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Jan. 4, 2022

Will Work Friendships Go Extinct?

Will Work Friendships Go Extinct?

This week, we chat about making friends while working remotely and habits that help us wind down after the workday.

Transcript

Ryan Purvis  0:00  
Hello, and welcome to the digital workspace works Podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host supported by producer Heather Bicknell. In the series, you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in the field story from the frontlines. The problems they're facing, how they solve them. The areas they're focused on from technology, people and processes to the approaches they took. That'll help you to get to grips with the digital workspace inner workings.

Pretty good, how are you? Yeah, not too bad. Not too bad. You have a good Christmas?

Heather Bicknell  0:34  
I did. Yeah. Since a nice time with the family.

Ryan Purvis  0:38  
How about you? Yeah, good. Thanks. We are in eastern Western Cape in a hotel. So we have a nice little family vacation and well, I'm working. They're all on holiday. But yeah, all good.

Heather Bicknell  0:53  
Yeah, it looks nice there.

Ryan Purvis  0:55  
Yeah, it's a nice place where there's been a bit iffy. But that seems to be normal. Nowadays. Global warming is good. It's a good vibe. Nice. It's nice and warm. Key.

Heather Bicknell  1:09  
Yeah, that's nice.

Ryan Purvis  1:12  
I haven't read that article you sent me Sorry, I haven't even got to that stuff yet. But just just the headline, I thought was great, because that's exactly what I was talking to someone about the other day. They're talking about the psychological effects of working from home, and how you get into some really bad habits. And, you know, like, like, I'm one of them, like, I'll go to, I'll go to a gym in the morning. And I'll go for a walk, and I'll do some email or something like that. And then, before, I know, my first calls are coming up and haven't even showered yet. So then I'll spend the whole day because I'm not seeing anyone read me on camera, I'll shower about create an afternoon. Because I got a shot at some point. But that's my first gap. And then there's other things about being too much to camp with your family too much. Because you're at home. And that also starts creating issues, because you actually need to get nougat from them as well. I mean, then we get previews for all these sorts of things. And I was, you know, I was thinking about it. From from the point of what you said the article, think about the friendships and you forget about that as well. For someone that is bonding with people at work, and not just collaborate, trust each other, but it's the friendships or the bonds for life in some sense.

Heather Bicknell  2:38  
Yeah, I think when it comes to difficult difficulty of building ponds, in our sense, it made me think of how you know, a lot of people, when you make when you're younger kids in schools and shared activities, maybe it's family friends, and then a lot of adults, you know, where you're spending most of your time that you'd be feeding people to become friends with which would be the workplace and a lot of those friends might not be you know, people you are in the same department with or work with every day. So when you lose those kind of hallway moments, any Yeah, just it's not as easy to form bonds and I think that the Office friendship will I don't think it's impossible to make become friends with someone in a remote sense, but I think it's just it takes longer

Ryan Purvis  3:41  
Yeah, definitely. And then well, I think we were just talking about it now in this previous call you know, there's a there's a need to meet up to go and see a customer to you will have that bonding moment because you're flying into one location your guy for dinner, yeah, that'll be the first time you mean physically so it'll be almost like an adventure. Then you'll have this stressful engagement with a customer because it's always stressful. But that'll create about the foundations for friendship to happen because you get to know each other, you're spending time in a hotel, the outside of your comfort zones. So that'll that'll help you bond really quickly. When offers you may never speak to that person you're meeting so you don't build the fringe relationship because it's it's it's challenging in some respects.

Heather Bicknell  4:27  
Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. But I think you're right. Kind of quickest ways I've ever bought it with people have been going to conferences together because you know, you have the air travel the meals out the stressful conference experience, depending on what you're there to do. And then you might go out afterwards. It's just a lot of lot more socialization, you really get to see different sides of people that you might not in kind of office environment where there's just it's More formal or there's less chances to interact?

Ryan Purvis  5:04  
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, I think we're still social beats. So we need to have those things. But I am finding interesting. So we've obviously been traveling quite a lot. And I'm running into people doing the traveling, and finding that people are a lot more social now than they were, in some respects, because they said they've craved it for so long. And I've tried it a few guys that are also here on holiday. But they're also working. So we've almost carried out a little work in club. So we meet and we meet like, six in the morning, we do like two hours to get three hours together, then they go through and I go my way. And then in the sort of the spy is in the spotlight, you'll catch up in the back of the house with their analysis going on. This is gonna I'm actually it's interesting. I'm actually learning a lot from people here. You know, a couple lawyers and a couple guys that build cars and race cars and what I'm learning about how they do their business now, you know, we never think dabbled in cars would be doing it remotely. But he's, he said, I've designed the car in this way and build it. So I'm just checking in I'm answering the questions while the golden I can do it while I'm here. And I'm with you walk out with cameras and send me videos and do it. Now before we get to that, but it makes total sense.

Heather Bicknell  6:23  
Yeah, it's very cool. That situation sounds very digital nomad to me. Yes. I did want to ask you, because you'd sent that interesting article about kind of how you check off from work. A couple weeks ago, it was kind of like tips for mending your day. Do you have any? Do you try to do any sort of routine or what's your kind of practice for that? I do.

Ryan Purvis  7:00  
I have a sort of trigger. That when I'm when it's the end of the day, I always read a book, or read chapter out of the book. So that that's how I ended day and I have a before I'm allowed to read the book, I've got a a template that I write out all the things that I need to do tomorrow, sort of all the open strings that need to be tied off. And then while I'm reading a book, I kind of fill that in as I go. So just I don't get anything, Why let the things that I am worried about come out on a piece of paper. And that's pretty quick, it takes me about five bullets to do. But that's that's the that's just the trigger that flicks the switch between end of the day and, and going a bit trickier now working more us hours. Because that I used to do about four or five o'clock local time. Now I'm doing that sort of eight, nine o'clock, sometimes setting for the day. But that it's amazing how the brain is trained to know when you do that process, then you stop worrying about works definitely when you go into work, sort of chill out. But I do take time with the family during during that sort of product up to seven o'clock periods, the bath time, dinner time, all that stuff. So that can be a frustrating time because that's usually the meaty time with stuff that's going on. As a US guys come online, and they want to chat to stalking snitching on my Glock entrepreneur, it's our boss. But that's that'll that'll sort itself out, you know, as people get to know what's going on. And we're where I am. Yeah, that's about it. So

Heather Bicknell  8:39  
yeah, well, I'm curious about this template that you use to log your, your stuff when you wind down. But I have not like a thing I do every day, but just sort of some similar habits. So I usually take another day Friday to do a big brain dump of all of the things that I want to remind myself about for the following week. The most days, I wouldn't say of great habits around it. I usually end work between 530 and seven. I mean, it really depends. I feel like my work habits are a lot better now. Joining a new team I'm kind of taking the time to I've been really intentional about trying to preserve more of that work life balance but I hadn't doing in the past so I usually check off work and then scroll social media on the couch for 15 to 30 minutes and then make dinner and then that's like just the evening, make dinner, watch shows, do dishes. Take care of the cats. It's not a super productive evening routine, but it's pretty standard.

Ryan Purvis  9:57  
Yeah, I mean the templates very simple. Just answer your question. I mean, it is really just a case of is it is there a meeting, if the setup is the cause I need to do is the brain work I need to do so like, I'm working on a design document moment. So that's always on my list of things that I need to do tomorrow, that I meant to do that and get to like, go going to read something or research on the order books. And that just helps me when I wake up in the morning, to go, I just got this plan, sort of freshness, the fresh start to look at the most brain intensive things first. And because the worst thing you do is going to Kojima that just scattered all over the place. And then by about 10 o'clock, usually, that's when I start looking at email. But the templates, very basic, it's meant to be basic, it's going to be so simple that you just can't not do because it's too complicated. Which is, which is what I did do that first out of very complicated, messy thing. And it's just never it never went.

Heather Bicknell  11:02  
Yeah, it's like too much work to actually fill it out.

Ryan Purvis  11:04  
Yeah, exactly the

Heather Bicknell  11:08  
author of that article, was there anything that they had pointed out as a transitional routine that you thought was interesting, or want to try it yourself?

Ryan Purvis  11:23  
There were a couple of things that I liked about I mean, some of the stuff is pretty well, nasiha, mostly pretty obvious. Yeah. But I like things like context. So we do certain tasks. You don't get you don't like you don't if you can help it, you don't really work. You know, that sort of thing. So even even in the hotel are you staying now, I've got a desk set up there, that is away from the lounge, and it's away from the bedroom. I work there. And that's only thing that I do this. So if I sit down, we're going to work. It's really early in the morning and the kids asleep and stuff. I'll leave the room and I'll go surfing the internet cafe and work there. So there's always a break. Physical break between the areas. And I think the other general things is just putting things on your calendar. So if you need time, like I said, I need to do pillow bed and bath time that's booked in my calendar. Because I put meetings together school, that sort of thing. So those are all good habits to have. I can't think of anything else off that article that really, really jumped out as Yeah, it was really those things. Did you have anything you'd like to add to it?

Heather Bicknell  12:41  
Yeah, those are those are all good practices. I agree that I think there's nothing here that was particularly expected, I think, maybe ones that I wouldn't necessarily have thought about is starting a craft after work. So kind of working with your hands in some way, whether that's painting or embroidery or I think you could even go out to the the shed and work with some tools and do some woodworking or something like that. I think that even a puzzle. I think there's something appealing to me about doing things with your hands engaging kind of other parts of your brain after as a kind of transitional activity.

Ryan Purvis  13:37  
Yeah, I mean, I could I can definitely see that. I just don't have the time or the space. Yeah, I need to tie up. Okay. Okay, so we'll catch up next week. All right. Happy New Year. To everyone. Thank you for listening today's episode. Heather Bicknell, our producer, editor. Thank you, Heather. For your hard work on this episode. Please subscribe to the series and rate us on iTunes or the Google Play Store. Follow us on Twitter at the DW W podcast. The show notes and transcripts will be available on the website www dot digital workspace that works. Please also visit our website www dot digital workspace that works and subscribe to our newsletter. And lastly, if you found this episode useful, please share with your friends or colleagues.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai