Of what kind is disruption of work and the mere idea of skipping having an office? Not the least: are there any useful advises on how, now, to cope with it? Well, advises are simple to find. But how good are they, actually? Here is “the best advise on these advises” you ever can find, at least so far.
It´s been cooking for a long time, actually a very long time; the discussion about “remote work”. So, to be honest; absolutely nothing is new here, in some sense. We all have heard about it, before.
We might even have stumbled on one or two of these “oddballs” that actually started working remote themselves decades ago.
Still, digital phenomena seam to function exactly like water: Small drops of rain does not change that much, but a big rain can, and flooding seriously can. Size matter in that sense, heavily.
It did not rain that much over the term remote work a couple of years back. But now it does. You now can find more advises on “how to work remote” than ever. But which ones should you listen to?
When just one person had the internet, not much changed. When more people got it, some things started to change. Now, when everyone has it, everything also really changes. And then, suddenly, also: a lot of people seem to know “the answer”, as if anyone of us did.
When that happen it is also the day you should start thinking about the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, because he was right, already 1921, in his book Tractatus: “wovon man nicht reden kann, darüber muss man schweigen” (what one cannot talk about, one must be silent about).
So, we are not to be surprised that when Corona happened, suddenly everyone started to talk about it: working remote. And, of course, companies like Apple, Twitter, Spotify and others, highly digital companies that is, the ones that also seem to set the agenda nowadays, not the least on the labor market, have now also announced: having an office might not bee needed further on. And that matters. It makes a tremendous big difference actually.
Having that said I suggest you to check out Matt Mullenweg. But why him? And who is he, really? I have never heard of him before.
Exactly.
But him in particular, because:
1. He has been working remote for a very long time, meaning: he knows what it means.
2. He has also been/is successful in doing it. He is the founder of WordPress. It´s a billion dollar company that never, ever, have had a physical HQ. Still, they have hundreds and hundreds employed, all over the globe, with him as the CEO working remote, back home.
3. And, which is the most interesting thing about him: he is sharing experiences from it, and have also already been doing that for some time. He has seriously spent time thinking about it, that is.
People that are willing to share their experiences, and does it openly, concerning things that also are seriously important to them, tend to end up with fairly good ideas – don´t they?
I might be totally wrong, but I myself would really not be surprised if Mullenweg, today, is one of the most interesting persons on the whole globe to take advises from, if you want to know how to work remote. Try his podcast. It is simply just great, and often heavily interesting.
And notice: he is even so open about all these things that he, himself, is still interested in learning more about it (a reason why he often interview other people on this matter in his pod).
But don´t be surprised: he pretty often give us advises that seem to be totally against the average discussion you can find concerning remote-work at this moment. He is for instance totally against muting at digital meetings. And he also believe that written text, as a way to communicate, is totally unappreciated nowadays (remember; he, if anyone, knows what a digital conference tool is). But; he explains why he is thinking in the ways that he does, and most often he really does have a point.
I humbly suggest you to care.
Working remote might not be what you just imagined that it was. At least: maybe it does not have to be done in the way you thought about it, yesterday. Or, in other words: there seems to be lot of things left to figure out about working remote.
And isn´t that just worth doing at this point in time?
Stop Nobody Move 