Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics used by the world's most successful people to get so much out of their day.
I'm your host, doctor Amantha.
I'm an organizational psychologist, the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and I'm obsessed with finding ways to optimize my work day.
On today's show, I am.
Going to be answering a listener question, and if you're a regular listener of How I Work, you'll know that I've been doing a shout out for listener questions because I am super curious as to what is on your mind. What are the things that you're struggling with right now at work, What are the questions that you have around improving your own productivity? And I'm really keen to answer those, So if you've got a question, send it through to Amantha at Inventium dot com dot au and my email
address is also in the show notes. I can't get around to every question. I have received a lot of them, but I will be picking the ones that I think could fit the most amount of listeners. So today's question is I've gotten finally into a groove working from home, and now I'm worried we're all going to be called back into the office. It's open plan, freezing cold. Has
just never been a comfortable place to be. Most of my key colleagues are interstate anyway, so I'll be mostly on MS teams anyway, and can't imagine taking video calls in an open planned space. How would you recommend I approach my boss about working from home long term? That's such a great question, And I feel like any kind of conversation with your boss around changing the way that
you work can be a little bit tricky. So the first thing that I recommend here is understanding your boss's point of view and trying to put yourself in their shoes, Like, what do you think is presumably going to be driving his or her resistance? And I'm assuming by your question that you're assuming that you will be met with resistance. So what's drive your boss's views. Do they just have a kind of old school mentality? Do they not like change?
Do they think that you will perform better in the office. Do they need to see you to believe that you are working. I'm not sure, but have a think about what's driving their point of view or what's motivating them, because you'll be a better placed to think about, how do you therefore frame the conversation and I guess, for want of a better phrase.
Argue your point.
I think the other thing that is important when going into these conversations is that people like to feel like they have a choice. So rather than just saying, hey, can I continue working from home? I would recommend giving your boss a choice and painting that picture. So, for example, boss, would you like me to continue working from home where I will perform better and here's the evidence and I'll be happier, and here's the evidence, and why or do
you want me to come back into the office. But what I think is reasonable to expect is that it will impact my performance this way or that way, And certainly with taking video calls, I'm actually going to feel really self conscious doing that in an open plan space. So really painting the picture of these two different options for your boss in a way that is hopefully compelling and speaks to their motivations.
I think that this as a general.
Rule is helpful to use for all conversations with bosses. A question that I do get asked when we work with our clients at inventing them around, teaching them about deep work and shallow work. And the difference is that people will often say, yeah, but my boss expects me to be responsive to email. If I don't respond to email, you know, within thirty minutes, I'll think that I'm not working. And so in that sense, I think it's also a really valuable conversation to have with your boss around deep
work and shallow work. And the advice that I give is to say, look, I'm happy to keep being responsive, but what it means is that I'm never really going to be able to get into the flow and do deep, sort of focused, undistracted kind of work if you also expect me to be checking my emails constantly throughout the day. So what is it that you pay me to do? Essentially,
where is the most value that I can add? Is it in doing significant uninterrupted blocks of deep work, which means I will be less responsive to email, particularly during the time allocated that.
I'm doing deep work.
Or would you prefer me to spend less time in deep work and have less chunks of uninterrupted focused time so that I can be more responsive to your email? And generally, when you frame it like that, it will
hopefully open up your boss's eyes to kind of going. Actually, I've probably overestimated how important it is for you to respond to emails quickly and obviously try to have these conversations in as unfacetious a way as you can, so hopefully that helps in terms of having these kinds of conversations about how you work with your manager.
So that is it for today's show.
If you know someone else that you know is maybe struggling with the same challenge, why not share this episode with them and hopefully they will benefit too. And if you're enjoying how I work, I'd love you to leave a review an Apple podcast. It might be a star rating or a few words, and thank you to the hundreds of people that have done that.
It's greatly appreciated.
So that is it for today's show, and I will see you next time.