Tips and Tools for Working from Home

Well, I work from home, Shannon, but that's normal for me. It's normal for you, too, now.

It is up, you know, a few years ago. No, I spent, you know, the previous, like, 20 years in an office environment in the warehouse and a bunch of, you know, labs and office and people. And so it's actually been a pretty recent transition for me. So I'm excited to talk about working from home today, what works for me and learn what has worked for you for all these years.

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, this. The. Our conversation today. Yes. Is about the things you can do. Not so much. Not definitively when you're working from home, but when you're working from an environment that is not your normal environment. You know, there's a lot of things going around with, you know, coronavirus, but other reasons, too, where you might just find yourself working away from where your normal workspace is. You know, like this morning I was at the car dealer, and actually I got a lot of work done, but it took some. Some intentional steps to be able to be productive there. And, you know, I was getting emails from somebody, in fact, that was on jury duty. Somehow they were allowed to have their laptop. So maybe they weren't in the courtroom, obviously, but. But they were also able to be productive. Right. So. So there's lots of scenarios. But of course, you know, coronavirus has caused a lot of companies to say, why don't you just stay at home? And so we figured, let's talk about some of those things that we can do here. Right?

Yeah, I think it's great. I've definitely learned what works for me, so.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right, well, he is Shannon Gene. I'm Dave Hamilton, and this is episode 266 of the Small Business Show. Before we get going, Shannon, I want to stand on a soapbox for about 48 seconds. I'm probably wrong on that number. So, you know, this coronavirus thing. Okay, great. There's some good that it seems might be able to come from this. You know, if we learn to wash our hands a little more diligently. That's not a bad thing. If we learn. If we learn not to go to our place of work when we're sick, like, that's a hugely good thing, I think.

Another benefit. Yeah.

Yeah, because we. We have. We have sort of a systemic problem in this country. And I am. I am fully guilty of this. You know, it's like, gotta be productive, so I'll just go and, you know, probably infect everybody around me. So, like, we need to be better about that. And if this teaches us that, great. But what I hope it doesn't teach us is to avoid all of humanity by default because that gets really dangerous, I think. You know, so much of business is, as we like to say, a full contact sport and not encountering other people. Conferences, you know, conferences have always been this thing where you sort of know you're going to risk getting, you know, some sort of cold or something going to it because you're encountering all these people. But it is worth encountering all those people, I think. So I hope that that's not the outcome of all of this that's going on here. I just wanted us all to sort of keep that in mind as we move forward, that's all. Yeah, I agree.

I mean, we've done, you know, specific episodes of the show, all about things like conferences, you know, trade shows, why it's so important to connect with people and face to face. So I conc, you know, there is some benefits to like working from home that we're going to talk about today. Of course, you cannot understate the benefits of, you know, connecting with another human and putting business aside.

Well, that's just it. I always say when I get together with people, either at their offices or at a trade show, you know, I'm not here to do business. We can do that over email. In fact, we've proven with most people I'm meeting with, we've already proven that this is to remind each other that we're human beings. And those are the, like I say that phrase to people and everybody's like, oh, right. And then everybody relaxes and we have a good time because there's no pressure. It's just, yeah, just humans. Yeah, yeah.

And you don't want to make everything transactional.

Correct.

And so I think that's a really some great advice. And I also hope that we don't wind up, you know, doing everything we can to avoid coming face to face with people. But, you know, things change quick once this, we get things under control here and the news cycles, you know, that. Well, we're not going to go down this road. We're not going to talk about this the whole show. Since we already ranted a bit.

Yeah, we're at three minutes now on my 45 second rant.

So there, you got it, you got it. So it's great. Thanks for the advice, Dave. Always well received. Yeah, so, yeah, but I, I, I think the topic is great. You recommended it actually a few weeks ago. It's like hey, we should talk about working from home. And you know, many people may be working from home right now for the first time, or suggesting to your employees that they work from home. Hey, you know, let's keep the office staff to a minimum. And if you have that kind of business where you can have folks work remotely, you might be dealing with it for the first time. So we thought, hey, let's talk about some tips. Dave, you know, like you said in the introduction, you've been doing this for decades, right?

Yeah, but, but I, I've, I've had to. Like today, you know, for example, I. And of course this is going to go completely counter to what I just said. Being at the car dealer is probably not all that much different for me than it is for someone that has worked in an office and now needs to work at home. Especially if that someone needs to carve out like a corner of the dining room as the office. If you don't have a, you know, a dedicated office space, it's tough. Well, in, in that scenario, you kind of have to go and embrace the momentum of the isolation. I know, it's exactly what I said we shouldn't do. But in order to be productive in the short term, you need to find a way to isolate yourself from the mayhem that's going on around you. For me, it was at the car dealer, but, you know, for you it might just be the normal course of affairs that goes on in your home during the day. And what I found was using some kind of noise canceling headphones really allowed me. I mean, I was so productive at the car dealer this morning. All I was doing was triaging email. But as I was leaving my. The thought that I had was, I wonder if one of our other cars needs to go in for service. Like, I wanted to go back. Yeah. And I put, I was using AirPods Pro this morning. They're actually not my absolute favorite noise canceling, but they were the ones in my bag and so it was fine. I just have a weird thing with my ears where they just don't fit me easily. But I got them in and they're fine. But any sort of noise canceling headphones, you know, JBL makes some great ones that I really like that are over the ear and in the ear. A company called Earin E A R I N makes some. They make my absolute favorites. They go. They're earbuds. They're completely true wireless. They're smaller than the AirPods. They have the whole, you know, transparency thing. If you want to be Able to hear the outside world, and they're super comfortable. So we'll put links to all this stuff in the show notes.

Yeah, that'd be great.

But find something that works for you. And I would almost say, if you're going to be doing this long term, find two sets of headphones that work for you, one that are in ears and one that are over the ears. Because regardless of which you use, your ears will physically fatigue from having something either on them or in them and having the ability to switch without having to say, well, I'm going to take these out. And now I got to deal with all the noise around me. Being able to sort of remain in your bubble, that can be valuable. So, you know.

Yeah, yeah. And let me have a couple questions about it.

Yeah.

Do you wear those when you're working in your. Your home office?

I don't have to. No, because I'm the only one in that room. In fact, I'm usually the only one in this building. My office is separate from the house, so I'm. I'm fortunate in that way.

That's cool.

Yeah. But I do listen to music when I'm working. Yeah.

In the next. When you're wearing those noise isolating, you know, earbuds or over the ear, you're listening to.

Right.

Not a podcast. Not that kind of thing.

Correct. I'm listening to music. I can deal. You got to find what works for you. You know, I can deal with music that has lyrics. Some. Some people can't at all. I know Kelly Gumont at Mac observer, who hosts our daily Observations podcast. She likes to listen to film scores because it's familiar music, but. But not lyrical. So, you know. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, again, find what works for you. It could be classical, it could be jazz, could be, you know, the thrash, metal. I don't care. You know, it's like, that's the beauty of it, is what it's yours. Like, whatever allows you to kind of get in the zone and tune out the outside world. That's the key.

Yeah, I think that's great. And there's a lot. I want to talk more about environment as well. But one of the things I found interesting is when I was putting together show notes for today is. And I was like, okay, I'll list a pros and a list of cons, but they kind of mesh together. You know, it's kind of interesting. Like, for example, you know, having a flexible schedule, well, that's great. And a positive. But at the same time, if you don't create a schedule to stick to. You can kind of get what I call, you know, work creep, meaning you never stop. You take your phone, you take your laptop down, you know, back away from your workspace, and you can just kind of keep going all the time. And I'm going to take some mini breaks or I'm going to do whatever, but I think you're keeping some flexibility. But built around a set work schedule is really important.

That's a great advice. Yeah, yeah. My guess is, you know, for the folks that are sort of temporarily displaced, you know, for lack of a better term, you'll probably still have people to report to and that sort of thing. So that, that might sort of provide that structure right there. But you're right, if you're on your own, if you're, you know, just, you know, a solopreneur or something like that, well, then, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Defining working hours even. And you got to give yourself permission to bend them, but you have to know that you are bending them. And it's not just like work is 24 7. Yeah, that's not a bad idea.

Well, it's some kind of structure because going to an office, going to work wherever you. It has that structure in it. And you get up in the morning and you know how things are going to work. And for me, I'm. I just find that I'm happier and more productive when I first get up because I start thinking about my day even the night before. Okay, what's tomorrow when I have my. Oh, here's, here's what I'm gonna. I know I'm working on this. I'm gonna get up to the office by, you know, 8 o' clock or whatever it is. It. It really helps me a lot.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's good.

You know, one of. Yeah. One of the other things is, you know, I put. Okay, you don't have as many maybe work distractions, right? People coming in your office or stopping by, asking you to do things, you know, all this kind of stuff. But on the, on the flip side, you still may get a lot of that just electronically. But I would say that there's an opportunity at least for way more personal distractions, especially if you don't have a separate workspace. Now, I think, Dave, you know, you said you're in a separate building. I'm in a separate building. Like, I can see my house, but I'm not in my house. And that has made a big difference for me, you know, and if you, if you're going to be working from home for a long time or it's part of your long term plan. And if you have space, you know, outside of your home or you can put in. I'll put a link. You know, there's folks that make some incredible little structures. It's called Studio Shed. And you know, they're not very expensive, but they're really well designed. And you know, you can just get a little 8 by 10 area. I would argue it could be the best investment you ever make if you're going to be working from home for long term. If you've got a backyard, you don't need much space. But having a separate little space that you can go close the door and get away. Oh yeah, it, it's been really important for me.

Great little business model for those folks at Studio Shed. I like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and they call them different things, accessory dwelling units, ad use. But you look online and you could, I mean these things show up in a kit. They bring them on the back of a truck. You can spend a few thousand dollars or $25,000, you know, or probably even more. They have big ones that you can live in and they have little small guys, but there's lots of stuff. You can even go on Amazon and buy some of this, that type of thing. But if you've got a little space and you can have a truck come drop that, I guarantee you walking out in your backyard in the morning to go to work will change your entire mindset. Because I know it does for me and it really helps.

Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah. I can see my house too. And I've noticed especially this year that if I realize my son is home during the day because he's got kind of a weird schedule with his high school and stuff, I'm tempted to go home and say hi to him and that sort of thing. Well, it's his last year at home. Awesome. Assuming colleges in the fall actually have students on campus and, and you know, at this point I think anything's up for debate, but assuming they do, then he will not be living here in the fall. And you know, and so I'll miss him. Right. So it's like every time he's home it's like, ah, I could like sneak over and I do afford myself that luxury sometimes, but it's not always the right time for that. I've actually thought about like, should I adjust my desk so that I'm not looking right out the window into the driveway, like those sorts of things. But that's it like, you have to be aware, really diligently aware of the things that are distracting you and why they're distracting you. And then you can choose to manage them or ignore them or engage with them, you know, whatever, but just knowing what those distractions are. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, it's good. Yeah, it's important enough.

I was going to say there's some software I want to talk about here that I think will be helpful, too. The first piece of software I want to talk about, though, is our sponsor for this episode, which is PDF Pen and PDF and Pro for your computer. Because when you are at home, you're probably going to be dealing with a lot more PDFs than you are papers. You might deal with some papers still in your office if you haven't moved everything over. But if you're going to be working remotely, I guarantee you things are going to start flying around as PDFs, and here's the thing, you're going to want to maybe make some notes on those, maybe even make some edits on those, maybe sign them, maybe do all kinds of things with them. You're going to need a piece of software that allows you to really manipulate and control PDFs at a very deep level. And there is nothing better for that, in my opinion, than PDF pen and PDF pen pro from smile@smilesoftware.com podcast. It can do all of the things I just mentioned. You can redact text. I had to redact some stuff for some forms that we had to send in. I was just talking about my son going off to college. We needed to send some tax forms, but they're like, make sure you redact out all the Social Security numbers. And I was like, oh, that's going to be a pain. Wait, no, it's not PDF Pen. I was able to search for that text in our tax forms and tell it to redact it, and it just happened automatically. It was great. Really, really easy. And you can do all that kind of stuff. You can edit things. I didn't edit our tax forms before we sent them in. I figured that might not be a good thing if they caught us, you know, but you could, because PDF Pen is super powerful and flexible. So, as I said, go to smilesoftware.com podcast to learn more and to start your downloads and all of that stuff. Our thanks to Smile for making PDF Pen and for sponsoring this episode. All right, man, it's time to talk about some software. Right? The additional software. Yeah. So I know. I said, you know, you want to embrace your isolation which was, was, which contradicted what I said at the beginning. And, and you know, really kind of tune out all those distractions. But here's the thing. If you're working with other people and chances are if you're making money, that's usually coming from other people, you're going to need to interact with them. And if you are in an office where everybody get, just gets to communicate face to face, if it's, you know, kind of tight quarters and you're all sort of right there, you might not have had to think about the tools that allow people to work in a distributed fashion. You might already have and that's fine. But you will quickly find out, if you haven't already, that using messages for those, you know, like SMS messages, even if you can link them to your computer, that is such a basic bare bones thing, you're going to find that it drives you crazy trying to actually have conversations and share information that way because you're going to forget stuff, it's going to get lost. Messages doesn't allow things like mark this message as unread so I can follow or flag it so I can follow up later. No, none of that. And then you're also going to find that email is too cumbersome for that stuff because you're going to have a million emails from exactly the same person. Right? Because these are the people you work with. So you need a tool that allows you to sort of have the virtual office in an app and there's a lot of them. My favorite one these days is Slack. It seems to have become sort of the default of most businesses. Whenever I engage with a new business they're like, can we add you to our Slack channel? It's like, of course, yeah, no problem.

Huge.

It's huge.

But Life Changer.

Yeah, it's a life change. Well, there's HubSpot and before that there was Skype and you know, I mean, and these things also exist. But you know, I found that Slack is pretty universal. If you're not already using something like this, go get Slack. Shannon and I use it here for our internal communication with the Small Business Show. We use it at Mac observer and even the one at Mac Observer. We're able to operate completely functionally on the Slack Free plan. So don't feel like you're going to start using it and immediately it's going to start costing you money. It might, you might choose to buy into their paid plan to get some more features. But it's really functional for free and that's intentional on their part. So something like that is going to. It's going to make a big difference in terms of staying in touch and creating that water cooler. You can still have some human interaction. You can even create a Slack channel where maybe people share stupid memes and hopefully it stays workplace appropriate and all that stuff, but just something to remind each other that you're humans.

Yeah, it's a great connectivity tool and a great hub for everything you have going on. If you have multiple businesses that you're involved in. I have a non profit that I work with that I created a whole Slack team with and it's all within the app and you just kind of click, oh, I need to go deal with small business show or I need to jump on this. It's just phenomenal. Yeah, that's great.

Another one that I use is Trello. You will quickly find that email. If you have various different projects that you're working on, email will like quickly break down and Slack might even break down unless you start breaking a project out per channel or something. But what Trello does is it works in with a cards paradigm and it's too generic to just describe it generically. So I will use two specific examples and then I will suggest that maybe Shannon, we need to adopt Trello here at the Small Business Show.

I would agree.

Yep. At Mac observer we publish articles and podcasts. So we make one card per article or podcast episode and then. And we can put them into categories. You know, they start in the ideas category. When someone grabs it and is working on it, it moves to the in progress category. And then of course when it's complete, it's in the completed category. But what's cool about cards is you can attach all kinds of things to them. You can have an entire threaded conversation just about that card. You can attach links, you can attach notes, files, whatever you want. So that even if, you know, I have an idea, but I know I'm not going to write it up, I put all the stuff into the card and then somebody else has my brain dump compartmentalized on that card that they can sort of take and run with. So that's what we do at Mac Observer. In one of the bands I'm in, we're doing a bunch of recording for some original songs that the guys have written and we do one card per song and it's the same kind of thing and we can do to do lists and tasks, lists on the card. So we can open a card and know, okay, scratch tracks are done, drums are done. Bass is done. We need to get the real vocals done. Okay, great. You know, it's right there. It's easy. And we even have it linked to our Dropbox, where we can actually hear the files. You know, that's what we're using to share the files as Dropbox. So Trello is another one of those, and I figured you and I could use it for. Have we talked about our new project yet? I don't know that we have.

Yeah, we have. Yeah, the guides that we're doing.

So it might be good to do a Trello card for each guide.

Yeah, I think it's a great idea. Yeah, I like it. I like it. You know, talking about being connected, you know, one of the things that I think is inherent when you're working from home. If you're by yourself, it's. You're by yourself. So, you know, you may feel isolated. So having these tools to help connect you with your team and, you know, the outside world, so to speak, is. Is really important. And I think that, like, for me, I start my day on LinkedIn. I go in, you know, I get 6:30, I come out, have coffee and I jump on LinkedIn. I've got messages, you know, new connections, what's going on in the world, catch up. And it's kind of like. Like you said, the virtual water cooler, you know, where you're. You're connecting with people. So I really like, you know, the Slack Trello, LinkedIn. This kind of concept of you can still have that connectivity, which is an important part of all of our lives.

Yeah, yeah. And it allows you not only to feel like you're connected, but it all. It also allows you to sort of see, okay, is everybody on the team still being productive? You know, I don't. I don't like to micromanage everyone, but I do like to see that, like, you know, we're moving the ball down the field, whatever it is. Okay. Yeah, there's stuff happening there. Okay, great. I don't need to. I don't want to micromanage it, but I also want to know that, you know, somebody's still able to be working and all of that. And if somebody's having a problem, sometimes I'll notice it before they would sort of wave the flag. And then I can be like, hey, do you need some help with this? Is there, you know, is there anything I can do for you? What. What do you need? You know, that kind of thing can be really. So, though, all of these things can be helpful. I liked your idea about LinkedIn. Because that allows you to sort of be in touch with the community, not just the people you're forced to be engaged with.

Yeah, works out great. Yeah, it gives me a kind of a broader view of what's going on in the business community. People that I connected with, people that I may want to have come on the show. It's just kind of a base to. To get. Get things going. So I feel like I'm not just focused on my own stuff, so.

I like it. I like it.

Yeah, it's good, man. Yeah, it's helpful. The. One of the things, too, that I think is really important is communicating if you've got a significant other. Well, let me back up. I. I want to make another comment. If people aren't, you know, if they're not in a house that has some space or has a separate thing or can't put a shed or whatever it is on there, you know, if you've got an apartment or a condo, whatever it is, at the very minimum, I highly recommend you carve out a distinct space and not just take the route of going on the dining room table and dropping your laptop and going to work. You know, if you can get a separate room with a door, that's golden. If you can't do that, you know, maybe there's a corner that you can put, you know, a work. Work table, and you can kind of create your own workspace because you need to have that when you come back in. Every day that I'm going to work, I'm sitting here, I'm doing this. And having that separate space, even within small spaces, I think is critical.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. You need to be able to leave things, if at all possible, leave things overnight for the next day so you're not packing up. I mean, obviously, if you're working, you know, when I was at the car dealer, you know. Right, right. That's a little different. Right. But, but yeah, for. If you. If you are newly working at home, carve out a space that you can leave as a space and something your. Your family and your pets and all of that stuff aren't going to mess with. Yeah.

And that when you're there, your family, your pets, whoever, your roommates, whatever you have, they know you're working and even just seeing you there. Oh, I know.

And.

And what I was gonna say before I jump back into the space was that you need to communicate with these people and, and you need to set up some boundaries. Right. I think one of the ways that people get very frustrated at Home is that there may be the assumption that, oh, well, you know, so and so's at home, they can do X, they can run an errand, they can empty the dishwasher, they can take care of these chores, they can take care of the pets, they can do whatever, you know, whatever.

Right.

Maybe that's part of your flex schedule and you want that, that's fine. But if you don't discuss it, I guarantee you there's going to be a difference of perception on both sides. You may think, I'm focused, man, I'm going from eight to five and I'm jam and I'm getting all this stuff done. And another person like, well, you're home. Why didn't you empty the dishwasher? Why didn't you put the laundry in or take the dog or whatever it is? So I would implore you to have that discussion and set those boundaries. And like I said, if there is a place that you can close a door, that's a huge benefit because then you'd be like, okay, when I'm in here, I'm working. So, you know, like, my wife and I. My wife's at home working. Works from home, too, with her business. Well, we text each other back and forth. I mean, you know, and then we kind of meet up at lunch. And so it's not a, hey, I need you to do this. Hey. Well, you know, I have some kind of structure, and I think that's really important.

I agree. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. My kids grew up with it, but I remember they would have friends over who were just flabbergasted, like, well, we just go ask your daddies right there. And my kids would be like, we don't know. Good for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there were times, there were some, you know, over the years, one or two emergencies or whatever where the kids, like, burst into my office. But I knew when they burst in the. This. This truly was like, at least in their minds and most of the time also in mine, like, there was an emergency and it was important. It always started with, I'm sorry to come in. It was like, nope, never apologize. Like, what do you need? Like, that's it. Yeah. But, yeah, you got to have that conversation. And it's an. It's a really easy conversation to have before it gets stressful. It's not necessarily as easy to have after the fact because now it, you know, the feelings can get hurt and all that stuff. So just talk about it ahead of time, like say, hey, yeah, what Are.

The expectations going to be working from home now? And I, I have this discussion with Renee all the time. Hey, okay, you know, I'm going to be here, I'm doing this. Here's my, like today. Hey, we're recording at this time, right? So I'm not going to be available to answer any questions or do whatever It's. It's important to set those boundaries and expectations.

Agreed.

Yeah, stuff, man. Yeah. And you know, you're talking about tools in the software. I think it's great. But also just the hardware, the equipment, you know, what equipment do you need to work from home? And if your employer, you're employing your, you know, your team to instructing them to stay at home, do they have the right equipment?

Right.

I mean, you can't just assume that they have everything. Does everybody have a laptop? Does everybody have this of that? You know, if you're setting up your workspace, you know, and you're going to be staring at a monitor, get a good monitor. You know, the prices are so inexpensive. Now for a good quality screen, I would say, you know, clarity and size, very, very important. Yeah, the big, the biggest you can get. But also that has a really good clarity because you're going to be, you know, staring at it all day. I'm sure the Mac observer can help you make some of those decisions with.

You know, I will, I will make one recommendation right out of the gate here. I've been super happy with Monoprice's monitors over the years. Their business model is great. They sort of look at what the high end stuff has, in my opinion. This isn't their words, but I think it's what they do. It seems like they look at the high end stuff, they distill it down into, okay, what's the one component or three components that actually matter for what this product is built to do. So in a monitor, it's what's the glass, what's the display, what's the chipset or whatever that runs this thing? Okay, cool. Now also, what else have these people built in? Well, they've got this glorious frame. Well, okay. Well, we could make the frame a nice frame out of plastic or something more economical. It doesn't have to be a millimeter thin. It can be 5 millimeters thin. And you know what? That's okay. And then you get this great screen for half the price that you would pay somewhere else. So my current favorite from them is their Crystal Pro 27 inch. It's a UHD display, which for us Apple people is like Essentially what Apple means when they say Retina Display. So you get that rich view where you're not seeing the pixels. If you set it in the way that you don't see the pixels. I mean you can configure it any way you want, but. And it's like it's for a 27 inch display. It's 335 bucks right now. Yeah, I'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, it's great.

You deserve that. And then the other thing, I, you know, I think you need a great chair, you know.

Oh yeah.

Sitting in the kitchen chair or sitting at the dining room table chair. That's just not going to fly. I mean it will temporarily.

Yeah.

But if you, if you're going to be there a lot, you need a great chair. You know, many, many years ago I bought a, a Herman Miller Aaron chair which has this netting. It's great. It's great.

I've got one of those. It's great.

Yeah, they're awesome. And now they not, you know, you can pick them up inexpensively, you know, they're not too crazy. They used to be a couple thousand dollars, but now you can pick them up. They're everywhere. And it makes all the difference if you're going to be in it, you know, all day. So tools really important, you know, on your software. There's a new website, just found it today. It's called open for business.org and there is a handful of large companies that are offering their cloud services and collaboration services for free for three to six months right now. While so many people are not going to be going into the office and I would suggest you go up there, there may be something for your team that you could, that you can use.

Oh nice.

Yeah. Go to meeting WebEx, Cloudflare Box all these, you know, companies that have put stuff up there at, at no charge.

That's great.

Yeah, that's cool.

Cool.

Could be, could be helpful. And again, we'll put the link in the, in the show notes for you.

Yeah, yeah. Open for business. There it is going.

Yep.

Cool.

And for me one of the, one of the last things on my list is, comes kind of back to the structure. Thing is you need to take breaks. I often get in this mode of feeling like, oh, you know, I could just keep going and power through and then stop at a certain time maybe, but, but I don't do it. I just keep going. So forcing myself to stop, get up, walk out of my office, throw the ball for the dog, you know, go for a Walk, really stop and eat lunch. Don't just chow something down at your desk that's really important for my mental well being. And I would suggest that getting away from your desk at least a couple times a day is really important.

No, it's super important. I drink tea. I mean, I say I drink tea. I start the day with a tea bag in a cup and I put hot water in it and I have a hot water dispenser in my office and that's my hydration all day. I am someone who likes drinking hot water. Not everybody does, but what I do is I just keep refilling the mug. By the end of the day, I'm just drinking hot water. It's not tea anymore in the sense that most people think of tea. But knowing that, oh, I could have a big water bottle on my desk, but then I wouldn't need to get up. And so needing tea, I get up, I move around. That's often my excuse to sort of take five minutes, go over to the house, say hello, you know, those sorts of things. But it creates these natural breaks. I use just a small little, you know, normal eight ounce mug, whatever it is, and I drink plenty of water because anytime that if I notice that it, it's empty, that's when I refill it. I don't wait till I'm thirsty. I just keep refilling the thing and it's great, you know, and of course then I have to pee a lot and that gets me up. And that's good too.

Get you up moving.

Yeah, it gets you up moving. That's the thing.

Yeah, you made a comment.

Oh, go ahead.

You made a comment one time where you said something, you said, you know, I found that having a, Was it a mint candle at your desk? Yes, that or some kind of thing that I was like, that's, that's brilliant.

I, I have one going right now. I'm using Yankee candles, Jack Frost, which is like a vanilla mint. It's great. Oh yeah, yeah.

That is totally cool. Yeah. So whatever works for you. And experimenting with different things I think is great.

Yeah, I agree.

Make the best of it. And if you have tips for what works for you working at home, I.

Want to throw one more thing in. But tell them where to send the tips. No, go ahead, tell them where to.

Send it to send me feedbackusinessshow. Co. We would love to hear from you.

Yeah, for sure.

What do you got? What else you got?

You know, getting standing up is a good thing. Sitting down in general is bad for Us as humans, especially when we do it for long periods of time. So consider getting a standing desk. Even better, consider getting an adjustable desk because that way you can stand or sit. And like, I've been using an adjustable desk for years and it was life changing. Really makes a huge difference. You also want to get a nice cushiony pad to stand on while you're at your desk. But. But I've got this new autonomous desk and it's super easy to put together and it's adjustable with a motor, so you tell it what height you want and it sets it to it. But what's cool is you adjust it to the height that you like. And it's got four presets, sort of like the presets you would have in your car for radio stations or whatever. And so I have one for sitting and one for standing. And they're exactly where I want them to be because I've already preset them and I just hit the button and boom, it moves and it moves smoothly so that it's not like, you know, like the stuff on the desk with the computer and the candle and everything just is fine. Like, I don't, I can, I can move it with a burning candle and I don't freak out about that.

Yeah. Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah, it's great. No, they, they do a really good job with, with what they're doing there. It's at autonomous AI, so I'll throw that in the show notes. And their pricing is, is really good too, so. So perfect.

Yeah, that's really cool.

Yeah, man, that's good.

So, yeah, so before we go, I want to do my. The. Our podcast of the week I've been talking about lately. One of them I've been listening to for years that I really like, it's Freakonomics. And, you know, these are a group of people that take a deep dive and look at things in a. Probably a very different manner than you're used to. One of the recent episodes, speaking about being isolated, is, is they talked about, is there really a loneliness epidemic? You hear that term in the news from time to time and they kind of dig in deep and if there's not there might find out. Yeah, well, yeah, it's interesting. It's. It's very timely and they do some great stuff, you know, like how people eat, you know, but all kind of related to, to economics and, and things. It did a great series on the opioid, you know, epidemic that, you know, things and they, you know, jumped into how to stop being a loser and great episodes about football and the 49ers and how they stopped losing football games.

Yeah, yeah.

So highly recommend it. Take a look. Freakonomics. We'll put a link into the show. Notes for you.

Cool. Cool. Did you say you had two or just the one?

Just the one.

Oh, just.

I do have one more. Yeah, just the one. I have one more thing to say.

Ah, that's why I thought you had something else. Okay, got it.

Like if when you listen to Freakonomics or anything else, the one thing they're going to ask you every time is to go leave them a five star review, it's really important for us podcasters to get those reviews. It moves us up in the rankings and allows us to connect with better guests, more guests, and bring you more information. So if you can do that at the, you know, if you listen to Apple from the Apple podcast directory, leave it there or wherever else that you are picking it up. Love to have that.

Shannon is not lying here. Even just one review makes a huge difference in terms of how the rankings work and all of that stuff. So please, business show co slash reviews. You can go to the site and click through from there too, but really makes a huge difference for us. We'd really appreciate it, so.

Yeah, we do appreciate it.

Yeah. All right, well, we also appreciate you listening. We appreciate your time. So we've taken up quite a bit of it here today. Thank you so much for listening and we will see you next time. That's. That's what we got. Keep living that charmed life. Yeah, take it easy.