I used to freelance for many years, in teams spread all over the world. Now I am a change facilitator in a big (and great) group. Here’s my 2 cents regarding #HOFFICERULES. Most important: You decide how you work best, not a social media post. Don’t listen to people with no whatsoever expertise but producing click bait content…
1 – PLACE
You decide where you work best. I for instance love the sofa or the bed. Because I hate sitting. I also like standing next to my coffee machine or walking around outside in my yard. If my kids come, I hide somewhere.
2 – DRESS
You decide if you wear a tuxedo, aluminium foil or nothing. Be aware of video calls though. I always check if my laptop has a camera and if it is properly shut / taped.
These industrial actors have dictated what’s cool for too long.
Screw hoodies and sneakers!
3 – TIME
You decide if you work now, have a break, a kitkat or an argument with your kids. Just be transparent (afk = away from keyboard, LDAIATTW: leave daddy alone, I am trying to work!) You also decide how long you work. As long as you stay legal your body and mind tell you when to stop, listen to them.
4 – TEAMWORK
You decide if you coordinate with others to make sure that the whole day runs nice and smooth or if you desperately try to call people at 9pm – while you were afk all day.
5 – TRACKING
You decide if you set up new excels and long mails to keep track of all the tasks and ideas you usually write on sticky notes and spread them all over the office… …. or if 2020 couldn’t maybe be the year you set up a professional workflow tool, just saying
6 – TOOLS
You decide if working in virtual teams now makes you panic and research a lot if Deon is better or Confluence or MS Teams or Tik tok – or you can look back at generations that have been working just fine with icq. Using tools is better than constantly checking out new tools. (Nonetheless: get MS teams and Deon! 🙂 AND YOU DECIDE if you get a proper headset asap or annoy people with lousy audio quality and awkward background noises!
7 – IDLING
You decide what to do if you’re running out of tasks. Nose picking, stretching, awareness trainings, … I would use the time to call process partners I haven’t called for a while or to contemplate on the question ‚was my work excellent? Can I improve something?‘, you decide
8 – FLOW
You decide if you want to reach the state of mind called Flow. If you know it and you love the flow, you might not like breaks that much. When I’m in Hoffice for instance, I only stop to avoid wetting my pants. And I love it that way. If you don’t know what I mean by flow, find out!
9 – PEOPLE
You decide how to make sure the team stays a team. I for instance do not like to be emotionally touched by receiving cat videos all the time. But sometimes.
10 – STREAMING
You decide if listening to music while working is worth wasting all the earths bandwidth. People might need it for more important purposes these days… and it produces CO2. You might instead listen to MP3 you have on your local devices (do you know MP3? It is music that is on your computer or phone even without internet!). If you listen to youtube clips, you can turn quality to lowest without serious loss of audio quality.
Conclusion: You decide a lot. #Hoffice is for grown ups. But you can dress like in the good old teenage days 🙂