Speaker 1: Even before we fled our workplaces amid the COVID pandemic
Speaker 1: to set up at home. Yob Van Dervolt was convinced
Speaker 1: that remote working was the future.
Speaker 2: He's the founder and.
Speaker 1: CEO of Remote and was previously the VP of Product
Speaker 1: at git Lab, so he knows a thing or two
Speaker 1: about remote work. Job's philosophy is that the easier it
Speaker 1: is to start doing your work, the easier it is.
Speaker 2: To actually do your work.
Speaker 1: Home offices should be built for comfort, efficiency and reliability.
Speaker 1: So in this interview we go deep into the ultimate
Speaker 1: home office setup.
Speaker 2: The first half of this.
Speaker 1: Interview goes into gear, gadgets, software. It's a bit of
Speaker 1: a nerd fest, so if that's not your thing, maybe
Speaker 1: skip to the second half where we get into some
Speaker 1: super cool strategies and tools that Job users to motivate
Speaker 1: and communicate to his company, who are of course us
Speaker 1: all working remotely. My name is doctor Ramantha Imbat. I'm
Speaker 1: an organizational psychologist, the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,
Speaker 1: and this is how I work, a show about how
Speaker 1: to help you do your best work. So something your
Speaker 1: believes in very strongly is that remote working can give
Speaker 1: you a far better life than being chained.
Speaker 2: To a physical office.
Speaker 1: So let's start by looking at how do you actually
Speaker 1: get a better life through being remote.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess you get a lot for free when
Speaker 3: you start working remotely because you don't have to commute
Speaker 3: it anymore. You win a lot of time in a
Speaker 3: day by not having to commute and just having work
Speaker 3: be really, really close.
Speaker 4: The one thing you do have to.
Speaker 3: Make sure of is that now that work is so close,
Speaker 3: you create a clear separation between what is work and
Speaker 3: what is the rest of life. I think the best
Speaker 3: way to do this is to create a specific place
Speaker 3: for you your house or wherever you do your work,
Speaker 3: to do work and to not be there at times
Speaker 3: that you're not working. And then from there just limit
Speaker 3: the amount of time that you are actually working, like
Speaker 3: create a schedule and stick to that.
Speaker 2: What does your schedule look like? Out of interest?
Speaker 3: So usually I start at around nine nine thirty am
Speaker 3: in the morning, and I've blocked most of my day
Speaker 3: until about seven pm, and I've blocked lunch as well,
Speaker 3: and so that's usually the times that I work. I
Speaker 3: have two small kids at home. We're in lockdown, so
Speaker 3: sometimes I move things about, but that's basically what I.
Speaker 2: Stick to now.
Speaker 1: I know that you've thought a lot about your home
Speaker 1: office setup, and I want to spend a bit of
Speaker 1: time talking about the nitty gritty. I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: obsessed with home office setup and I've thought so much
Speaker 1: about my own. So one of the advantages of working
Speaker 1: from home is that means that you can totally take
Speaker 1: control of your workspace.
Speaker 2: And I know that you've.
Speaker 1: Written about what you're set up here is then I'll
Speaker 1: certainly link to that in the show notes. But why
Speaker 1: is thinking so much about your home office space and
Speaker 1: the atmosphere so important?
Speaker 3: I always think about these things as what is the
Speaker 3: total cost for you to do something? Like? What is
Speaker 3: the threshold for you to start doing work? The easier
Speaker 3: it is to start doing work, the easier it is
Speaker 3: to do your work.
Speaker 4: The more you can focus on the work itself.
Speaker 3: And so that's why I focus on I think for me,
Speaker 3: I built my home offers around comfort first and efficiency
Speaker 3: and reliability. I have zero patients for things that don't
Speaker 3: work or don't work well, or are not fast and snappy.
Speaker 3: I could never work with a slow computer, so that
Speaker 3: is what I optimize around, and to me, that makes
Speaker 3: a huge difference if I never feel frustrated and everything
Speaker 3: just works.
Speaker 1: I guess when we're thinking about working remotely and the
Speaker 1: importance of having a good setup for all the communication
Speaker 1: that happens virtually.
Speaker 2: Why is that so important?
Speaker 1: Because I know it on the majority of zoom calls
Speaker 1: that I'm on camera angles, a terrible lightings bad people
Speaker 1: just don't.
Speaker 2: Think about it.
Speaker 1: So why should listeners be thinking more about this setup.
Speaker 3: I am on two mindst on this. On one end,
Speaker 3: I think that the kind of setup that I have
Speaker 3: is overkilled for almost everybody. I do it because I
Speaker 3: like it, and I see it almost like a hobby,
Speaker 3: and I'm happy to maintain it and I'm happy to
Speaker 3: invest in it. But on the other end, when you
Speaker 3: see someone face to face, the amount of information you
Speaker 3: transmit and the presence that you feel when you are together,
Speaker 3: that a lot of that is lost when you were
Speaker 3: having a video chat with someone, and that's exacerbated by
Speaker 3: having a poor connection or a poor camera angle, or
Speaker 3: getting the feeling that someone is not looking at you.
Speaker 3: It's such a simple fix to make sure that your
Speaker 3: camera is right in front of you so that you
Speaker 3: roughly look straight at a person when you're looking at
Speaker 3: the screen. That's such a simple thing to do, but
Speaker 3: it makes a huge difference. And so if you build
Speaker 3: your office, if you build your webcam, your zoom setup
Speaker 3: around the idea of I want people to feel close
Speaker 3: to me and I feel like it's I am really here,
Speaker 3: that can make a meaningful difference in how people perceive
Speaker 3: you and how you perceive others if they have a
Speaker 3: similar kind of setup. For one, I always feel very
Speaker 3: frustrated when I'm calling with someone and the connection is choppy,
Speaker 3: or even if just the video freezes, you can still
Speaker 3: hear them talk.
Speaker 4: Technically, we can still talk with.
Speaker 3: Each other, but it's definitely not the same experience, and
Speaker 3: so that nonverbal communication that's in that moment completely lost.
Speaker 3: And I think the better your setup is around these
Speaker 3: kind of things, in essence, the more data you can
Speaker 3: transmit between each other.
Speaker 1: So having the camera at eye level is very important.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me what tech you use to produce
Speaker 1: a really great quality image?
Speaker 2: And again I'm going to link.
Speaker 1: To your blog because you've got a picture of how
Speaker 1: you look on screening video conferences and it looks very
Speaker 1: very good. So can you talk me through what your
Speaker 1: setup looks like for producing that great image.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think it looks much better today because
Speaker 3: I made a lot of change. I've replaced most of
Speaker 3: the things that you see in that picture. So I
Speaker 3: have Sony A sixty four thousand recently upgraded because it
Speaker 3: don one broke, which and I use that one as
Speaker 3: webcam with a thirty five meter one point eight lens.
Speaker 3: And the lens is really the trick, right, Like the
Speaker 3: camera is just the thing that produces image, but having
Speaker 3: a good lens with somewhat of a short depth of
Speaker 3: field that helps you create this really nice blurry background
Speaker 3: and so it focuses on you. So that one is
Speaker 3: connected to a KEM link, which allows me to to
Speaker 3: actually use it as a webcam. Then nowadays, what I have,
Speaker 3: it's one of those key lights from El Gato. It's
Speaker 3: one of those large lights that you connect to your
Speaker 3: desk with a triple and you can connect it with
Speaker 3: the stream deck the little buttons in front of me,
Speaker 3: and so that makes sure that even if it's a
Speaker 3: little bit dark in my office, I'm well lit and
Speaker 3: it works extremely well.
Speaker 4: I think that's it for how I look.
Speaker 3: Part the rest of it is, you know, I make
Speaker 3: sure that in my office, I just the light. So
Speaker 3: I have spotlights in my office. There are all Phillips
Speaker 3: you lights, so I can address them individually. And so
Speaker 3: one of the things that I do is I turn
Speaker 3: off the light directly above me because it casts dark
Speaker 3: shadows on your eyes. It makes you look very tired,
Speaker 3: so that when I turn off and the rest of
Speaker 3: the ones in the room I dim. And then nowadays,
Speaker 3: because in the picture that in a blog, my desk
Speaker 3: is turned in one way, I now turn it to
Speaker 3: the wall. So my background is you look further into
Speaker 3: my office and you don't see very much because it's blurry,
Speaker 3: but you see some little details and it gives a
Speaker 3: nice effect.
Speaker 1: And so you've got the Phillips huge lights. Do you
Speaker 1: use any kind of automation with those lights? Given that
Speaker 1: they're smart lights?
Speaker 3: Most of the time I control them with my stream deck,
Speaker 3: so I just manually adjust them, change them throughout the
Speaker 3: day to match the daylight.
Speaker 4: Color or how I feel.
Speaker 3: So in the beginning of the day, I always turn
Speaker 3: them really white to wake me up, especially because it's.
Speaker 4: Still someone dark outside.
Speaker 3: And then throughout the day, especially near the end of
Speaker 3: the day, I started to turn them a more orange lights,
Speaker 3: so you get a feeling of like, okay, now it's
Speaker 3: see the end of the day. I don't do too
Speaker 3: much automation around lights. What I found is that if
Speaker 3: you do that, you spend a lot of time thinking
Speaker 3: about an ideal scenario and then reality is always very
Speaker 3: different from that. So in the past, for example, I
Speaker 3: would always turn them on at a certain times turn
Speaker 3: them off at certain times, and I found that the
Speaker 3: reality never matches that either I end up turning them
Speaker 3: off earlier or turning them on earlier. It's surprisingly hard
Speaker 3: to have like a perfect automation.
Speaker 4: But we have these lights all throughout the house.
Speaker 3: And the one super useful thing I always find is
Speaker 3: that if you have a few of those motion detection detectors,
Speaker 3: so that if you walk into a house, it does
Speaker 3: turn on the lights here and there.
Speaker 1: I love the idea of the lights changing hu during
Speaker 1: the day.
Speaker 2: That's so cool.
Speaker 1: Now you have mentioned the Elgado stream deck a couple
Speaker 1: of times, and I must say, after I read your post,
Speaker 1: I got one of those. I also found out that
Speaker 1: my dad has one. So my dad is a computer
Speaker 1: programmer and also does all the sound engineering for this
Speaker 1: podcast and I'm in love with my stream deck, and
Speaker 1: I'm imagining most listeners have no idea what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: So can you talk about what this stream deck thing
Speaker 1: is and how you use it.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's a tiny keyboard.
Speaker 3: On each key a little screen, and what you can
Speaker 3: do is you can decide what you want each one
Speaker 3: of those keys to do, and then you can actually
Speaker 3: decide what it looks like. Because it's a little screen,
Speaker 3: you can display a particular thing. And then the nice
Speaker 3: thing is is it comes in a little dock, so
Speaker 3: you can mount it at forty five degrees, so it
Speaker 3: like sits in front of you and it looks at you.
Speaker 3: And I have the stream Deck XL, which has thirty
Speaker 3: two buttons, and so what I do with it is
Speaker 3: I map those buttons to different actions.
Speaker 4: It can be context aware.
Speaker 3: So for example, if I have Zoom open, it shows
Speaker 3: me all the typical controls of Zoom, like music, myself,
Speaker 3: turing my camera on and off, etc. However, for most
Speaker 3: of the day, the default screen that I have does
Speaker 3: a few things. I have buttons to control the key
Speaker 3: lights or the light that shines on my face.
Speaker 4: I turn it off.
Speaker 3: Whenever I'm not in a zoom call because it's very bright.
Speaker 3: And then I have a whole bunch of buttons related
Speaker 3: to things to control on my computer. I always have
Speaker 3: media control, so the ability to turn off and on Spotify.
Speaker 3: I have a single button that opens my calendar because
Speaker 3: I have a lot of meetings, so I can express
Speaker 3: that and it opens my calendar. I have several buttons
Speaker 3: related to scanning and printing documents because in my work
Speaker 3: I actually have to still print a lot of PHYSS
Speaker 3: called documents, wet sign them and scanning scan them again.
Speaker 3: So I just put them all in my scanner and
Speaker 3: I press the button here and it runs through them.
Speaker 3: And then I have a whole number of automations that
Speaker 3: I've made with keyboard Maestro that do all sorts of
Speaker 3: things in my computer. For example, one button re arranges
Speaker 3: my screens so that in a way that I like them. So,
Speaker 3: for example, I always want to have I have two
Speaker 3: screen series, so I want to have Slack on my
Speaker 3: left screen, I want to have my browser on the
Speaker 3: main screen, I want to have Roam on.
Speaker 4: My mainscreen on the right.
Speaker 3: And if I press it one button, it just rearranges
Speaker 3: them all at once. And I have another one for example,
Speaker 3: that cleans my local download folder. Because I have to
Speaker 3: download a lot of things and I don't want to
Speaker 3: manually sort them out. So what I do is I
Speaker 3: download things, I work through those documents, and whenever I'm done,
Speaker 3: I just pressed it one button and it automatically rearranges
Speaker 3: all the files in my computer and sends some of
Speaker 3: them to the cloud and trushes some others.
Speaker 1: I'm quite inspired hearing about all the different shorts that
Speaker 1: you've got, because I don't have anywhere near as many
Speaker 1: as that. I feel like it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where you kind of become aware of all the repetitive
Speaker 1: actions that you do during the day, but then just
Speaker 1: investing five minutes to go okay, I could say so
Speaker 1: much time just through taking the time to program that
Speaker 1: on to stream deck that for some reason something sometimes
Speaker 1: just stops me. So I'm definitely going to invest some
Speaker 1: time tomorrow. I'm quite inspired. Now you mentioned Keyboard Maestro.
Speaker 1: What is Keyboard Maestro.
Speaker 3: It's the ultimate automation suite for Mac. So you previously
Speaker 3: and you still have Automator for example, this is a
Speaker 3: little bit hard to use, and so keep it. My
Speaker 3: stow is made by one individual I believe, and it's
Speaker 3: a not very good looking tool that allows you to
Speaker 3: essentially automate anything that happens on your Mac give it
Speaker 3: the permisions to do so. So the way it works
Speaker 3: is you set some sort of trigger. So that trigger
Speaker 3: could be a manual action you clicking somewhere, you click
Speaker 3: on a button, or pressing a particular key, or in
Speaker 3: this case, for example, me pressing on a key on
Speaker 3: the stream deck, but it could also be a change
Speaker 3: in your computer an event for example, I add a
Speaker 3: new file to a particular folder. So you set that trigger,
Speaker 3: and then what you can do is then based on
Speaker 3: the trigger, you can do all sorts of actions, and
Speaker 3: those actions the standard actions that are available in Keyboard Maestro.
Speaker 3: As first, they seem somewhat limited, but you quickly discover
Speaker 3: that they're actually very powerful because you can essentially do
Speaker 3: anything you could do with your hands without automations. For example,
Speaker 3: if I want to find a particular place in the
Speaker 3: screen to click on, I could say, well, I want
Speaker 3: to click at a particular coordinate. But you can also
Speaker 3: do is you can have Keyboard mysto search for an
Speaker 3: image on your whole screen and then click on that image.
Speaker 3: So that you don't have to rely on your screen
Speaker 3: speining a particular place. It's incredibly powerful and you can
Speaker 3: virtually automate anything with it. And to give you an example,
Speaker 3: the latest thing I automated, well, I get a lot
Speaker 3: of images through WhatsApp, and I want to save those images.
Speaker 3: But there's not a real easy way to do this,
Speaker 3: especially not if you have a lot a lot of
Speaker 3: them hundreds. And so what I did is I created
Speaker 3: the keyboard maestrow automation that essentially opened WhatsApp, selected the
Speaker 3: contact from which I want to download the images, and
Speaker 3: then one by one go through each image, click on download,
Speaker 3: saves it to the right location, waits until that's done,
Speaker 3: and then goes to the next image, and it just
Speaker 3: does that for however long I wanted. And so once
Speaker 3: I set up that the automation I tested to with
Speaker 3: like three images, I turned it on, I did like
Speaker 3: three hundreds, and then a minute later I couldn't touch
Speaker 3: my computer in this time, though, but a minute later
Speaker 3: it had downloaded all those things. And it would have
Speaker 3: been very tedious to do by hand, but it was
Speaker 3: actually very easy to automate. It took me maybe five
Speaker 3: minutes or something.
Speaker 1: Do I need to be able to write code to
Speaker 1: automate within keyboard my story or is it for non
Speaker 1: coders like me?
Speaker 4: No, not at all. That's the beauty of it.
Speaker 3: I think it's good to have an understanding of loops,
Speaker 3: so understanding what does how does loop work?
Speaker 4: And such?
Speaker 3: So having some sort of like a mind that likes
Speaker 3: the program things certainly helps and it will make you easier.
Speaker 3: I also think it's worth while just exploring online, like
Speaker 3: sometimes it's worth to just look at examples online. If
Speaker 3: you do want to code, you can actually coach. You
Speaker 3: can write JavaScript, or you can write automator in there,
Speaker 3: and if you want to do very specific things or
Speaker 3: things that are on a command line, then you will
Speaker 3: need to do that. But actually, I think none of
Speaker 3: the automations I am using today uses any kind of code,
Speaker 3: So no, it's it's really nice.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Just before we started recording, I said, you sound so good,
Speaker 1: and I would expect nothing less. Can you talk me
Speaker 1: through what your setup is for sounding so great and clear?
Speaker 3: I spend a lot of time thinking about this, and
Speaker 3: one of the things I learned very quickly was that
Speaker 3: if you want to control the acoustic properties of your space.
Speaker 3: You have to invest in immense amount of time and
Speaker 3: effort and money to be able to do that, and
Speaker 3: I essentially decided to not do that, and rather than
Speaker 3: having spending time on acoustic insallation and echoic things, I decided,
Speaker 3: I'm going to build a setup that works around like
Speaker 3: one really good microphone that is someone close to my
Speaker 3: mouth and then I don't have to worry about the echo.
Speaker 3: And so that's exactly what it is I now have.
Speaker 3: I think it's called an Electro Voice r E twenty microphone,
Speaker 3: which I can obviously not expect anyone to buy the
Speaker 3: same one. It's very expensive, but it's a very popular microphone,
Speaker 3: especially in the recording industry. It's really really good because
Speaker 3: you don't have to be too close to it. You
Speaker 3: have to be someone close to it, and you basically
Speaker 3: the ultimate sound quality and that is connected to a
Speaker 3: microphone arm and a microphone arm. I don't remember the brand,
Speaker 3: but it's a nice one because it has the xcel
Speaker 3: R cable insight so you don't have to lose cable
Speaker 3: wiggling about. Honestly, that's all the money that I spent
Speaker 3: on that that's worth it, and that into the perfect
Speaker 3: USB microphone interface. It's a USB pre too from sound devices,
Speaker 3: which again is OVERKO for ninety five to ninety nine
Speaker 3: percent of all people. The nice thing about this one
Speaker 3: is is that it's essentially indestructible and mega reliable and
Speaker 3: doesn't require any drivers. So this whole setup is, I
Speaker 3: have a really good microphone. It goes into a box,
Speaker 3: and a box doesn't need any drivers. I just plug
Speaker 3: it into my computer. It would work on any computer.
Speaker 3: The device is like fifteen years old. They haven't changed
Speaker 3: it in many years. They haven't released any driver updates
Speaker 3: to it. It's just super solid. So I'm really really
Speaker 3: happy with the audio setup I have today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that you used to use a slightly
Speaker 1: more affordable microphone, am I right inside that you used
Speaker 1: to use an Audio Technica I TI twenty one.
Speaker 4: Hundred, Yeah, the twenty one hundred USB. And it's still
Speaker 4: really good.
Speaker 3: Like if I for some reason I have to record
Speaker 3: multiple audio streams at home, which is like one in
Speaker 3: the Blue Moon, then I have two of them. I
Speaker 3: bought it for fifty dollars when I was visiting New York.
Speaker 3: Once it was hard to shipt Europe. But yeah, and
Speaker 3: it's incredible. I think the difference between the mic that
Speaker 3: I'm using now and that one is that that one
Speaker 3: really has to be close to your mouth. You really
Speaker 3: need a pop filter on it, and the dynamic ra
Speaker 3: INNG is a little bit less, but it is almost
Speaker 3: as good.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: I know that you're not a fan of bluetooth headphones.
Speaker 1: Could you talk me through what you do use and why?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I also recently upgraded all of that, so
Speaker 3: I'm not like I. Fundamentally I use Bluetooth headphones all
Speaker 3: the time. I use airports all the time. I have
Speaker 3: a set of Airports Max and all more order. But
Speaker 3: for my own setup, it's not reliable enough. I have
Speaker 3: days where I have seven hours of meetings sometimes and
Speaker 3: none of them do a good job. And like, I
Speaker 3: don't want a hassle with losing connection to it, so
Speaker 3: I always use wired headphones without any exception. So today
Speaker 3: I use by Bayer Dynamic nineteen ninety pro, which is
Speaker 3: open back headphones, which is my preferred type of headphones
Speaker 3: because then I can still hear myself when I'm talking
Speaker 3: like I am now, and also I find the sound
Speaker 3: quality much better. People have concerns that the sound leaks
Speaker 3: too much through them, but I find that that's not
Speaker 3: really the case, and those are connected to a sheet
Speaker 3: audio deck and amp which is on my desk, and
Speaker 3: that's then connected to my Mac.
Speaker 1: I want to geek out for just a little bit longer,
Speaker 1: so please indulge me, or rather I should say listeners,
Speaker 1: please indulge me in this, because I could just talk
Speaker 1: for hours about gear. Now, keyboards keyboards are not created equal.
Speaker 1: Talk me through your view on your preference for keyboards.
Speaker 3: A long time ago I got into mechanical keyboards, like
Speaker 3: I think many people in the tech industry start to
Speaker 3: discover them at once, and I used all sorts and
Speaker 3: then I.
Speaker 4: Saw someone use a split keyboard.
Speaker 3: So split keyboard being a keyboard, it existently exists of
Speaker 3: two separate part one for your left hand, one for
Speaker 3: your right hand. And actually, I don't know if you
Speaker 3: heard that, that was me moving it. And so I've
Speaker 3: used an Ergo dogs Easy for a very long time,
Speaker 3: and today what I use is a Moonlener, which is
Speaker 3: their new split keyboard, and it's a split keyboards and
Speaker 3: it's also Ergo linear, so that means that the keys
Speaker 3: are in neat rows and columns, so rather than like
Speaker 3: being offset. Like a normal quirty keyboard, they are in
Speaker 3: very straight column. So essentially, if you want to move
Speaker 3: from the J to the you, for example, on your
Speaker 3: right hand, you go straight up instead of going slightly
Speaker 3: to the left or to the right. And so this keyboard,
Speaker 3: for one, it's my favorite keyboard of all time. It's
Speaker 3: truly incredible when you drop your arms next to you
Speaker 3: and you just stick out your hands straight forward that
Speaker 3: is where each half of the keyboard is, rather than
Speaker 3: moving them to the center in front of you, and
Speaker 3: so actually in the center in front of me, I
Speaker 3: usually have my coffee and I touch type. And the
Speaker 3: nice thing about the keyword is is you can program it,
Speaker 3: and you can program it in a sense that you
Speaker 3: can add multiple layers to it.
Speaker 4: That means that.
Speaker 3: If I just type normally, if I keep my hands
Speaker 3: on the home row so with my left, the next
Speaker 3: thing on the F, and am I right on the J,
Speaker 3: it's just a normal quality keyboard. I don't use any
Speaker 3: specific other arrangement. But then if I, for example, press
Speaker 3: on the key next to the A, which traditionally you
Speaker 3: have the cap slope for me, it activates a level
Speaker 3: switch and now every key on the keyboard is mapped
Speaker 3: to something different, and because it's programmable, I can choose
Speaker 3: what it is. So in my case, it means that
Speaker 3: if I press on that key so that it is
Speaker 3: to the left of the A on my right hand
Speaker 3: under my index and middle finger, I have parentheses and
Speaker 3: square brackets and curly brackets, so things I use very
Speaker 3: very frequently, and so they are very easy to reach.
Speaker 3: So I don't have to press shift and then reach
Speaker 3: up with my hands now. Rather they are under the
Speaker 3: home row and I can really quickly type particular things.
Speaker 3: I have not layer switch on the other side of
Speaker 3: the left hand where each key is mapped to.
Speaker 4: I don't even know what.
Speaker 3: Kind of key combination, but it essentially allows me to
Speaker 3: move windows around. So if I press my index finger
Speaker 3: on one and then I usually use my ring finger
Speaker 3: on another key, I know that it can really quickly
Speaker 3: move a window to the left, or the screen to
Speaker 3: the right, or screen besides, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Now, but I've got a normal, just a Mac keyboard
Speaker 1: that's sort of Bluetooth connected. If like thinking about the
Speaker 1: keyboard setup that you have, I imagine most people don't
Speaker 1: have that setup. How difficult or challenging would it be
Speaker 1: for people with a normal keyboard to move to what
Speaker 1: you're using where it's essentially split in half.
Speaker 3: I have a lot of friends that start using this
Speaker 3: and actually yesterday or a friend of mine body exact
Speaker 3: same one.
Speaker 4: And I here two things.
Speaker 3: One is it took me about a week or two
Speaker 3: weeks to get as fast as a normal keyboard, and
Speaker 3: I love it and I don't want.
Speaker 4: To go back.
Speaker 3: And I've had several friends that were like, this is
Speaker 3: not for me, and I'm turning it or stop.
Speaker 4: Using it, and so I personally spent I think.
Speaker 3: It was one week that it was like a bit
Speaker 3: of work and I missed a few keys and I
Speaker 3: had to remap them. I kept hitting the wrong key
Speaker 3: for the bee. But more and more I see, especially
Speaker 3: people in my company, for example, using this kind of keyboard.
Speaker 3: It is much more organomic and had the advantages of
Speaker 3: having a program or keyboard are hard to understate.
Speaker 4: It's really really quite powerful.
Speaker 1: And how about your mouse or I should say misce
Speaker 1: I believe what's your set up there?
Speaker 3: So I used to mice on the right. So I
Speaker 3: used to be a die hard track pad user for.
Speaker 4: A long time.
Speaker 3: I started getting pain in my hand, and the moment
Speaker 3: that happened, I immediately decided to no longer use a
Speaker 3: track pad as my primary mouse. So I'm right handed,
Speaker 3: so on my right hand I have a Logitech MX
Speaker 3: Master three, which is a really great mouse, and on
Speaker 3: my left hand I still use the Magic track Pad
Speaker 3: two from Apple. I have the black one that came
Speaker 3: with the Macro. And the reason I use both is
Speaker 3: that a normal mouse is good for almost all normal
Speaker 3: day to day computer use, and this one, in particular
Speaker 3: is really nice because it has like this horizontal scroll wheel.
Speaker 3: It has a few extra buttons, which I don't use,
Speaker 3: by the way, but it has them if I were
Speaker 3: to use them. And then on the left side I
Speaker 3: have the trackpad for gestures. You know, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of really nice gests, like a three or four fingers
Speaker 3: swipe up to have xpos A open. But in particular,
Speaker 3: we use fig masks designed to add remote and moving
Speaker 3: around like a virtual environment like a two D space
Speaker 3: is infinitely more easy with the trackpad because you can
Speaker 3: just put two fingers on it and you can move
Speaker 3: in X and the Y dimension, and you can pinch
Speaker 3: to zoom in and out, and that is something that
Speaker 3: with a mouse and regular mouse is significantly harder. And
Speaker 3: so what I do is like, on my left hand,
Speaker 3: I navigate around. On my right hand, I click on
Speaker 3: things and resize things, and it works so well. I
Speaker 3: tried to convince more people of using the same setup.
Speaker 1: I like that a lot because I use a normal
Speaker 1: mouse and I've actually put my track pad away in
Speaker 1: the draw. But since learning about your setup, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe I need to become ambidexterous in my mouse setup.
Speaker 1: Now I imagine that there are you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of listeners going wow, that sounds like an amazing setup,
Speaker 1: but it's going to be overkill for me, or I
Speaker 1: don't have that budget or my organization would not fund
Speaker 1: all that amazing gear. What would your top two or
Speaker 1: three tips be for listeners that are on a budget
Speaker 1: to get the biggest bang for their back in terms
Speaker 1: of improving their home office setup and how they're communicating
Speaker 1: visually an auditory with the rest of the world.
Speaker 3: If you ask me specifically, like the whole home office
Speaker 3: may advice is always one. Get a good chair. Spend
Speaker 3: all your money on that. It can get your back
Speaker 3: back right. This is the one thing where you should
Speaker 3: really optimize for an external monitor. If you are set
Speaker 3: with those basics, I think the next step it's nice
Speaker 3: to have mechanical keyboard. They are not expensive. You can
Speaker 3: get like a great mechanical keyboard for the equivalent of
Speaker 3: fifty dollars or so nowadays on Amazon. And then it's
Speaker 3: what I said, like, try to optimize the little thing
Speaker 3: so you can get an inexpensive webcam and put it
Speaker 3: on your screen in front of you if you have
Speaker 3: an external screen, so that you look straight at the webcam.
Speaker 3: Make sure you have some sort of headphones whenever you're
Speaker 3: in a zoom call, so that there's no chance that
Speaker 3: you have that echo effect where which zoom actually cancels
Speaker 3: out really really well. But not all video clients do
Speaker 3: very well. It's very easy thing just put on headphones.
Speaker 3: If you already have some lying around, that works fine.
Speaker 3: And then if you still have some budget left, you
Speaker 3: can always look into getting an external microphone. It tends
Speaker 3: to make quite a big difference, especially if you just
Speaker 3: get one and put it somewhat close to you. The
Speaker 3: closer to your mouth, the better it will sound. That's
Speaker 3: like then the price of the microphone doesn't really matter.
Speaker 3: If you put it really close to your mouth, and
Speaker 3: again you can get like a great one for fifty
Speaker 3: to one hundred dollars, which definitely is an investment, but
Speaker 3: it is also worth it if you spend a lot
Speaker 3: of time in video calls. And then the one thing
Speaker 3: I always say is like, get a wired Internet to
Speaker 3: your desk, like remove the latency of Wi Fi and
Speaker 3: the chance that your Wi Fi goes down or you
Speaker 3: have problems with it all together by just putting a
Speaker 3: wired directly to your computer. You probably need a dong
Speaker 3: all if you use a MacBook, but.
Speaker 4: It's so worth it.
Speaker 3: It will cost you, I don't know, twenty dollars to
Speaker 3: do so at most, and you will forever get rid
Speaker 3: of all your latency problems with zoom calls.
Speaker 1: And what sort of chair do you have? Given that
Speaker 1: that is the most important item.
Speaker 3: Chairs are really personal choice. Years many years ago, I
Speaker 3: sat on a Herman Miller Errands chair and I thought
Speaker 3: to myself, I've never said this comfortably, So that's what
Speaker 3: I'm sitting on an error chair.
Speaker 1: Yeare moving away from tech talk. I know that you
Speaker 1: used to be at git Lab and I actually had
Speaker 1: Darren Murph on the show a few months ago, and
Speaker 1: I got to say that was one of my favorite
Speaker 1: interviews of last year and just learning about how things
Speaker 1: are done at git lab, and I know that asynchronous
Speaker 1: work is the default at git lab. For those that
Speaker 1: haven't come across the term asynchronous, can you just briefly
Speaker 1: define what that means, because I know that at remote
Speaker 1: dot Com, I assume that your default to asynchronous communication
Speaker 1: there as well.
Speaker 4: Yes, we do.
Speaker 3: Asynchronous work essentially means that work can continue in the
Speaker 3: absence of being together in the same place at the
Speaker 3: same time, So you work in a way that doesn't
Speaker 3: require you to have a meeting with someone, that doesn't
Speaker 3: require you to be working on something at the same time,
Speaker 3: and things can still continue. That is fundamentally what you
Speaker 3: try to achieve with asynchronous work. When you think about specifics,
Speaker 3: it means that you'll write down rather than things being
Speaker 3: in the air. Right in a normal office, when you
Speaker 3: work together, it's often the case, like what is the
Speaker 3: status of a project? You can shout it in the
Speaker 3: air and then the person in the other desk might say,
Speaker 3: this is what it is. In asynchronous work, this is
Speaker 3: not acceptable because that means that it relies on you
Speaker 3: both being working at the same time at the same
Speaker 3: place and communicating with each other and asynchronous work essentially
Speaker 3: states that, well, if there is a status to be had,
Speaker 3: it's accessible to everybody, and you don't need to bother
Speaker 3: someone else to be able to get that status. If
Speaker 3: you want to read what decision was made and why
Speaker 3: it was made, that is accessible, you don't have to
Speaker 3: ask it to someone. And all of this to eventually
Speaker 3: allow you to build the team that is distributed and
Speaker 3: it can work whenever they want and continue with their
Speaker 3: work at whatever time they want without needing to sync
Speaker 3: with other people.
Speaker 1: Now, I am curious as to what the differences are
Speaker 1: in the way you've chosen to work and build the
Speaker 1: culture at remote dot com. But before we go there,
Speaker 1: for listeners that haven't heard of remote dot com, which
Speaker 1: I imagine is quite a few listeners, can you talk
Speaker 1: about what your company does and why you created it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 3: So if you are an employer and you want to
Speaker 3: employ someone in a different country, that's actually pretty hard
Speaker 3: to do. You need to have a local office, you
Speaker 3: need to have a local entity. Then you need to
Speaker 3: hire someone locally meet the local laws in terms of
Speaker 3: labor laws, and employment laws, and then you need to
Speaker 3: run local payroll and pay them out locally in their
Speaker 3: local currency.
Speaker 4: That's a lot of work.
Speaker 3: If you choose to not do those things, you are
Speaker 3: a non compliant. Like you can't just hire someone in
Speaker 3: another country and say you are now an employee of
Speaker 3: my company, which is an American company, even though you're
Speaker 3: in Portugal.
Speaker 4: That's not possible.
Speaker 3: And we face this problem at get lab many many times,
Speaker 3: and we never found a great solution to it, and
Speaker 3: so Remote specifically solves this problem. So what we are
Speaker 3: we are a global employer of record and we take
Speaker 3: care of exactly this problem. So we take care of
Speaker 3: payroll and benefits and compliance for international teams. And we
Speaker 3: do that by, among other things, employing people locally for
Speaker 3: other employers. So if you have a company in the
Speaker 3: United States you want to employ someone in Portugal, you
Speaker 3: can do so through us. We take care of all
Speaker 3: the bureaucratic stuff and we just send you an invoice
Speaker 3: every month and you treat that employee like any other employee.
Speaker 3: So that's what Remotes does.
Speaker 2: What a brilliant problem to solve.
Speaker 1: And I want to know, given you spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time at GitLab involved in their culture, and I'd
Speaker 1: say for those that are not familiar with that culture,
Speaker 1: I will link to my interview with Darren Murph in
Speaker 1: the show notes because that goes into a lot of
Speaker 1: the choices that GitLab have made in terms of creating
Speaker 1: the culture that they have there around Remote Works. So
Speaker 1: what are some of the things that you've chosen to
Speaker 1: do differently in terms of being a remote first company.
Speaker 3: I think there's a few fundamental thing we started to
Speaker 3: do that I'm not sure we get LEB does, but
Speaker 3: one notable example is what we start to see is
Speaker 3: that having a single moment with the whole company together
Speaker 3: is of course very hard to achieve. And when you
Speaker 3: have people all over the world and you want to
Speaker 3: have both ability to bond with your colleagues independent of
Speaker 3: where they are, and you want to also especially if
Speaker 3: you're a leader in the company or if you have
Speaker 3: some news to share, to be able to do that.
Speaker 3: And so what we started to do is we started
Speaker 3: to explicitly separate those things. So now what we have
Speaker 3: at the Remote is we have six bonding calls a week.
Speaker 3: So these are calls and their only purpose is to
Speaker 3: spend time bonding chatting with each other, maybe doing you know,
Speaker 3: those icebreaker questions, or just having fun together. So it's
Speaker 3: six calls, but on three different days, and then one
Speaker 3: for me it's in the morning, and one for me
Speaker 3: it's in the late afternoon, so that essentially the whole
Speaker 3: planet can at least attend one of them, and then
Speaker 3: we still have an all hands meeting where we try
Speaker 3: to all get together, which is a shifting time. But
Speaker 3: what we figured out was that this all hands for one,
Speaker 3: we don't like to schedule long and many recurring meetings,
Speaker 3: so it's only thirty minutes. So rather than using that
Speaker 3: time for updates, what we started to do is require
Speaker 3: every team to record their updates in a LOOM video.
Speaker 3: So what people do is they we have a page
Speaker 3: on Notion where everybody posts their updates and it can
Speaker 3: be either written in a little Notion page or it
Speaker 3: can be loom or sometimes a combination of both, and
Speaker 3: people tend to stick to at most five minutes, so
Speaker 3: these are really short updates and it gives you a
Speaker 3: really nice ability to quickly see what is happening across
Speaker 3: the organization, and of course we categorize those so if
Speaker 3: you want to see like what is the latest in
Speaker 3: sales at Remote? Even on your first day, you can
Speaker 3: just go to that list and you can see, oh,
Speaker 3: there was an update two days ago. You can watch
Speaker 3: it and you're fully up to date. And I'm quite
Speaker 3: proud of this because this solved so many problems, and
Speaker 3: it took a while to encourage everybody to start recording this,
Speaker 3: but now that people are doing it, it's an incredible
Speaker 3: source of information because it moves away from the requirement
Speaker 3: of having to really search the deep through documentation just
Speaker 3: to get a glance of like what is the current
Speaker 3: status of things. You can just watch a video or
Speaker 3: even just read the transcript, and it still gives you
Speaker 3: somewhat personal thing because you can put a face to
Speaker 3: another department or a face to a particular task, and
Speaker 3: so you actually get to see all the people that
Speaker 3: you know. Remote we spend a lot of time on
Speaker 3: international expansion. You can actually see the people that are
Speaker 3: working on this, and I find it very very cool for.
Speaker 1: Listeners that haven't come across Loom or Notion, Can you
Speaker 1: briefly explain what those two pieces of software do, how
Speaker 1: they work.
Speaker 3: Of course, Loom is just a way to record videos.
Speaker 3: You can record a video of your screen, you can
Speaker 3: record a video of yourself, or a combination of the
Speaker 3: two where you see a winnow in your computer and
Speaker 3: a little image of you talking. Incredibly easy way to
Speaker 3: quickly record and share videos. And I am personally using
Speaker 3: it all the time, and it just released a feature
Speaker 3: to have transcripts, which is quite good. So, for example,
Speaker 3: yesterday I had a new colleague starting and I recorded
Speaker 3: a few LOOM videos for him because I want to
Speaker 3: share all this information with you, but we don't need
Speaker 3: to necessarily set up.
Speaker 4: An hour long meeting. I can just record a bunch
Speaker 4: of videos.
Speaker 3: And then what he did is he actually just read
Speaker 3: the transcripts and he says I prefer to read, and
Speaker 3: the transcript was really good, and then that worked well
Speaker 3: enough for him.
Speaker 4: So that's LOOM.
Speaker 3: It's a really really great tool, highly recommended, especially for
Speaker 3: any kind of remote company. And a notion is a
Speaker 3: really popular tool. It's a tool in which you can write,
Speaker 3: so you can document things, you can have databases. Essentially,
Speaker 3: it's a way to collect, organize, and read a lot
Speaker 3: of information. It's really powerful, it's really expressive. It makes
Speaker 3: it very easy to write, it makes it very easy
Speaker 3: to add particular kind of content and it's really great
Speaker 3: as a single source of truth. So getleb, for example,
Speaker 3: has its handbook. We have a handbook as well with
Speaker 3: ours is in Ocean, and actually part of it is
Speaker 3: public online at handbook dot remote.
Speaker 1: Dot com handbook dot remote dot com. I'll link to
Speaker 1: that in the show notes and tell me what are
Speaker 1: some of the other things that you do? And by
Speaker 1: the way, I'm loving the sound of six bonding meetings perbect,
Speaker 1: but what else do you do at remote dot com?
Speaker 3: We wanted to do more because just putting to get
Speaker 3: people together in a call it definitely works, but it
Speaker 3: also makes it a very easily skippable event. So we
Speaker 3: wanted to do things where we engage people. And so
Speaker 3: what we started to do is we started to organize
Speaker 3: things to play games together, so at least every Thursday.
Speaker 3: But what I'm starting to see more often people organize
Speaker 3: themselves are there are specific moments in the calendar to
Speaker 3: play games together, and those games can be all sorts
Speaker 3: of things. People play pictionary together, they play video games.
Speaker 3: We have a Minecraft server, for example. There are people
Speaker 3: playing all sorts of online games. There's dungeons and Dragons
Speaker 3: group nowadays, and then a while ago I bought the
Speaker 3: Ocalist Quests too, this VR headset from Facebook, and I
Speaker 3: found the experience just so incredibly good compared to anything
Speaker 3: what was before, and so we figured we're going to
Speaker 3: set up an initiative we call it Remote Labs, to
Speaker 3: try out new ways of communicating with each other, and
Speaker 3: this was one of the things that we tried out.
Speaker 3: So everybody at Remote gets one of these Ocallest Quests
Speaker 3: VR headsets and actually hang out in VR. Sometimes it's
Speaker 3: just a really nice experience because again it helps you
Speaker 3: feel more present and feel closer to people, right rather
Speaker 3: than just seeing someone on the screen, there's a physical
Speaker 3: element to it where you feel the actual presence in
Speaker 3: three D space of someone else. Now today, I think
Speaker 3: we did that a few times, and people everybody Jones
Speaker 3: Remote will continue to get one. The reality is though,
Speaker 3: that most people are now playing Beat Saber, which is
Speaker 3: a really nice music game in VR, and there's a
Speaker 3: very intense competition going on where every time someone breaks
Speaker 3: your record, you get a notification on your phone and
Speaker 3: I get several day of that, so it's pretty fun.
Speaker 1: What do you think the future holds in terms of
Speaker 1: remote working, a more company is going to be doing
Speaker 1: this or is it just a phase thanks to this
Speaker 1: global pandemic?
Speaker 2: What do you reckon?
Speaker 3: I think there's two very strong forces that will make
Speaker 3: sure that remote working will only continue to grow. The
Speaker 3: first one being is the need for talent. It's simply
Speaker 3: there's simply not enough talent in the neighborhood around the
Speaker 3: office to ignore remote work, right. You know that Now,
Speaker 3: if you're an employer you want to hire the best person,
Speaker 3: you can just find them by saying, well, it doesn't
Speaker 3: matter where you live or where you want to live,
Speaker 3: we will hire you.
Speaker 4: And so that's the first one.
Speaker 3: It's like the hard need for talent and the need
Speaker 3: to just look outside of the direct vicinity of anybody
Speaker 3: particular offers. And the other one is because of the
Speaker 3: pandemic and many of us were forced to work from home,
Speaker 3: the secret is out that you can actually do most
Speaker 3: jobs from home or do them remotely. And so independent
Speaker 3: of what an employer might decide to do post pandemic,
Speaker 3: they might say, well, everybody has to go to the office.
Speaker 3: Each individual knows that remote working is a thing that
Speaker 3: is possible, and it is a thing that you can
Speaker 3: do so even if your current employee forces you to
Speaker 3: go back to the office. You know that well, if
Speaker 3: you like this, or if you see the potential of hey,
Speaker 3: if I work remotely, I can move somewhere else or
Speaker 3: I can travel well working, then you are going to
Speaker 3: think to yourself, well, maybe I'll look for a different job.
Speaker 3: And there will be plenty of jobs because again, the
Speaker 3: need for talent will make it so that employers will
Speaker 3: try to do what is what people actually want, and
Speaker 3: many people want to work remotely. So yeah, I'm absolutely
Speaker 3: sure that this is not only a trend that will stay.
Speaker 3: I think it will only grow, and I think it's
Speaker 3: almost any knowledge worker over time will work partially or
Speaker 3: fully remotely.
Speaker 1: It's interesting what I'm saying happening in Australia is that
Speaker 1: but a lot of organizations are encouraging their staff to
Speaker 1: come back to the office, which is actually the opposite
Speaker 1: of what we've done at Inventing. In my consultancy, we
Speaker 1: have gotten rid of our Melbourne and Sydney leases and
Speaker 1: we are now officially a remote first company. But you know,
Speaker 1: is there a difference between being a remote first versus
Speaker 1: just a remote friendly company where people can work from home,
Speaker 1: but they're kind of encouraged to come into the office
Speaker 1: at least a couple of days a week.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: I think it starts by the fact that in one
Speaker 3: of these two scenarios, if you're remote friendly and you
Speaker 3: still encourage people to go to the office, you take
Speaker 3: away the freedom of living anywhere, right. I think that's
Speaker 3: I think there's a large component. I always think that
Speaker 3: remote work fundamentally and remote first companies give you more freedom.
Speaker 3: And so if you are going to restricted freedom by saying, well,
Speaker 3: you have to be in a particular location, that immediately
Speaker 3: implies that you also have to work in particular hours,
Speaker 3: because most people work during the day, like I do,
Speaker 3: between nine and five, nine and seven or so. So
Speaker 3: you immediately restrict that, and you immediately limit that. And
Speaker 3: then if you also require them to actually come into
Speaker 3: the office, it means that they can't actually move anywhere.
Speaker 3: So I don't think it's remote friendly if you call
Speaker 3: it like that. I think it's about encouraging or requiring
Speaker 3: people to be closed to the office that is the
Speaker 3: real problem here. And then if you don't allow people
Speaker 3: to actually far away and fully work remotely, you're not
Speaker 3: remote friendly. You just want a business that sometimes people
Speaker 3: can work from home. And lastly, of course what happens
Speaker 3: is that your company culture will not be asynchronous, it
Speaker 3: will not fully embrace remote work, because people are going
Speaker 3: to rely on their moments to being together in the office.
Speaker 3: It's a natural tendency that we have because communicating in
Speaker 3: person is much easier than communicating through a computer, and
Speaker 3: so it requires much less work for you to just
Speaker 3: talk to me rather than writing something. It requires much
Speaker 3: less work to just walk over into the office rather
Speaker 3: than setting up a meeting when I'm remotely. And so
Speaker 3: if part of the company or all of the company
Speaker 3: regularly meets in in the office, they are going to
Speaker 3: lean into the time that they're in the office and
Speaker 3: using that to communicate and using that for meetings and
Speaker 3: will it will essentially means that if you work remotely,
Speaker 3: work isolated, and it's a bad idea to work like that. Okay,
Speaker 3: I think you either have to accept like everybody works
Speaker 3: remotely all the time and there happen to be offices
Speaker 3: where you can sit and work some of the time,
Speaker 3: or you have to say, well, we are just not
Speaker 3: a remote company.
Speaker 1: Personally, I'm very happy to not be going into an
Speaker 1: office again.
Speaker 2: And look, finally, are there any other general.
Speaker 1: Tips or advice that you have for the average work
Speaker 1: from home person to improve their productivity and just have
Speaker 1: a more enjoyable experience working remotely.
Speaker 3: When I talk to companies about remote culture and making
Speaker 3: it work, the one thing I would say is don't
Speaker 3: accept the status quo as like this is the way
Speaker 3: we're going to work. Keep iterating on that, and I
Speaker 3: would say the same two individuals. It is not easy
Speaker 3: to especially if you work at home, right, which is
Speaker 3: not avironment for remote work. You can get an office,
Speaker 3: you can work in a co working space or whatever else.
Speaker 3: But if you work at home, I think it's worthwhile
Speaker 3: to spend a lot of time thinking about how can
Speaker 3: I improve this? Am I happy with how it is today?
Speaker 3: You should not feel like work is your life. Rather,
Speaker 3: it should feel like work is a small facet of
Speaker 3: life and that happens sometimes throughout the day or sometimes
Speaker 3: throughout the week, and I optimize around that. I think
Speaker 3: that is very important, and the best way to deal
Speaker 3: with that is to, as you said in the beginning,
Speaker 3: create a specific time, specific places to do your work.
Speaker 3: Make sure that work space is ergonomic. Make sure to
Speaker 3: separate work and life by not having notifications on your
Speaker 3: phone for example related to work. Those are simple things,
Speaker 3: but they make a huge difference in the way you
Speaker 3: will perceive work in a way you will perceive the
Speaker 3: rest of life. But you don't want to feel like
Speaker 3: you're always working, and I think that is the most
Speaker 3: important thing. And then if it comes like little productivity
Speaker 3: things and little tips, those are very personal. There's so
Speaker 3: many productivity tools. I am completely in love with Rome
Speaker 3: Research right now, and I would recommend everybody to use it,
Speaker 3: but I know in reality that's not how it works.
Speaker 4: It is not for everybody.
Speaker 1: I've had great things about Rome, but I haven't tried it.
Speaker 1: In a nutshell, can you describe what it is.
Speaker 3: It's a note taking tool that is quite opinionated on
Speaker 3: one end and very customizable on the other end.
Speaker 4: On it's simplest.
Speaker 3: What it is is that you take notes, and every
Speaker 3: time you have a term or a person, you can
Speaker 3: put double brackets around that and it will link to
Speaker 3: every other instance of that term or that person, and
Speaker 3: then it essentially builds a giant database that links itself
Speaker 3: and it can link to other things.
Speaker 4: It's really quite powerful.
Speaker 3: So for example, what I do is every time in
Speaker 3: the beginning of the day, I put my whole calendar there,
Speaker 3: and I put lock brackets around all the people I'm
Speaker 3: meeting and the companies that relate to them. So for example,
Speaker 3: for today, for this morning, I have here me how
Speaker 3: I work podcasts. Those are two separate terms, and if
Speaker 3: I click on one, it will link to the other
Speaker 3: and any other reference I have of you or your podcast,
Speaker 3: for example. And this might be the first time that appears,
Speaker 3: but in the future, if I listen to another podcast
Speaker 3: episode or I think about it, then I see, oh yeah, no.
Speaker 3: It was on February nine that I listened to this,
Speaker 3: and these were my thoughts on that day. It's really
Speaker 3: powerful and it works a little bit the way most
Speaker 3: people think, as in like it becomes one big graph.
Speaker 3: I think it works best if you spend time customizing it,
Speaker 3: which is not super simple.
Speaker 4: There's not an.
Speaker 3: Inbuilt tutorial there somewhat of it, so you have to
Speaker 3: actually spend time wanting to learn it, which is why
Speaker 3: it's not the most accessible too. But once you get
Speaker 3: into it, there's nothing really that competes with it.
Speaker 4: So I really love it.
Speaker 1: Awesome and my final question for listeners that want to
Speaker 1: connect with you and remote dot com.
Speaker 2: What is the best way for people to do that?
Speaker 3: So if you neither services, you can just go to
Speaker 3: remote dot com. You can also just email me directly
Speaker 3: at yop atromolticom. So does job atromoticom. I don't mind
Speaker 3: it tw when people email me if you want to
Speaker 3: ask me things about my setup as much it's messagers
Speaker 3: reached out on Twitter, it's at yop foul so jobfo
Speaker 3: fantastic Yo.
Speaker 4: I have loved our chat.
Speaker 1: I've loved geeking out and I've loved hearing about your
Speaker 1: views on remote work.
Speaker 2: It's been awesome. Thank you so much for your time,
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. That is it for today's show.
Speaker 1: I hope you're feeling all inspired to level up your
Speaker 1: home office setup.
Speaker 2: I know that I spent a lot of.
Speaker 1: Time thinking about mine, and I've definitely taken some of
Speaker 1: Yob's advice, definitely checking out keyboard my story, which.
Speaker 2: I thought was an awesome recommendation.
Speaker 1: Now next week on How I Work, I have Kate
Speaker 1: Morris on the show, founder of Adore Beauty, a little
Speaker 1: online beauty e Taylor that last year listed on the
Speaker 1: ASX for six hundred million dollars. We talk about how
Speaker 1: Kate manages her energy and motivation her beauty routine, after all,
Speaker 1: she is immersed in the world of beauty and has
Speaker 1: been for two decades, and the importance of outsourcing tasks
Speaker 1: at home to actually be able to juggle it all.
Speaker 1: Subscribe to How I Work to be alerted when new
Speaker 1: episodes such as this one drop. How I Work is
Speaker 1: produced by Inventingum with production support from Dead Set Studios.
Speaker 2: The producer for this episode was.
Speaker 1: The amazing Jenna Coder, and thank you to Martin Imber
Speaker 1: my dad, who did the audio mix and makes everything
Speaker 1: sound better than it would have otherwise.
Speaker 2: See you next time.