- Hey everyone.
Seems like a lot of people really enjoyed
my little just simple working
from home vlog that I did last week,
so I thought I'd film another one this week.
It's kind of like, I don't know,
things are quite interesting to document,
these weird times we're looking through
and I know people said
that they enjoy just like getting an inside
to someone else's life throughout all this,
which I've been enjoying as well.
So yeah, I'm gonna make them whenever I'm feeling like it.
Yesterday, I just like wanna be real, was not a good day.
I just felt really low all day and incredibly unfocused.
I track my time when I work just for my own purposes,
my company doesn't make me do it or anything,
but I tracked about two hours and 16 minutes worth
of actual work time yesterday, which is not good.
I was feeling guilty about that,
as well as just feeling super unmotivated and like,
I don't know, just feeling like what I'm doing right now
is just not important in the grand scheme of things,
like I don't feel like anything I'm working on
is helping with this crisis the world is going through.
And, I don't know, I just found that really unmotivating.
I wanted to share that, that working from home these days
is not a usual situation.
I did mention this in the last vlog
but I wanna clarify again that if you are new
to working from home right now and maybe you're watching
this video to get advice or something like that,
or just to see how someone else does it,
please know that this is not a usual situation.
And so working from home, like you can't judge it,
based on these times, I guess is what I'm saying.
Everyone's struggling even people like me
who have been working from home for three years.
I just could not focus yesterday I could not get motivated.
Yeah, it was really difficult.
I'm determined to make today better though.
I'm a big fan of fresh starts, which is why it sucked like,
'cause today's Tuesday, yesterday was Monday,
I'm actually one of those weird people who likes Mondays.
I love the fresh start to a new week.
And like you know making plans,
for what I wanna achieve this week.
And yeah, just wasn't feeling it.
I think part of it was worrying that well, not worrying
but New Zealand, which is where I'm from
is going into lockdown starting this week.
And, I think it just, even though I've been
on lockdown here in Spain for over a week now,
it just made it feel a whole lot more real
that now my family is going through it too.
On the complete other side of the world,
like literal other side of the world, just, I don't know,
brought about the scale of this whole thing
to me even more.
But yes, I am determined to make today a better day.
And so I thought I'd vlog it.
So that maybe, maybe I don't know yet,
it's still in the morning, it's 10 o'clock right now,
I'm getting a bit of a later start.
Part of having a good day with having a sleep in.
Maybe some of the things I do will work
and if you're having and like unfocused, unmotivated day,
you can try them for yourself, perhaps
and maybe that'll help.
That was a big ramble.
Let's get into it, I guess.
Step one for me, what I usually do on a weekday
is go through Slack and Basecamp, which are the tools
that my company use for asynchronous communication
and chat 'cause we're a fully remote company.
I go through them, I look at all the threads,
where there's like a little green bubble
with a message for me.
And I make notes in my bullet journal of anything
that I need to do so, right now, so far today,
I just have that, I need to give feedback to Morgan
and feedback on a film.
And I'm sure some other stuff
will come out of me checking through the threads.
(upbeat music)
Okay, after 40 minutes, it turned out,
it was a busy day, Monday for my team apparently.
Going through everything, I'm feeling a lot better.
I feel like now I have a to do list of,
first of all, a bunch of stuff that people need from me.
And, I don't know, I think that's what
I was lacking yesterday, was a sense of purpose, I suppose
that, you know, I have projects on
and there's work over, so you need to do.
There's not deadlines to them and I don't know,
I feel a lot better about the work that I have to do today
because it's things that people have asked for
and the things that people need,
and so I can be helping them out.
And so I don't know, just feels feels good
to be helpful, you know.
That makes me think that I probably need
to set some deadlines for myself
for the other projects that I'm working on,
so that I can feel more inspired by them, I suppose.
So as well as getting through this to do list today,
I'm also gonna set myself like a point I want to get to
with one of the projects, which is wireframing
for a new homepage.
I wanna finish the day with wireframes done
for the second version, 'cause we're gonna test two.
So that probably doesn't make much sense to you right now.
I'll show you some things as we get on with the day.
But yeah, I'm feeling better,
starting today than yesterday for sure.
Now, I'm gonna go make some coffee,
let's go. (upbeat music)
Cheers.
Okay, now I'm getting into my to do list.
And I think what I'm gonna do is actually start
with the wireframe, the homepage, it'll be easier
for me to start with the feedback people have asked me for
and like, you know, working on imagery requests
that people have had, but I know for my work situation,
most of my teammates are based in the US and so like Slack,
and everything gets really busy in my afternoon here
in Spain, 'cause it's the morning for the US time,
and that's when I have less like, it's harder to focus,
I suppose, in the afternoon.
And so I think that I'm going to, where's my phone?
I gonna set a timer.
So I use this app called forest.
Basically you hit Plant,
you can set the timer for as long as you want
just by changing around the ring there.
And if you pick up your phone or like you know,
exit out or give up before the timer ends,
the tree dies. (laughs)
Then you see this little dead tree in your forest.
This is my forest currently,
there's just two things in it from yesterday.
I don't even know if you can see that.
And you don't want a dead tree in your forest 'cause
that is very sad to look at. (laughs)
And so I'm going to plant this tree
and spend 45 minutes working on homepage wireframes
and then I'll feel like I made progress on
that project for today at least.
So let's go. (upbeat music)
Focus time done and then I actually went
a little bit over as well
'cause there was one idea I was like in the middle of
when the timer ran out.
So that was good, I got about five new wireframes done.
So that feels pretty productive
and I definitely feel like I've made progress
on this project, not just in terms
of the wireframes I've created
but like getting my thoughts in order.
Just to give you a little look,
well, first of all, I was wireframing on my iPad.
I need to make a video about my iPad wireframe process,
because there's a very old wireframe video of mine
that gets a lot of views.
And my process has changed a little since then.
But anyway, I did these the other day,
and so I've been bringing them up onto figma.
And there's two, like types,
two versions of this homepage we wanna test.
So I'm essentially designing two home pages one
that's more focused on being inspiring and telling stories
and one that's more focused on being a product journey,
we wanna test which connects more.
Obviously, in this version, we still have information
about product on our website,
so, you know, it's just wouldn't be homepage as much.
Yeah, so I've been doing all these ideas.
And if I turn on comments,
I've been leaving like comments all over.
So hopefully the other designers at ConvertKit
can take a look and share their thoughts
on which little pieces of these, the like ideas,
they like best 'cause there's a bunch of different ideas
in here and I'm currently not entirely sure
what I wanna do, but yeah, that was a good session.
Next up, 'cause it is 12:30 now,
I'm going to do my workout for the day.
I think it's really important to get that in,
especially when I'm feeling low energy like I am today.
I have no excuse, there's nowhere else,
like I need to go today.
Cool, you know?
So let's just get a workout done.
(upbeat music)
After lovely chilled out lunch break,
playing some Animal Crossing,
I'm gonna get into the list of things
that I wrote down this morning that people needed from me.
'Cause people are starting to come online now,
things are starting to get busy
and in a couple of hours I'm gonna have a few meetings
to end of the day as well.
So we're going to get stuck into feedback time now.
So a thing I find myself doing even though
there is nobody else in this office with me,
I could play with music out loud if I wanted to,
but I like to wear headphones while I work still
because it, like puts me into the focus zone.
So, I'm gonna put my headphones on
and get to work. (upbeat music)
Just got off my calls for the day, two really good meetings,
one that was more like brainstorming
and then one where I was able to get feedback
from Nathan and Dylan, the other design people on the team.
So that's really good.
And I feel like that last minute in particular,
look at all these notes I scribbling in my bullet journal
as it was going.
So I feel like I have a good direction
of where to move in, is this on focus?
Yep, where to move in tomorrow on the homepage
to keep that going.
So it's good.
Feeling good about that.
Also, I just got through, check out this cool new header
that is gonna be going on our creater stories
that my workmate Isa has been writing,
these beautiful profiles of creatives
with amazing photography and everything.
And like, slowly I've been working on this template.
So like, I coded this cool quote thing.
The cool side quotes and now Cory has quoted
this amazing header that I absolutely love.
So I'm feeling really excited about this
and getting it shipped.
Also, I'm ending my day on a feel good note,
because if you didn't hear if you don't follow me
on Twitter, at ConvertKit, we established something called
the creative fund to help creatives
through this virus crisis that we're going through
and it's made, a lot of people are out of work
or having contracts canceled, et cetera.
So they establish this fund,
and there was a bunch of other companies
and individuals contributed to it
to help basically pay some people's bills this month.
I decided personally to contribute to it.
I was meant to be actually right now on a trip in Vegas,
which obviously got canceled because of the virus.
And so I decided to donate like, the refund I got
from my hotel, I was like, well, that's money
that I already like had spent in my mind.
So I'm gonna donate it to the fund instead.
And so I got a list from our team
who are handling the organization at the fund
of three creators who I needed to send $500 to
to help pay the bills 'cause they'd applied
to through this fund system.
So I just send them off some money,
and so that feels really good to know
that I was helping someone out today.
I feel like that's been the focus
of what's helped me feel better today in general,
has been connecting with other people through helping them
with what they need,
whether it was my teammates needing feedback,
or needing my thoughts on things or, you know,
these donations with funds,
just connecting with people on meetings.
That's, I think what I was missing yesterday,
just feeling a little bit too isolated,
if you know what I mean. I'm gonna wrap up for the day now
and go hang out with Mark, make some dinner.
I think I'm just gonna shove a pizza in the oven
to be honest, 'cause can't bother cooking
and I know he can't either,
so it's probably what's gonna happen.
And watch some TV, maybe play some Animal Crossing
'cause that's super fun
and been making me feel happy lately.
I hope you enjoyed this video
and that if you've been struggling working from home
with motivation or anything,
maybe there was some ideas in here, I don't know.
I think just in general, I woke up in a better mood today.
So that helps too.
Sometimes just it can't be helped,
yesterday I was trying to do all the same things as today,
setting the focus time and all the things
and it just wasn't working.
So some days it just doesn't work
and give yourself grace for that.
This is a strange time.
There's nothing normal about
what we're going through right now.
And so it's hard to have a good normal work day.
In the end, let me check my time o'clock.
I clocked in nearly six hours of tract work today,
which is pretty good.
Like that's not that much less than a regular workday
and I got a later start
'cause I had a little bit of a sleep in.
So, yeah, now I'm feeling good about that.
I hope that wherever you are in the world,
you're staying safe,
you're staying home. (laughs)
And that you're staying healthy,
and I hope that you can have a good day
and get done what you need to
but also take some time for yourself as well.
Alright, thanks for watching.
I will see you in the next video.
Bye. (upbeat music)