchen, at least most of us don't, right? We don't exercise in our kitchen. We don't have toilets in our living rooms, right? And why don't we do these things? Because those environments are not conducive to the thing we need to accomplish, 

if you are working out of your dining room, for example, and there's no measure in place to create some sort of boundary around your workspace, then you're going to be distracted or interrupted by things that are going on in the house. The same is true in the reverse, the people in the home are going to be disrupted or distracted by you working.

And so there's this constant awareness of how loud you're [00:11:00] working, how much you're working, how you're working, and that is taking away from what you're really trying to accomplish during the day. So I recognize that this is a privilege and that not everybody has access to a protected working space But I do want to share a story with you That might encourage you to be more creative in how you think about your protected working space And when I say protected working space, I mean a space that has some sort of physical boundary to it So if you have a room with the door, I mean, that's the dream right?

Especially a door with a lock on it. That's the dream But there's a scale to this and a spectrum to this 

A very close friend of mine works from home and she works from home most of the week. She is in a hybrid work environment, but she's working from home at least three days a week. So that's a significant amount of time and she had set up her home office in her loft space.

 she lives in a multi-story town home. And on the second floor right at the top of the stairs, there's an open loft space and that's where she had set up her work environment. It was a great amount of space and it was carved out from the rest of the [00:12:00] home. 

But what ended up happening is because she has a young child at home who was often home during the day or during working hours with a caretaker, she found that she was constantly being interrupted. Not only that, she felt like she had to work. Quietly in order to not disrupt bedtime or the morning routine or whatever else was going on in the home.

So she got creative. She turned her foyer slash entryway into her home office. That room came with a door, which was amazing, but she completely sectioned off that part of the home and they sort of gave up their mudroom space for her office. Now was that a sacrifice for her and her family? Absolutely. Absolutely. That was a big sacrifice for her family to lose that real estate in the home for, boots and backpacks and all the things that we put in our mud rooms. However, the payoff was worth it. They had another [00:13:00] entry point into the house via the garage.

She respects and values her work enough to advocate for turning that space into her workspace and it made sense. It was a much healthier environment for not just her and her work, but also the whole house, right? It wasn't, you know, be careful mom's upstairs working. It became a better setup for everybody in the home.

And that was a really creative way of thinking about. Workspace. What I've also seen work is to create natural boundaries. So , if you have to be in your dining room or in your living room or in your bedroom to work, because that's the space that you have, use a separate desk. Don't use your dining room desk.

You know, try not to use your vanity, create a separate desk. And there are some really Right size desks out there that can scale pretty small to fit into all different types of spaces. 

There are so many ways in which you can find a separate desk that you can [00:14:00] keep your laptop on, right? You don't need to clear it at the end of every day because that desk serves a multifunctional purpose in the house, right? You have your own carved out protected working space and you can use perhaps a natural boundary to create that protected environment.

So even though you are physically situated in your bedroom, Let's say, could you, , hang something from the wall or put a rug underneath the workspace or use a natural boundary like hanging plants or some sort of gate, right? Natural gate that looks nice, right? We don't, we don't necessarily want. A non looking nice thing in our house, but, but something that looks nice that Signals to you and the rest of your family or the rest of the people that you're living with in your home , this is my workspace and when I'm here, I'm not to be disrupted,

You're to treat me like somebody who's working because that's exactly what I am. So those are my tips. [00:15:00] Ethernet, gear, protected space. These are the things that I didn't do initially, it took me two years to get an ethernet. It took me many years to build up my inventory of gear, and I'm six years in, and I only recently feel like I got all the gear in place that I need.

It took me time of figuring out what that was and also experimenting with different products to see what works for me. So it's a process , but it's certainly worth the investment. And then protected working space. There was a while where I was working, , in all different parts of my house, I've worked on the first floor.

I've tried working on the second floor. I've shared my office with my husband. I mean, there's been lots of experimenting to figure out what works for me. And right now I just moved my office. Actually. I'm now in a much smaller room than I've ever been before, but it's private. And I realized that privacy.

is absolutely everything. So I've downsized my desk and some of the equipment that I use. But what I, what I've gotten [00:16:00] is complete privacy. I have a room with a door that is off on the side of the house. I'm really lucky to have that. But I've learned for me, this is really what I need.

I need something away from the front door, that gets a lot of traffic, And while this is a small space that I'm in, it's an efficient working space, which is exactly what I need it to be. 

So those are my top tips for working your space so that it works for you. I hope this helps you set up your space for success. I'd love to hear your ideas around what I might've missed, things that you've learned along the way in terms of your remote workspace. And you can go to work at remote.

com to get in touch, learn more. And also in the show notes, you'll find some of the links for the products that I use to help get you started on your journey. All right. See you at episode number two. 

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