The Impact of Remote Work on Family Prosperity – Episode 520   

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.

[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Prosperity thinkers, we’re going to be talking about the impact of remote work on family prosperity. And it is relevant right now, because almost everyone has a computer in their pocket, or a zoom meeting, or a Google link that they have done. So Kim, take it away, explain why this topic is relevant for the audience. Well, this is a fun one, because there are differing opinions in our household about this arena. So I have worked essentially remotely or work from home for 20 years, and I love it. And I literally think my children own life insurance because I worked from home. Because when they got home every day, after their sports activities, I still had a meeting or two to do and they were listening.

[00:59] I mean, literally from a very young age to my meetings with clients as I worked from home. And I quickly learned how to develop the habits, the physical habits, the necessary financial habits, the focus habits, the mental habits, the food habits, like all of the things that had to go with that to make sure that that was very effective remote work. And it’s, in my opinion, a piece of cake to have effective remote work when you love your work, because you’re never going to sit there and just waste time. You’re going to give your all to the work at hand because the energy that you get from serving with your unique ability to those that want the benefits that you provide. And so I believe very strongly that the family benefits when there is more interaction

[01:58] with the adults and the children. I grew up with teachers as parents, so they were around pretty much all the time in the summer and I played sports and we lived a long way from school. So by the time I got home, it was quite late, but my mom was there. She taught school and then came home and was available and my dad was around. Sometimes he had to go back for board meetings and that kind of thing at night. But we all sat in the living room and did homework and mom and dad read or did whatever they did. And so I envision and my kids are now grown and gone and having their own. But it is a envisioning environment to me that a family can develop those habits that I spoke about that control time, control money, control physical

[02:50] locality and get the amazing benefits of remote work because it doesn’t have to be done at a different physical location and because a lot of it does not have to be done during the certain sort of normal business hours of eight to five or nine to six or whatever you call normal business hours. And so, for example, that precious time in the morning when everybody’s getting up and some space can occur because a parent is not having to drive 30 minutes somewhere. And I realized that for some families, the drive is this precious time, right? So that’s great if that works for you, but remote work combined with homeschooling can create a much more graceful morning for people than often occurs. And then same is true in the three o’clock to five or six o’clock space

[03:49] where there’s a shift, right? The kids come home or what have you. And there’s food prep that has to occur. And then the call at seven p.m. to nine p.m. space, the work can get done again because homework is necessary and other work could occur that didn’t get done in the three to five space, for example. So that’s, I think, the benefit. And I believe that that will become a way of life. Interestingly enough, my husband thinks people need to go back to the office. And so that’s awesome. We have some fun discussions around that. And it will be very interesting to me to see what happens with remote work. What happens with a lot of conversations around these days are the four day work week. And there are other pieces and parts that come with that about how income

[04:40] gets paid and earned and knowledge of workers as it relates to profitability like open book companies. I mean, there’s just a whole world right now that’s been stirred up with a big mixer and that’s going to cause some really good and innovative things to come out of it. Absolutely, 100 percent. You know, one of the things that I love about this and to give context, I work from home, our family home schools. I don’t have a lot of external obligations. I have what most of my friends say is they say you say no to almost everything. So they’ll be like, oh, I want you to do this. I’m like, no, this no, no, no, because I understand how precious time is. And I view work more of like energy than I do the time.

[05:31] And I think you do as well, meaning there are some days when I’m working on something that’s interesting and I may be carving out that time from five thirty to eight thirty in the morning and I accomplished more than I typically would in eight or ten hours. And then there are some days where maybe it’s lighter and I’m not doing much. Do you go through the same ebbs and flows of that? Yes, it’s been interesting to me. The concept of free days, focused days and buffer days, which I learned from Dan Sullivan 25 years ago, has run my life ever since. And I am very, very tied to my calendar. And so I also because I do have external obligations in the form of meetings with clients, often over the phone, sometimes

[06:24] on Zoom. Also, the Tuesday to Thursday space is very driven and I have to perform during that time. And so that is a little different environment than where you live, whereby you can wake up one morning and choose how the day goes. I’ve pre-chosen how my days are going to go. And I like that for me. That works. That has some benefits because sometimes on Tuesday morning, maybe I’m not feeling it, but I have to train my body and my mind to get it together and perform because that is how my day was figured out and chosen maybe a week or two previously. And so it’s been very important for me to have calendar control and make sure that I build in the free days so that I can perform on what I call those focused days.

[07:24] But then that I also have the so aptly named buffer days in between so that those are the days that have some slide. I remember actually just last Friday. So Mondays and Fridays are my buffer days and I usually have a fairly loose schedule, but there is a schedule and the things that I want on my calendar are on my calendar. Nevertheless, there is some flexibility. And so Todd, my husband, wanted to get something done on a Friday morning. I had a different view of how Friday morning was going to look, but I just sat back. I listened to what he wanted to do, which was actually something that was benefiting me, a big project. And I thought, yeah, I can switch gears. I’m going to go help him do his slash my project instead

[08:18] of what I was going to do. And so I love that capability as well. And there’s no way that we could pull that off if we didn’t both have remote work. That’s so good. There there’s actually three pieces in this that I want to extract and pull frameworks from because it’ll be helpful for any of you as a listener to go through this. One is the framework of having work days, you know, having it planned out, be it intentional, meaning for me, I may say AI project and it’s blocked out for three hours. And then there are times as you, if you may have meetings or projects, papers, whatever you’re working on, it’s very detailed in there. And then we have our buffer days and we have our free days. The reason why I think that’s so critical of getting to

[09:11] this first framework is that for people that are starting out, they will burn out if they don’t do that. So talk a little bit if you can give the highlight and then maybe a benefit of how the free days have benefited you and your work. So the definition of a free days, midnight to midnight, no business activity, no business activity. And I’ve taken that to even mean business reading, like I won’t read a business book on my free days. And, you know, it’s not the American way, right? The American way is 24 seven, go, go, go, go, go. And when we’re young, we feel like we can do that. I remember working that way, feeling that way. Yet I, thankfully, because of Dan’s guidance at a very young age, I think I was 24 when I started the

[10:02] strategic coach program, decided, okay, you know, he coaches entrepreneurs. He’s been doing this a while. I’m paying for the program. Best give it a try. And what was so amazing is that when I took a truly free day, typically a Saturday and Sunday, how much I got done on Monday, like I was so much more prepared, rested, reflected on, you know, I had that time done so that I could really be on for Monday. And it was amazing the difference. And then furthermore, the distinction between a buffer day and a focus day. So buffer day is like preparatory work. It’s clean up work. It’s all the things that are needing to be done in between the free days, which are no business. And then the focus days, which are essentially

[10:50] all business, basically 80% of your, your business time on doing the money-making activities that are necessary. When you have really good buffer days, then you’re even, even more, more, more. I can’t even think of a good word prepared for the focus days, which is when you really do need to be on and performing, you know, you could think about it like athletes or performers because they don’t give up, get up and give a concert every day. They don’t play a game every day. They have downtime, they have preparatory time, and then they have their performing time. And that’s really what the free day, focus day, buffer day idea is. And I can’t encourage it enough. In fact, even people that think they are

[11:33] retired, I believe should use the free day focus day, buffer day idea, because otherwise, you know what the problem is? What’s that? Every day’s the same. Yeah. I have met so many people that are, and I, and I don’t want to say the R word, but I will, retired and the highlight of their day is, well, the mailman just came by and that’s sad. So very intentional. The second framework or piece that I wanted to cover in this is leverage. I think as we are working from home, and again, some people may want to be in the office, but we can leverage either technology or we can leverage other people. Meaning, and I’m saying that in a correct way, I don’t want this to be taken out of context for anyone, but meaning we’re

[12:27] leveraging other people’s unique abilities. And that’s not something that’s required on them being in our time zone. So, you know, you work with people all throughout the world. You can go to sleep, you can assign a task before you go to bed. You can wake up at the morning and all of a sudden something happened and it puts you a day ahead instead of having to wait. That’s huge leverage. Absolutely. And there are people that really enjoy the work that does require physical location. So, you know, the guy that’s putting together the car that loves to use his hands is not going to be able to do remote work. Awesome. And so self-identifying that either using the Colby profile or some other thing that will help, you know, at

[13:16] an early age where your God-given talents lie and where your skills can be put to use can then dictate whether you’re a good match for remote work or not. And I know other people that socially don’t like remote work. They prefer to be around others. And so maybe their work is still remote, but they go to Starbucks to get it done or whatever they need to do to get the social action that they desire. And that self-knowledge is so valuable. Absolutely. That ties in perfect with the third framework, which is communication. You mentioned that on a buffer day on a Friday that Todd wanted to work on a project that was going to help you. And even then he was helping you. It was one of those things you had to

[14:07] pause, reflect, doing some internal communication and then have the external communication. And so, so often when we’re around others or we’re in different environments, we have to make sure that we’re actually communicating. And that could be, you know, if you’re in a large house or on the property and you’re sending text messages or it’s at the breakfast table, Hey, here’s what’s happening. The communication. So what are a couple of communication things that you’ve done that work for your environment? The use of the word preference or prefer. And I learned this from Garrett Gunderson. He and I were chatting one day and, and he said, I have no preference. And I was like, Oh, that’s such a better word than I don’t care.

[14:59] And then the opposite is true. I prefer we do this project as opposed to that project. I prefer it. So no preference, prefer, and communicating that information because sometimes we don’t want to say, and it’s not helpful that we’re not saying, you know, you go to a group of people, where are we going to go to dinner? Well, if you have no preference, that’s helpful to know. But if it’s important to you to have chicken, that’s helpful to know. And same with, you know, a project like what was occurring for me and Todd. I don’t remember whether he used the word preference or not, but, you know, I would like to do this. And so that enabled me to be aware of it, whereas he could have just gone and started

[15:49] working on it. And then, then I’d be like, well, does he want my help? Like, you know, what’s happening, or he could have not gone and worked on it and then been resentful, even if quietly, subtly resentful, that’s a very dangerous thing in a relationship. So when communication can occur and we use the word preference, or prefer, it’s so helpful, so valuable, and it still leaves open space. Oh, I dig that. I really like that. For me, I’m going to add two pieces that have helped us as a family be being that work from home and homeschool. One is being really explicit in the communication. I’ll use a visceral example. Zane goes out and he’s got a drone business and he films others. And when he’s working and

[16:40] editing and piecing it together, it takes intense focus. And so one thing that would derail him is if someone came in and would ask a question. And so I said, hey, simple thing, put a piece of paper up that just says editing or do not disturb. And I said, but you can’t leave it up all the time, only when you need it. And then the second piece, as I mentioned there, we have to be explicit in it. The other is that not everything matters. Too often with kids, it’s like everything matters or even adults. And it’s like back to your example of not having a preference or chicken. Sometimes it matters. Sometimes it doesn’t. If we fight everything, then nothing matters. Well said. So the, the pick your battles

[17:35] environment is always a good discussion for families to have. And the explicitness is so, so valuable. And sometimes we don’t know ourselves. And so sometimes we need other people to help us get more explicit. So the idea behind the seven levels of why is super valuable. If somebody says I need some time, great. Why, you know, help me know why, because I need to focus on something beautiful. Help me know why that’s important to you because, you know, and if you just keep digging and digging, it helps both parties get clear because sometimes as human beings, we’re not clear ourselves. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit ProsperityThinkers.com.