Back to the office?

An increasing number of you have started to return to your offices since Easter, either on a full-time basis or in some form of hybrid model with some days still spent working from home. This may be a source of great joy for some and much nervousness or anxiety for others, depending on your experience of the last 12 months. Here are some thoughts on how to make the best of this significant moment, and maintain or extend some of the positive changes you have unearthed during this enforced period of WFH.

Value your time

You have 168 hours in a week: those are the most precious units of currency in your life and you should spend them wisely. This could be the one chance in your professional career where you can reset your weekly schedule and bring it better into line with what really matters to you. And what matters to you now may be very different to what you thought mattered a year ago. 

No one else is going to design your ideal week for you and make it happen.

You have to do it yourself. There is no right and wrong in how you do this, but time is in finite supply and you should aim to make conscious and thoughtful decisions rather than being sucked into how other people want to use your time.

A few specifics:

How many hours sleep do you need to function well? For too many people, sleep is what you do with the limited time you have left over when everything else has taken its share. Turn this around: “I need 7 hours sleep to be at my best, what am I going to do with the other 17 hours in the day?”

Rethink your approach to meetings. I have yet to meet the client who says to me: “I wish that I had more meetings in my diary”. Of course it will be great to reconnect with colleagues in real life over the coming weeks, but how many of your weekly or monthly meetings are done more out of habit than because they are genuinely productive? Do they really need to be an hour or would 30 minutes suffice? If someone doesn’t actually say anything in the meeting, is it a good use of their time to be there? Do you have to chair every meeting just because you are the most senior figure around the table? 

Or watch the video below on how they do meetings at Amazon and challenge yourself to try a different approach: small numbers of attendees (the Two Pizza test), somebody writes a proper memo – no Powerpoint – and everyone is given silent time at the start of the meeting to read it and form their thoughts before the discussion begins.

Block out time for what matters to you and enhances your wellbeing and performance.  

• Figure out when is your best time to exercise, whether first thing in the morning,  during lunch or during a quiet spot in the middle of the afternoon. Schedule it otherwise someone will take that time away from you…try to avoid having your exercise slot for when you have finished work, as this makes it far more likely that something urgent or important will come up and your run or gym class falls victim to it.
• If you discovered that you really enjoyed dropping your kids at school or picking them up during lockdown, get into a routine of doing specific days or times. The same applies if you acquired a lockdown dog that you love taking out as it gives you a proper break. 
• See your friends in person. Who are your five closest friends and who are the 15 people you most enjoy going out with in the evening? How many of them can you meet up with this summer?  Be the person who organises the evening out – it only takes five minutes and it means you get to choose exactly what you want and where you go! 

Maximise your hours of “Deep Work”

Many people who normally work in open-plan offices have remarked to me how much more productive they have been at home, whether that is getting things done more quickly or producing higher quality work. The modern worker already faces huge mental distraction from their phone, or from emails and messages popping up on their desktop, and it can easily take 10-15 minutes to regather your concentration once it has been broken. 

Clearly we want to rekindle the positives of collaborative office work and interaction, but we also want to retain those periods of deep, uninterrupted focus where our best work is often achieved. Hybrid workers may want to use their home days for this and utilise office days for interacting with other people. But what about those returning to the office full-time? Could you schedule an hour of Focus Time every day or two? Put them into your diary so that they are sacrosanct and protected; think about whether you work best on these kind of tasks in the morning or later on. Perhaps book out a redundant meeting room (they will surely be plenty of those for a while to come) to ensure you are not disturbed or find a third space in a café or your gym. Put your phone on Do Not Disturb, or better still leave it out of arm’s reach and come back to it in an hour.

The value of a daily walk

One of the few good things to have come out of lockdown has been a better appreciation of the benefits of walking. Whether to listen to a podcast, as a way of meeting with friends or just a good excuse to get out of the house, it has provided a vital lifeline for many.  How can you keep this wonderful habit going once you are back in the office? I would highly recommend trying a walking meeting – it only works for certain types of encounter, but it can really free up the dialogue as well as providing a vital brain-break for both participants in the right circumstances. 

Failing that, try to establish a simple habit: if you go out to get your coffee mid-morning, extend your route to the cafe by 15-20 minutes to stretch your legs. Or do the same after lunch to ward off the afternoon slump and charge up your brain for a productive afternoon. 

Your PA is not a mind-reader

If you have an assistant or someone who looks after your diary, go through all of this with them so that they properly understand your priorities. Otherwise how will they know whether it is OK to put an 830am meeting in on the day you like to take the kids to school? Perhaps you should devote 10 minutes with them every Friday so you can address any such conflicts in the week ahead and indeed remove any meetings that are not good uses of your time. 

Sanitise your devices

This could be the most productive hour you spend this year, so just get on and do it. Here are the basics:

• Switch off all notifications and those little red numbers (badges) that tell you that you have 1,000 unread emails or Whatsapp messages.
• Turn off all noises on your phone/watch.
• ·Figure out which apps you use “nutritiously” and which are the digital equivalent of “junk food”. For the latter, you have a range of options: delete them completely (you can always re-install them if it turns out they really were vital); move them off your home screen to one of the later screens on your phone so you are reminded of them less often; take them off your phone but leave them on your laptop or iPad - you can still access them, but they are not at your fingertips every time you get bored. 
• Learn how to use the Do Not Disturb function on your phone.
• Remove your Apple Watch. If you want an activity or sleep tracker, use something without a screen.

Eat well

I know some have seen big benefits from eating at home during lockdown because they have consumed more fresh, unprocessed food and, in a number of cases, taken great delight in the preparation of that food. For others, the challenge has been tougher because they have more access to tempting snacks and maybe a desire to reward themselves for getting through another day of Zoom. 

What is your plan for when you go back to the office? Will you just slip back into ordering the same sandwiches from Pret a Manger once you are back? Perhaps a few minutes spent on their website can highlight the huge disparity in calories between some of their different products and help you make some better choices (Cinnamon Danish = 489cals for example, close to a quarter of a reasonable total for a whole day!)

If you have discovered a joy of food preparation, can you start bringing your own prepared food in to have at lunchtime? Or share with others so you can take turns in doing the prep? For those who can’t wait to dine out again, many restaurants now provide full nutritional information online on their various menu options so you can think in advance how you can best combine tasty with healthy. 

Reflect on your “Why?”

Before you charge back into the hurly-burly of office life, take some time to detach yourself and think about your passions and motivations. Why do you do the job that you do? Is it still delivering on what you want from it? Are you devoting the right amount of time to it compared to what you are getting out of it, or is it preventing you from developing the other “Whys” in your life? 

There is nothing inherently wrong with your professional life being your primary focus but should it be the only one? If you define your self-worth one-dimensionally, what happens to it if you suffer a setback in your career, even if the reasons for that setback were beyond your control or not your fault?

What is it that really matters to you? The amount you earn may be your most visible measure of success but that doesn’t automatically make it the best one. Fulfilment (which comes in many forms), respect from others or the ability to be in control of your own time are much harder to ascribe a score to but that doesn’t make them necessarily less important.

Final thought

This may feel like a daunting task-list, but you have a once-in-a-career opportunity to get this as right as you can over the coming months.  Start with whatever seems the smallest and easiest change to make and carry on from there. As an extra motivator, ask yourself this: how happy would you feel in a year’s time if your weekly office routine had defaulted back to exactly the same as it was pre-pandemic? 

Steve Davies spent 25 years working in the City, including more than a decade running a ￡2bn equity fund at Jupiter Asset Management. He now runs a performance coaching practice for CEOs, senior executives and City professionals, covering areas such as sleep, nutrition, exercise, relaxation, time management and concentration skills as well as providing advice and support in their professional roles.

Find out more at www.stevedavies.coach, email [email protected] or via Whatsapp on 07956 157172 to set up a free initial conversation.