Apparently people are “more productive in the office”. It is, indeed, a matter of appearance. In reality, productivity depends on having a clear objective. If you don’t quite know what you should be doing, you end up being very busy and not accomplishing much.
In an office setting, that’s OK. You were there! People saw you being busy. You talked to people. You clearly showed up at the right time and left at the appropriate time and you were nowhere else in the meantime.
In the office, distractions don’t matter. We just reframe them as part of being at the office. Having a conversation, grabbing a coffee, helping Matt to organize the storage room - you did them in the office. Hence, no need to track anything.
In any other setting, distractions are a major reason for feeling guilty, especially in the absence of clear objectives. When productivity isn’t defined, you have to proove that you weren’t distracted.
Hence, the foundations of productivity is actually distraction management.
And that’s exactly what my talk at Business of Software was about.
Enjoy the Empress in action:
You can find all videos from the conference on this playlist: Europe 2023 – Business of Software, including those by Lucy Heskins, Bob Moesta, Matt Lerner, Rich Mironov and more.
And if you are looking for an inspiring speaker at your next event, answer to this email! I enjoy talking about productivity, leadership and product management. Sometimes sprinkled in with some sage motherhood advice, and always with the distributed perspective in mind.
About the Empress of Remote
👑 I am Valentina Thörner, Leadership Expert for Distributed Teams.
✨ Supporting Product / Ops leaders optimizing their team engagement and retention.
✨ Keynote speaker for companies who want to motivate and kickstart change.
*️⃣ Find out more: https://linktr.ee/empressofremote