On Testing Productivity and Online Learning While Working Remotely
#WEEK13
Hi Human,
If you’re on this side of the universe, you should know by now that remote working is now compulsory. For giant tech companies that had structures in place, remote work is a walk in the park, for small businesses who had to let their staff work from home, this period will be a trial and testing period as they scramble to put structures in place to test the productivity of their teams.
Well, this week, I recorded my work log, how a typical day at home looks like for me. It was remarkably different from what I had imagined, I also asked a few techies trying remote work for the first time. You might learn a thing or two about how to make your work interesting…and productive, jump in
All Tag Lines are great, but some are greater than others…
Like this one “You just hit a route that doesn’t exist, the sadness”
I didn’t know how to react to this message, to applaud them for their well-played sarcasm or to be upset that I did not find what I was looking for.
You would think zoom would have a super dope tagline about video conferencing, all those stuff, but here’s how their tagline reads
“Deliver happiness to your colleagues, invite them to zoom today” Only Zoom can try to relate two mutually exclusive things together, how is zoom happiness? In all, trying out zoom for the first time, was a battle between phone and laptop.
I was prompted to download the app before getting access to a meeting and that was not what I wanted to do, at all. I didn’t think that was a great move, since they are the best thing that has happened to virtual meeting since sliced bread, who knows. They must be getting something right.
It’s not about getting the right answers…
It is about asking the right questions! In my past work entry, I’ve talked about the predictability on search engines and how they would have to be able to understand human emotions and derive more accurate results if they want to still be in style, here’s an example.
I clipped this picture from a video I watched. I loved the idea of using actual size phone screen layout to sketch ideas on paper. Now all I had to do was find this on the internet. What would my keywords look like?
“Drawn phone screen layout for wireframing?”
“Real size phone screen for sketching prototypes”
The right questions to throw at the search engine is my challenge, and worst off, search engines do not read minds, they are not the oracles of Delphi.
This means I have to keep fine-tuning my keywords until I hit a sweet spot. Another way to search for this online might be inserting this photo, through Google photo search, but it might derive the video where this photo was gotten from than what I’m looking for. I’m sure you can figure something out here, if you find a way, kindly share.
This is what a typical day looks like for me: Wednesday 25th March
Insert image of my schedule
9:00 am: Drew my tasks and assignments for the day and began work
10:00 am: Felt hungry, decided to make breakfast, that took like forever
11:26 am: Finally got around back to my workspace, but then the internet was messing up
12:00 pm: Started work proper
2:00 pm: I had only written one article and it wasn’t even finished
4:00 pm: Time is going! Time is going!! Help!!!
5:00 pm: Completed article, posted on social media, answered mail
7:00 pm: Finally closed my Laptop and started a self-inflicted Justin Timberlake themed party…
Look, don’t judge me, we are all getting a hang of this remote working thing, so for a first-timer, I think I’m doing pretty well for myself.
Key Learning for the week…
People say it takes discipline and self-motivation to work, and we’ve been doing that since time immemorial but here are a few lessons I learnt and some productivity knack anyway
This week, revealed a lot of things about the work habits I did not know:
-I was always getting distracted from one task to the other. If I found an article difficult to write, I would skip it to work on something else
- I got impatient when a task was taking longer than I envisage to complete when that happens, I left it halfway, I found fulfilment in seeing a task completed than seeing it well completed
-To prove to my own self that I was getting this working from home thing, I would always complete my tasks for the day, working way beyond a typical office hour. It’s hard to leave your work when you’re not hurrying to beat traffic. I asked a few techies of their remote working experience and here’s what they said.
“Working from home has been sub-optimal barely got any work done. I’ve been focusing on personal stuff. I. think I need to get a new job because remote working this current job is shit”
-Sam, Business Strategist
“I have been working from home for two weeks now. My first week was productive because I was in my own place in Port Harcourt, I had electricity and control over my time. This week, I stayed with my family and didn’t work as hard, at some point, everyone needs one thing or the other from me”
— Cynthia, Software Dev
“One thing I learnt about myself (well I’ve always known) is that I like to work alone. I’ll seek help and clarifications when I need them, but I’ll like to get the rest of the work done by myself. The biggest challenge for me was overcompensating. I found that I was doing way more work than I would normally do while at the office. I was working late into the night because the lines are blurred and there’s no official ‘closing time’ anymore. I hope that changes this new week.”
— Chinelo, Management Consultant
An unexpected break and an Internet full of opportunities
The standout advantage of working remotely is getting time enough to squeeze in learning and personal development. And it seems the internet decided to open the Kraken of learning opportunities and make them free. Many startups and Edtech platforms are doing their own bit of CSR by making their platform free or slashing prices. Here are a few you should latch on:
There are so many opportunities out there, as many startups are trying to do their best to promote online learning and the use of their platforms, this period
- Facebook and Andela have partnered to up-skill developers across Sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, and South-Africa) through the #BuildforSDG Challenge. Apply here
- Flutter Wave extended the women’s day grant till April 6th. You can still apply if you’re a female founder
- Udacity is giving one-month free access to their Nanodegreee Programs
- Packt is running free online workshops for software programming courses.
- 365 Data Science is offering all their courses for free until April 15th.
- Product school is giving out a $1999 course at no cost. Use the coupon code: learn from home
That’s it for this week guys, let’s take it one day at a time, do all you can do today and leave all you can’t.
Maximize opportunities available for personal growth, take deep breathes and share opportunities you find here on Twitter, I’d love to hear about your work experience too.
