How Do I Be Present Online When Working on Side Projects?

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC]

00:00:05.000 | All right, moving on.

00:00:08.500 | We have a question from Pierre.

00:00:11.100 | Pierre asks,

00:00:13.300 | how do you manage your online presence when doing Phantom

00:00:18.500 | part-time jobs?

00:00:20.300 | He elaborates that he's a software engineer and he is

00:00:25.800 | concerned about his boss monitoring his work status

00:00:32.100 | using Microsoft Teams.

00:00:33.500 | So he goes on to elaborate,

00:00:34.900 | if you stop working early,

00:00:36.500 | how do you deal with tools like Teams that communicate your

00:00:38.900 | online status?

00:00:39.900 | For example,

00:00:40.400 | my supervisor might start asking questions if I'm often listed

00:00:43.000 | as being absent or don't respond to messages.

00:00:45.600 | So while I like the idea of Phantom part-time jobs,

00:00:48.600 | I feel like Teams prevents me from effectively doing it.

00:00:51.100 | Any advice for this issue?

00:00:52.200 | All right,

00:00:53.500 | so just quick backgrounds, Phantom part-time jobs,

00:00:55.900 | of course,

00:00:56.500 | is my terminology for when you get really on your game about

00:01:02.500 | organizing your work,

00:01:03.700 | full capture,

00:01:05.400 | quarterly, weekly, daily planning,

00:01:08.300 | you're on top of things,

00:01:09.700 | you're going to free up a lot of time

00:01:12.000 | because most people are not on top of things.

00:01:14.900 | So you're going to hit whatever the reasonable workload is

00:01:17.700 | for your position in less time than your peers.

00:01:21.400 | And now you have two options.

00:01:23.100 | You can take that extra time and invest that into your main

00:01:26.800 | job and therefore accelerate the acquisition of career capital

00:01:29.800 | and opening up more options or advancement in your career,

00:01:33.500 | or you can take that time and say,

00:01:34.700 | I'm going to invest it in other parts of my life.

00:01:37.400 | So maybe I have another endeavor I'm working on,

00:01:40.000 | or maybe it's a non-professional interest.

00:01:42.300 | I'm now going to spend much more time on.

00:01:43.700 | I'm going to take advantage of this free time.

00:01:45.200 | Now my argument from an ethical perspective is that if you're

00:01:49.300 | in a non-entry level,

00:01:51.900 | knowledge work style job,

00:01:53.600 | where you're not being paid by the hour,

00:01:56.900 | you're being paid a salary to fulfill a particular role.

00:02:00.900 | The strict number of hours you work does not really enter this

00:02:06.000 | equation.

00:02:06.700 | If I am hiring you to be the associate director of marketing

00:02:10.200 | for some startup or something like this,

00:02:12.600 | I am hiring you to do that role and the things that come along

00:02:15.100 | with that role and to execute them at a high level.

00:02:17.400 | I'm not hiring you to punch seven hours or eight hours into

00:02:21.100 | a particular time clock.

00:02:22.200 | That is a crude proxy for productivity that I think we've

00:02:25.100 | moved beyond.

00:02:25.900 | So I think it's completely appropriate if you think you're

00:02:28.700 | executing at a high level.

00:02:30.200 | And my definition of a high level is you seem that you're

00:02:33.500 | doing better than your peers that are in the same company.

00:02:36.100 | Oh, my act is more together.

00:02:37.600 | I'm being praised for what I'm producing.

00:02:40.300 | I'm getting things done.

00:02:41.900 | I'm getting things done when I say I'm going to get them done.

00:02:44.400 | We're hitting objectives.

00:02:45.700 | People seem to be happy with my work.

00:02:47.300 | If you're hitting those markers,

00:02:49.000 | then I don't care how many hours you're spending.

00:02:51.100 | And this is taking five hours a day.

00:02:52.800 | You have just freed up more time to do something else.

00:02:55.500 | I think that is completely fine for non-entry level,

00:02:57.700 | non-hourly knowledge work.

00:02:59.200 | You have a problem here that there seems to be a hyperactive

00:03:03.600 | hive mind culture at your workplace.

00:03:05.900 | Where work is coordinated in ad hoc fashion with back and forth

00:03:09.800 | unscheduled messaging in your case on teams.

00:03:11.700 | Yeah, that's a bigger problem.

00:03:13.000 | That's the whole issue.

00:03:14.100 | I tackle in my book a world without email.

00:03:16.300 | It's a terribly ineffective way of getting a bunch of human

00:03:19.000 | brains to coordinate and collaborate on producing value.

00:03:22.300 | So that's a bigger problem.

00:03:23.500 | Maybe buy him a copy of my book.

00:03:25.300 | But for you in the short term,

00:03:27.300 | what should you do about your phantom part-time job?

00:03:29.500 | I would say spread it out.

00:03:31.500 | I think it's the simplest solution here.

00:03:33.900 | So instead of having the mindset of I can now get my work done

00:03:38.400 | in five hours instead of eight.

00:03:40.700 | Instead of having the mindset of then I will work till 2.

00:03:43.600 | And then stop working.

00:03:46.500 | Instead say, okay, I am now going to spread three hours of

00:03:50.900 | other types of things throughout my day.

00:03:53.800 | That's much more maskable.

00:03:57.400 | That's much less notable, right?

00:04:00.100 | The other thing I would recommend here is even if your

00:04:04.500 | boss is a big believer in a hyperactive hive mind culture

00:04:08.100 | and you don't want to confront him about this and it's too

00:04:09.800 | difficult to change the whole team.

00:04:11.100 | You can still move your individual interaction with him

00:04:15.800 | and the rest of your teams or her and the rest of the teams.

00:04:18.000 | You can move it away from the hyperactive hive mind.

00:04:20.200 | I talk about this in a world without email by just thinking

00:04:22.900 | about internally.

00:04:24.200 | What are the different things I'm involved with again and

00:04:27.400 | again in my job?

00:04:28.400 | Call these processes.

00:04:30.000 | Given just what I can control assuming I cannot control

00:04:34.100 | anyone else.

00:04:34.800 | What changes can I make into how I execute these processes

00:04:39.000 | that will minimize the number of unscheduled messages that

00:04:42.100 | show up in teams or emails that have to be responded to?

00:04:45.900 | Just focusing on what you can control you can often make

00:04:48.300 | a drastic reduction in the amount of these unscheduled messages

00:04:52.600 | that arrive that require a response by just nudging people

00:04:56.300 | into better implementations without telling them you're doing

00:04:59.500 | that without calling them better implementations.

00:05:01.800 | This is where you just sort of say casually.

00:05:04.700 | Yeah, you know if the bug review,

00:05:06.800 | I think what we should do here is use this bug review

00:05:11.700 | tracking software seems to be really great.

00:05:13.800 | You know anything you have put it in there.

00:05:16.600 | I will go through it on Monday and I will give you a call

00:05:21.100 | Monday at 1 or stop by your office.

00:05:22.700 | I have any questions and and then I'll sort of know what

00:05:25.000 | we're up against.

00:05:25.700 | I don't know if that's what software developers actually

00:05:27.500 | do. I'm making up all these words, but you see what I'm

00:05:29.100 | doing here kind of specifying what you're going to do.

00:05:31.900 | In a way that minimizes back and forth messages without

00:05:35.900 | ever talking about bother me less.

00:05:37.800 | I'm too distracted.

00:05:38.900 | Stop doing this.

00:05:40.000 | Send me less messages.

00:05:41.100 | All people care about is this thing will get taken care

00:05:43.500 | of its clear how it's going to happen.

00:05:44.900 | Great.

00:05:45.300 | That's one less thing.

00:05:46.400 | I have to worry about and they will move on.

00:05:48.300 | So here that's what I would say you should be doing is

00:05:50.800 | spreading out your phantom part-time job and then to

00:05:53.800 | slowly starting to nudge the way you work with your

00:05:56.800 | colleagues away from the hyperactive hive mind that's

00:05:58.800 | going to give you a lot more leeway.

00:06:01.200 | Thank you.

00:06:01.800 | [Music]

How Do I Be Present Online When Working on Side Projects?

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