It’s the time of year when people start to talk about vacations. For too many of us, all we do is talk. Fifty-five percent of Americans do not use all their vacation time (Those of you in civilized countries feel free to smirk and berate us. We deserve it). In fact, we collectively leave 768 million vacation days unused! That’s not the worst of it. Even when we do take the … [Read more...]
What Do Your Teammates Read?
There’s a lot of talk about helping form relationships on virtual and hybrid teams. We want to build trust, help people get to know each other and get to know and like each other. Here are some questions for you: What movies do your teammates watch? What are their favorite TV shows? Video Games? What do they read? Why do you care what your teammates read? When we meet … [Read more...]
What is Mental Fitness?
They say that every cloud has a silver lining. If that’s the case, then the storms we’ve all had to endure over the past couple of years have produced some benefits, too. One is certainly a better understanding of remote work, which we have catalogued every day on this site. Maybe the most important thing we’ve “discovered” during the pandemic is the importance of mental … [Read more...]
Is Social Time Wasted Time?
It’s NCAA Tournament time again, which means nothing to 90% of the civilized world. But here in the US it means three weeks of drama, gambling, and well-intentioned foolishness. It’s also a good time to examine the role of creatively "wasting" time with social activities at work. First, we’ll start with the supposedly bad news. According to lots of studies done every year … [Read more...]
Of Cats, Keyboards, and Building Relationships
Can a cat walking across a keyboard really help your team build working relationships on a remote or hybrid team? I have been thinking about this for a while, and as silly as it sounds, one of the signs of a healthy working relationship might be the team’s reaction to Mister Fluffybutt getting webcam time during a meeting. This might seem odd, and there’s no doubt there are … [Read more...]