AXIS Network held our first virtual meetup on the 17th April 2020. The session was purposely casual, a much needed space to speak with like minded individuals, whilst adhering to physical distancing guidelines.
The event was a small networking session, where we all drew on our experiences in the first few weeks of lockdown.
Here are our "Top Tips for Keeping Positives":
1. Plan Joy. Keep in touch with the family and friends, schedule date nights, scavenger hunts, afternoon disco, boozy bingo. Plan work tasks in which give you joy too. This might be moving things forward, getting people talking to each other, talking to new people in your business.
2. Enjoy spending time with the family. It’s a really tough time for parents, with children at all ages (including adult children!) now at home, and you’ll never before have spent as much time with your family as you are now. It’s tough but take a small moment to enjoy in the absolute chaos of your current normal.
3. Set a routine and plan in me time. Does starting your day at 7am and breaking at to do a Joe Wicks workout work for you? Or finally going running because your schedule for the past year has been crazy? Do you ordinarily exercise and now it’s far removed from your thought process? Exercising isn’t for all of us, either through choice or sacrifice, but there are lots of things you can do to create a little bit of much needed downtime for yourself. Try reading 5 pages of a book, going to bed 10 minutes earlier, binge watching a TV show, switch off everything and focus on breathing for 3 minutes. There are lots of things out there to try.
4. Use video conferencing! Seeing someone outside of your household during this time is comforting, even when you are talking about work. Visually seeing someone you build rapport and trust.
5. Being able to support teams in a different way - diversity is more visible. Lots of us work in diverse teams in the office, but we are now living our authentic selves more now than ever because we welcome people in to our homes virtually many times throughout the day. It’s broken down barriers between employees and managers with expectation vs reality in our current state, prioritizing mental and physical well-being and stopping burnout from happening. Getting to know each other from a different perspective makes us all more effective.
6. Focus on the value adding activities. Some people are saturated right now, but there’s lots of people with capacity to take on more. Is there value adding activities that those individuals can do now, so when we return to the new normal, we can hit the ground running?
7. It’s good for business. People working effectively from home means many companies can look at new operating models, reducing their overheads in terms of office letting, business travel, it’s giving a different focus to managing costs. The argument that “it can’t work” now no longer exists.
8. It’s good for the environmental. Without question, the environment around us has benefited hugely from humanity slowing down.
9. It’s good for small businesses. With supermarkets running out of stock early on, many people turned to small, local businesses who are thriving.
10. Getting into podcasts has been a nice way to add some background noise to replicate the office, plus great for some tips! The Good Life Project is particularly good.
11. Focus on your "what I got done!" list at the end of the day and what went well today. The positive achievements are endorphin releasing rather than focusing on what is still to be done.
12. Take every day as it comes. Try not beat yourself up for the things you used to do and currently can’t. Every day will bring its new challenges, just breathe, you will get through it.
Some useful links and resources:
Busting the Productivity Myths (LinkedIn article); https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sandravoyadzis_leadership-coaching-executivecoaching-activity-6655904523363631105-6e3U
Fiit TV – Bringing your workouts home; https://fiit.tv