Tired of me talking about telework? Oh good...
Days 3 and 4 of me teleworking have gone quite as expected aside from a category 5 home network connection snafu.
Some of the more noticeable consequences are along the line of the rhythm of the day when I am not in the office and that I can be far more predicative with how I account for time in my day now. I have to spend more time reaching out to people than I normally do though. When I am in the office there are opportunities to engage and encounter co workers I do not have if remote. Reflecting on this a bit, it also means that there are fewer opportunities for people to engage with me randomly, which is about as nicely as I can state the nature of our workspace without insinuating that it is an interruptions-driven vortex of distraction and low value meetings from which there is no escape.
I digress.
As a noted in a prior post, productivity does appear to be on the upswing. I have been able to hammer through a chuck of my backlog faster than expected though I do not know what is being missed. That notion, that something is being missed or forgotten is the most challenging concern to address when working remote. I set to determine if there was anything quantifiable to understand it further.
If I assume that my job is most quantifiable in the artifacts of communication and interaction, I should be able to determine if working remotely has impacted my week negatively through the meetings and their outcomes as well as emails and other similar means of typed modes.
As it pertains to email, there has been a slight up tic in emails I have sent this week with little change of inbound messaging. On average I am sending into the ether about 430 emails a week related to UM efforts and this week I am projecting to be about 15% higher than that. I suppose that could be regular deviation but I have been compelled to write a few more messages to those I would otherwise assuredly bump into.
As it pertains to meetings though there has been more of an interesting shift. I tend to keep copious notes on my meetings I have throughout the week. Functionally, there are so many meetings that if I didn't have some rigor around this, I would never remember what was agreed upon and my obligations. These notes have been helpful in understanding the impact of my telework. I have for UM purposes an average meeting (including ad hoc) tally of 44 meetings a week and of those the majority are 60 minutes long. This week, I have will have more along the lines of 15 with only 2 lasting 60 minutes. That seems substantial and is a warning signal to me that perhaps I am missing something important being remote. However, once I dug into the details of my meeting notes I realized that almost half of my regular meetings I have when I am in the office have no discernible outcomes or expected deliverables while of my current week's 15 there have resulted in 13 specific decisions or next steps.
This can lead me to surmise that meetings and interruptions are driving out productivity, at least when I am in the office, and that perhaps occasional telework will have benefit long term. Additionally, I think I should be a touch less liberal with my schedule for meetings in general, yikes.
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