The Remote Workers Toolkit #2: Device Isolation

It's 6:00 p.m. and you've just sat down with your family at the dinner table following a long day of work. You feel your cell phone buzz in your pocket. Ughh. It's your boss. He's got a few things to go over with you. Looks like dinner will have to wait.

Very rarely are these work interruptions necessary. The majority of issues could have been resolved in the morning. Wouldnt it be nice if your personal life was kept to yourself, fully able to focus on the other important aspects in life such as family, friends, and alone time?

If you currently find yourself in similar types of situations that I've described above, you've got one of three options:

1. Nothing. Continue to answer work calls at whatever hour of the day they occur at.
2. Ignore these work calls. Outside of the 9-5, this might be the next best thing. but this tends to weigh on your conscience.
3. Try "Device and application isolation".

What's the next best thing to not getting calls from your boss late in the night? Not knowing that you're getting calls from your boss late in the night. There are two parts to device and application isolation. The first of which is the strict protocol that after work hours you are only allowed to use personal electronic devices. It would look something like this:

7-9 a.m: Personal cell phone and other personal electronic devices allowed.

9 am-12 pm: Work computer and work phone permitted.

12-1 pm (lunch break): Personal electronic devices permitted.

1-5 pm: Work devices permitted.

The strict time frame(s) that you allow yourself to use work-related are what constitute part A. If you are in the unfortunate situation where you are forced to use your own personal laptop as your work computer check out my last article on a shutdown ritual to remove yourself from the workspace after work hours.

In a nutshell, the second part of "device and app isolation" allows you to have one application/software/platform attached to one device and only one device.

Here's a breakdown of what it looks like on my own devices:

Apps on my work laptop:

1. Slack
2. Canva
3. Google Workspace
4. ClickUp
5. Zoom
6. Adobe
7. Figma
8. Hubspot
9. Bitwarden

Apps on my work phone:

1. All Social media platforms for the company

Apps on my personal cell phone:

1. Podcasts
2. Music
3. Personal Email
4. Yoga Membership
5. Personal Social Media Accounts

By allocating one app, to one device. My life was simplified a hundredfold. After originally implementing step 1 of this strategy to give each device more purpose, I found myself multitasking and juggling between apps and software still far too much for my liking. Before implementing stage 2 of "device and app isolation" I would be splitting up my attention between work meetings, and dinner plans with friends. I would be mid-way through content creation strategy sessions and have company social media notifications flood my field of vision. When I implemented stage 2 I began to hardly multitask at all.

In a world of constant exposure to information, it's so easy to feel overwhelmed. This strategy helped me zone in on one task at a time, before moving on to the next. There are certainly times when I feel like I absolutely have to be on multiple devices at a time, and though this happens on occasion, the majority of the time I am on only one device. Even if I am now forced to switch devices when I switch focuses, I see this as a positive development and one that beats getting 1000 notifications at once on your work computer.

My work computer is solely for work.

My personal cell phone is solely for personal matters.

I now get to focus on one goal, one task, one device at a time.

Simple.