Transcript: Remote Work

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Django Chat, a weekly podcast on the Django Web Framework.

I'm Will Vincent, joined as ever by Carlton Gibson. Hello, Carlton.

Hello, Will.

And we are recording this Tuesday, March 17th, amidst the coronavirus pandemic. So we thought

we'd talk about remote work, which is an episode we had planned for a long time anyways, and

is perhaps a bit more timely. But first, a little bit of news. I'll start with some Django news.

So the Django Software Foundation board approved a new governance model for Django. There'll be a

link in the notes that removes the older core. There's now a technical board and a DSF. And the

gist of it is it makes it easier for new contributors, more accurately reflects

current contributors. And so this is a win overall, most people feel, for Django itself.

So that's something we talked about in the meeting last week for the Software Foundation.

Anything you want to add, Carlton, or how that impacts the work of the fellows?

It doesn't really impact the work of the fellows.

I think it more recognizes in the structure of the Django Software Foundation and the Django project how it's been run for quite a few years since the fellow project began.

So, you know, since that began, first it was Tim Graham.

He was there doing it, and he was the merger.

He was doing all the merging, all the PR review, not all the PR review, but, you know, putting it into the thing itself.

And there were this Django core, which had commit rights from back in the day, but no one was using any of that.

So with the change in the governance model, that kind of recognizes the structure as it is.

And it, you know, the hope is that it gives us a nice foundation for the next, you know, period in Django's life.

Yeah. And a shout out to James Bennett, who has been leading this for several years and

doing a lot of the work to make this happen. So thank you, James.

What else? In personal news, my wife and I had our third baby 16 days ago. So that's

wonderful. I'm pretty sleep deprived on top of everything else. So this might be meandering,

but certainly gives me extra perspective about thinking about the world, holding a little kid

for 12 hours a day and ways in which, you know,

tech can help people generally and specifically with this health stuff.

Because I don't know about you, Carlton,

certainly I have sometimes a feeling of, you know,

I know people who are front lines, you know,

to hospitals and everything else.

And, you know, I have to remind myself, tech is a part of that, right?

We're all commuting remotely and there's going to be more and more ways

in which technology and, you know, Django can and will be used to help.

yeah it's like um the doctor in demand type type doctor on demand type model you know where they

got the remote app and you you know you talk to a doctor online that that kind of thing is perfect

for the current outbreak i don't know if they've got enough capacity but you know it's yeah it's

the way it should be going right right and also for education i mean so all the schools are closed

here in the states i assume in spain so you know lots of things and then i'm um

Yeah, and I think I'm also, you know, all these things bring out the best and the worst in people, but there are so many helpers out there. You know, a small example is the schools are closed in the United States. Child nutrition is linked to the schools. There are people in my hometown in many towns who are working extra time shifts, who are making meals, sending them to families in need. So even though the headlines are pretty bad, there are all these micro examples of people doing amazing stuff. So that's about all I'll say on that. And if you want to add anything, Carlton?

no you know it's here it's kind of total luck then you're allowed to go out to go to the

supermarket but that's they're the only shops that are open so it's really you know and you

if you're out and the police will be like well why are you out and if you haven't got a good

reason you can be fined and you know yeah that's not here yet probably by the time this airs it

will be um so let's talk about working remotely and i think part part of that is i haven't realized

that, you know, both you and I, Carlton, we not only work from home for many years, but also

are basically self-employed. Um, so we'll try to separate those two. So to me, the kind of areas I

think about, and I can think back to when I first started working remotely, um, the first one,

the biggest one is discipline. Um, and part of that is as we both, well, I don't now, but as you

do having a dedicated space and time to do your work um or just that acclimation of the first i

would say the first two weeks um it's really interesting to me how even people who in an

office environment are really go-getters can really struggle with the discipline of not

turning on netflix getting a snack um it's really you you kind of have to get through that and you

have to you know the work environment is like a procrastinator this procrastination right you go

to the office and you sit at your desk and you know there's other people and there's a kind of

expectation you know if you go and spend too much time hanging out the water cooler you get a bad

name but then you're at home right and then you're on your laptop and then you you know your oh

twitter's open all of a sudden or you know and i'll just go make a put the coffee pot on and

you know all of a sudden the entire day kind of disappeared and you've you've done 25 minutes work

but you're exhausted because you've spent the entire day procrastinating and that's mentally

draining right and i think you know in a way you know you and i both have um hordes of children

and and their schedules forces a discipline that you know if if right if not for that it would it

would be harder in a way i would have all day we've got to we've got to divide this into two

things like what there's working from home when you're like not got kids with you and then there's

working from home when there's kids so let's talk about working home if like you when you're by

yourself because for me the the trick is you've got to find out when you're productive you've got

to find the bit of the day so human body it can get you know three four hours work done maximum

need to break and then another two three hours work you know possibly as well but that that

second period isn't going to be as high productive as the as the first bit so you've got to find the

part in the day where you've got that three hours three four hours that's that's yours

and then you've got to work it yeah and i've it's so true that when you when you work from home you

really realize all the time that's wasted with the rest of the nonsense you know the commute the

water cooler and so well let's say you've got an hour commute each way right that's two hours a day

that's like that's like half of the gold time well right so i was going to say that on the one hand

you realize how productive you can be when you remove all these distractions it's amazing how

much you can get done in an hour or two but but to what you were saying it's also true that i was

certainly guilty of this of i was just like i need to work all the time and i quickly realized

you know i do hit you know i have these mental physical mainly mental limits of i can't code for

more than three hours at a time i do need to have these blocks and certainly now what am i seven

eight years into my you know more or less remote journey the way i structure my day is the i'm a

morning person yeah me too go to school so i try to do technical deep thinking coding in the morning

and then in the afternoon do email and all the the rest of it i'm not always successful at that

you know if i start in on you know an email or something in the morning it's kind of blown up

but that is my ideal day is doing that three four hour block and of course you know and also you

know your brain is always working or certainly ours are so even if i'm playing with my kids or

something else um you know i'm still thinking of the problem you know in the same way if you sleep

on it if you if you do time box things and you do say i'm going to try to be present for dinner

and this and that you know or pick up you know thoughts will come to you right you can't kind

of force that so certainly i you know i had to learn the hard way that you know i felt like i

had to sit at a desk for you know eight nine hours a day or more actually um and i just that wasn't

getting the best out of me no you've got to be realistic you know you work for 50 minutes take

a 10 minute break and that 10 minute break can be like putting the washing on right so you can get

the house jobs done as well right but but while you're that that putting the washing on well let's

say putting the washing on right that that occupies your sort of left brain a bit that

needs something concrete to do so that's that's distracted and then your creative right brain

side is going hey you know that problem you've been struggling with here's the answer for free

and it's like ah you win you win i was hanging out the washing i sort of solved this really hard out

but there is that balance right there's like taking 15 minutes and then there's taking an hour

to you know make an elaborate lunch or something so there's a balance that's where the discipline

that's where i i think it's really requires so much more discipline um but you know once you

get used to it you you get these wins of you you know it's kind of you and i know like i know

what i need to do to get a great day's work done and i also know that i can get more done you know

in a day remotely than i could you know in a week in an office setting where all this time would be

burned um well yeah i've been remote so long that you put me in an office it's like i'm all right

for the day i'll come and visit the office for the day but no way am i there say all week that

would just be yeah well you prioritize your time too i mean even um you know partly in an office

setting you have to be available for things but you just become much more stringent of even you

know i live or normally i live in a city um and if people want to get coffee or something like

that's half the day and if it's the morning like that's my whole day so i'm much more can and do

say no a lot more than i would in a you know office environment where there's open spaces

and people tapping you all the time and it's just so hard to get into any kind of flow yeah and i

part of that is i don't have things like slack or whatsapp or you know facebook or twitter available

during the day because if you they're there then you know a direct message can come in and it's

like oh i'm a massive distraction so those things are off and you know yeah you know i use twitter

that's the only thing i actually i'm on but i'll check that periodically and it's like a quick

response and then back to work yeah and it is um i mean social social media is exhausting i typically

only use twitter and pretty you know once or twice a day but you know recently with an infant in my

arms i kind of have you know him in one hand and my phone in the other getting updates on the state

of the world and it's exhausting you know just looking in it you know and for what right so um

but it's got that addictive thing to it as well you know where it's like oh you sign find yourself

checking your phone again again again no that's the time when the phone has to be moved and put

away and you know not touched yeah so um another piece of this and maybe this veers more into if

you're doing your own thing is around creativity or perhaps i just want to get this in there which

is john cleese of monty python fame um has these incredible talks on creativity in business and how

to have open and closed minds, we'll put a link to one of his talks. Because maybe I guess in all,

you know, whether you're self employed or not, I often struggle with those transitions. I mean,

it helps me if I say as I did, you know, the morning is code. And then the afternoon is sort

of contemplation. When I try to think about what to do, and how to do it, I often muddle about and

it doesn't feel good. So at the same time, I, I'm, I have a planner, and I think you do as well.

and i'm very specific on what my goals are i usually have three you know three a day three

big ones and i try to do that thinking the night before and i do weekly and daily so that when i

come in in the morning instead of blowing an hour getting my brain revved up it's like right boom

boom boom i've already decided what to do and that's a bit of an employee employer thing i call

that the downhill start right so that when you get in the morning you've got this this set of like it

can be a major a major task and a few bullet points just on how it's how it's done so you get

to the desk in the morning you look at the planner i have a sort of weekly diary with some notes on

the side i look at the notes i'm like okay yeah get on with that and then that first 30 minutes

that first hour is just super and then you're in the zone and the great the great danger of being

at home is that you you just can't find i can't get in the zone i can't get inside that's because

you're on twitter get off twitter and do some work so like you'll suddenly find you're in the zone

is that thirst it's those first three minutes those first five minutes right it's all i read

a study that backed this up but i don't know if it's placebo or not but i often tell myself that

the first five first 10 minutes it's never gonna feel easy even if i've had you know a perfect

night's sleep and everything is great i show up there's still a part of me that's like what's one

of those will yeah well exactly you know but so in the same way that i don't know i like to run

you know the first couple minutes of running is often a little bit uncomfortable but then it feels

nice and i just know that if i just put in that 10-15 minutes just go right i'm gonna attack the

hard problem first i know i'll get into that state and i don't sit around thinking like oh where's my

muse or you know or writer's block right i mean slight tangent but i used to be a book editor so

you know with writer's block i always love the idea of like you just don't allow it to be an

option you're like i just can't have writer's block right paper has to get done code has to be

done well like with coding if it's a django project you know you can get started you can

i don't know what code to write today okay open up your terminal activate your virtual environment

run your test suite right look at some logging areas that pop up like dig into and you're there

all of a sudden you're there and all you did was actually begin right and well and part of that too

is i i um the uh you know or sometimes i'll read to articles about django or there's the google

groups there's the Django newsletter that I have now so it's a little bit of a cop-out but it's

still kind of Django related where I'm you know slowly rolling into a downhill yeah okay that's

better for like for me for afternoon evening time um yeah no exactly I do that kind of thing in the

evening because say I sat down to a nice juicy article in the morning that's it oh I'll just

write oh and then I'll have to do some notes on it and oh look that time's disappeared so I'd save

that for the afternoon or the evening yeah and if you you know it's a function of getting older

and kids and this and that but like if you actually count up the amount of thinking time that you have

in a year in your life it's so small i'm kind of like how do humans do anything when you think

about all the nonsense we spend our time with right like and one analogy is there's this famous

skier michaela schifrin who used to live near where i do and she calculated she spends her

entire year trying to ski she spends less than 24 hours on the snow and in a way if you think about

how much time you actually spend thinking about coding or like these problems it's so small right

but it's because it requires all this other you know work right like athletes talk about how they

you know even with like resting is part of the work right so like being rested having these focus

zones even though it's only four hours you can only get that four hours by the other 20 you're

trying to spend the right way yeah self-care is part of the work yeah absolutely yeah so i guess

that's what I'm kind of getting at. Um, so another piece is a big one is socialization,

um, for working, uh, remotely. So I, you know, even the most introverted programmer still finds

that they need some human interaction and you, you know, when you strip out the commute, when

you strip out the daily, this and that, if, um, you know, you lose that, right? So you lose that

both and, and it manifests itself in a number of ways I've found. So one would be, um, if you have

a partner right you you're suddenly you're home with them all day um and you don't have anything

to talk about because you don't have the like oh you know someone did something at the bus stop or

this and that um it can be a strain on the relationship and it can also um at least for me

i i was guilty of finding myself wanting my wife to fill that void of like chattiness and other

things that i have that was just sort of presented to me when i had a workplace and i was out in the

world um and so i had to make steps i'd a recognize that and be be a little more specific about

and deliberate about my steps so trying to go to meetups um trying to schedule online calls with

people making more of an effort to you know do social things right i mean this is this is i think

especially you know men as they get older there's they don't aren't always great at maintaining

kind of friendships and stuff like and that's there's a um this is a tangent but whatever um

John Mulaney is a comedian who hosted SNL recently, and he had a little bit about the most amazing thing about Jesus is he had 12 adult friends who weren't friends of his wife, you know, his wife's husband.

Because, you know, like all my friends are my wife's friends' husbands.

So anyway, so that's a big thing.

And I think there is a little honeymoon period for, especially for introverted people who, you know, it takes a little more work to be social, but even they find, like, you need to make that important.

So don't think you can just be a hermit forever.

Yeah, no, I mean...

Maybe you can, Carlton, but I can't.

Well, no, I get out.

I go to Tai Chi, I meet people, I have a coffee.

You know, I make space in the week, but I agree entirely.

You know, it's too easy to spend just the whole week,

I was just in the house, I didn't go out, I didn't do anything.

Right, you have to be more deliberate about it.

It's almost a discipline in a way of saying, like, this is important...

you know i it's not just part of the daily flow of things and it enriches your life um yeah it's

you mentioned earlier on about the ideal day um yeah and one one exercise that i do periodically

is i get like a planner of the week so it's monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday and i block out

areas where i'm like well now i'm working and this is lunchtime where i go pick up the kids and this

is the afternoon where i do this and this is where my tai chi is and this is where i might meet

someone or and then you find where the gaps are and then where those gaps are you can say oh well

actually i'd like to do this or i'd like to do that and that's where you can fill in bits of

your life that are missing and you can do that periodically yeah well and i think too i've also

again with this idea of when you work remotely you can really squeeze as much out of yourself is

is also for me i can be a bit hard on myself just trying to be kinder when i have days where it's

just not coming to me like i try so i try to focus on the the effort and the input rather than the

result so i can say you know some days i'll get so much done in an hour and some days i'll i'll do

all the right things i'll try for three four hours um i'll get stuck on something and i have to remind

myself that the process is what's important and and not focus on the result which you know you

know so there's that saying like don't um you know don't let your successes get to your head

and don't let your failures get to your heart um that's true in a lot of realms but especially with

you know something very thoughtful like like coding where it does go in these kind of leaps

or it feels like these leaps but when in fact it's all the process um but if you're sat at the

computer and you're getting nothing done and you know all of a sudden the procrastination tools

come out and you're on facebook and you're refreshing and doing all these you know i've

checked the news 45 times in the last hour and nothing's changed you know yeah why would the

new york times update a little bit yeah yeah at that point stop working just get off the computer

because as much as anything it's probably a sign of burnout or tiredness you know burnout's a big

much more substantial thing than being tired that one day but you know back away take the space

you know you're at home just go and go and cook a risotto or something like do something

fulfilling do something different go for a walk spend some time with your spouse go and see a

friend whatever it is but get away from the view don't just sit there banging your head against the

the machine yeah that sometimes happens so just you achieve nothing and you get more tired

yeah and so really all this comes down to you have to self-manage you know if you're working

in a company because they care about your whatever your deliverables are and in a way they don't you

know as long as you get them done i mean part of that is well even even for marks right the

subsistence labor the subsistence wage for a wage for a laborer was the included enough to get them

there the next day to be able to do it again right you've got to you've got to be sustainable you

can't just burn yourself out on a given day or a given project you've got to go the next day and

the next day and the next day right well i was gonna say that um you know google used to have

this 20 time and and i certainly did they cancel that because i thought that was fantastic i don't

think they've had that for a long time okay boo new google yay old google pretty sure that that's

been gone for a long time okay um but i was gonna say personally i again i try to time box this

where and i've started doing this on fridays where you know because creativity a lot of time comes

out of sometimes procrastination or boredom so i will i've started trying to have fridays be days

where i i you know i put the time in but i let my you know my brain go a little bit so i have all

these side projects i work on like i have starter projects and i have all these various things that

are kind of interesting but not um they're important but not urgent i would say um and so i

i found that rather than constantly feeling like i don't have time to like be creative or play i

have to just you know drill on you know my responsibilities i i do have an outlet for it

i say okay on friday i'm gonna you know i'm gonna take you know a couple hours and play around with

this tutorial or you know keep learning these things that are easy to kind of forget doing

when there's just so much of a you know a constant stream of things in my to-do list sometimes i just

really need to say like well i'm still gonna do stuff related to this you know in a way like

i don't know like a rock musician playing jazz or something or like a theater actor you know

movie actor doing theater like you you need that but it also needs for me it needs to be kind of

time boxed so it's not just like a procrastination inch that i scratch exactly i allocate exactly

this amount of time for it and perfect yeah so we should talk about kids right because it's all

very well saying i'm going to do my three four hours solid in the morning when you've you know

you've got three or four children at home who are running around and i'm done with three carlton

you're a madman well i we had two we said let's have a third and we got twins so you know yes

let's talk about kids we can talk about whatever we want um what are your thoughts how do kids i

think the question right you got to look at how old they are right because yes if they're babies

then you know there's a quite simple routine they they they eat they do three things and they sleep

right so the activity is probably changing their nappy or look looking out the window or playing

with a teddy right and they sleep and they've got this routine they do it all day and all night and

you've just got to fit in with it so if you're going to work the only time you can work is when

they're asleep so you can feed them you can play with them you can put them down and then you can

do maybe an hour's work before you've got to start thinking about hey they're going to wake up soon

they're going to want some food you know and you just got to be realistic with that you can't

you know you can't expect to do you know 40 hours 40 hours on the week you're going to get what you

get get done what you get done and you're also if they're little kids you're going to be severely

sleep deprived um and you know that's sort of the self-care piece i mean i'm in the middle of that

right now right i had you know coronavirus nonsense i'd plan to take a month a little

bit easier knowing that it's an intense period of time and um you know rewarding time but you know

i need to just remove thoughts of all these projects or things i'm like i want to do that

you know i mean and part of that is because coding is you know coding is fun it's it's fun to focus

on a problem and kind of block out the rest of the world, especially when you've got little

kids and you're just constantly reactive, you know, so building in some self-care there

is good as well.

But I will say, go ahead.

Well, I was just going to say, so my kids are spaced out a little bit, seven, four,

and zero, as my kids say.

So it's amazing, and I grew up with multiple siblings, but we're all around the same age.

seeing a seven-year-old who can soothe and take care of the baby is amazing i just didn't even

think that was that's like outsourcing that's brilliant yeah i mean even this morning you know

you know she was she came down helped and um yeah so it's just a really beautiful thing but

we gotta be realistic about you know if you're going to be a present parent yeah it takes a and

really it's it's sleep i think um you know until you sleep regularly through the night i mean you

know i'm up four or five times a night my wife even more um it's just unrealistic that i'm gonna

do any good work i'm probably gonna cause more harm if i try to that's independent from working

at home you know even if you were doing the commute going into an office you would expect

that your company would know you had a newborn and be sympathetic of the fact that your productivity

is going to be down for six months or 12 months or 18 months like this is how it is i would say

this is part of being the self-employed bit of you have the additional burden of you have to be

your own boss and you have to recognize that in yourself um maybe we'll just do a slight tangent

on self-employment yeah if you like why not um i think it's just you just have to i have to build

in all this additional time to think about what to work on think about you know self-care like i

can't just assume i can just execute 40 hours a week there is a huge component of you know both

in my remote work having those those two big blocks of time where i can be productive

and then being self-employed of allotting time to contemplation which at least for me you know

it's planning which i don't find that as um it doesn't feel as good as execution no but planning

always feels like wasted time it's like design work software design you know where you sit there

drawing boxes and arrows and on paper feels like a waste of time but i tell you what when you sit

down to the hard work of coding all that time comes back in in you know when in space like

with dividends it comes back with an express payment on it it it feels not as good and it's

not as rewarding to that dopamine receptor bit of your brain that like say i've solved a problem

i've solved a problem i've solved a problem cookies right right well but it's part of the

work you know there's some the mythical mammoth i think there's a you know quite an old book now

but i think i think it's in there could be one of those other old books but you know they say

that a programmer, even in an old-school

enterprise environment, would only spend

10-15% of their time actually coding.

The rest of it is meetings, planning,

testing, debugging.

I don't know what. Testing counts as coding

to me, but who knows? I don't know what.

Coffee, water cooler.

Maybe just a pro tip.

Testing is always

underdone, and I find testing a great

procrastination tool. If I'm stuck on something,

there's always more tests that can be added,

and usually that's a little more

low-level, or

little bit easier to do than you know an architecture kind of thing so that's something

i'm i look to instead of twitter like right so i got some tests somewhere you've got a you've got

a little alert that pops up will you've been writing tests for two hours now you're sure

you're still adding value yeah well and again this is um you know this is the thing about

remote work or especially being self-employed um you just have to have all the discipline like

nobody nobody sees the tests i write on stuff if it's a solo project right so yeah no one's

no one no one's clapping me in the back being like good job in the test coverage right it's you can

kind of punt that so but so i've allocated it in the just like good cleaning and health right just

like i shave occasionally like writing tests is important and valuable and and you know i do it

for its own sake also because i tell people to write tests um right but okay let's turn it into

a testing episode but like the writing test is how you can make changes later right so for me

when i come to when i come to untested code it's like but how can i change anything and it might be

because it's untested likely it's highly coupled and that's kind of why it's untested because it's

highly coupled in its vicious circle but it's like before i can start changing this before i can start

fixing this i have to write these harnesses around it so that i can put some tests in place to know

that when i make this cut over here i didn't break it right well and i and i think too i've realized

that i can just as i have started projects and i find myself you know everything is crud with a

list view and a detail view and you know some auth um you can reuse tests too so it's not like

um this is i i've i will be doing a at some point a deep dive on a django testing course because i

always think of tests is really hard to write at first because you don't really know where you're

going so it's hard to write tests for it and then i don't know of great canonical guides for it but

then it becomes quite boring because you're just doing the same kind of tests boom boom boom boom

so i sort of seek out the boredom like if i'm getting bored writing tests i'm like okay good

you know like this is kind of where i want it to be um and you can you know you can copy and paste

broadly your tests in the same way you can do that with you know your urls or whatever else

if it's a similar type of project to something you've worked on before but when there's a when

there's boredom there should be an abstraction right so i'm right hey i've written this test

before well that means there's a well that's when you switch to pi test you know you kind of

not true anyway kids kids at home so you've got little ones little ones you've just got to look

after because eat activity sleep but like say they're older say they're like 10 11 12 secondary

school kind of thing what do you call secondary school in the states middle school high school

high school high school a bit older anyway but they can work they can sit down with with some

work and they can read they can write for an hour they can work on the computer for an hour

so they can actually sit in the same room as you because they can do it in silence and then it's

like you're working together with your kids and that's kind of really rewarding that's like oh

wow you know we can get some work done and they can be in an environment where it makes them feel

like empowered and big and you know and you spend some time there oh i'm bit can you help it out

yeah okay two minutes no problem like that's kind of cool that's kind of cool so they're kind of

taken care of it's the middle ones that are trouble likes three four five six seven eight

years old they are you've got no chance you've got my four and my seven-year-old is what you're

saying well and you know my two seven-year-olds right yeah you have them too yeah it's it's

absolutely fatal because they basically they can't do any 30 seconds mom dad i need some help

okay we don't okay we spend 10 minutes getting you settled you all settled yeah you're in you're

into i'll just sit down mom dad i need some help so there is a light at the end of the tunnel you're

telling me because i'm yeah no when they get older they can work and it's that's really nice but these

middle ones they're just like they're like ah you've got no chance so essentially okay ah you

just have to go with that as well you have to be realistic about what you can achieve and you can't

beat yourself look they're off school because there's a pandemic and the schools are all being

shut and you just have to be realistic about what you're going to achieve in that circumstance and

don't try and don't get cross with them because they're kids it's just age appropriate behavior

right and you'll i want to do some work tough you can't do any work you've got yeah you just

well you know parenting is yeah you can put you can put the telly on for a bit but you can do that

how long like half an hour an hour like a day like you can't just put them in front of the telly and

let them watch all day so you have no choice if you've got kids of that middle age that middle

period you are going to the best you can do is potter at your work so we talked about the creative

work and the notebook and the downhill start try and make notes right try and make notes and so

give yourself that downhill start that that to do with the bullet points that break down so that

let's say they they do get into something and that means you've got half an hour well okay that half

an hour you can get on because you created that downhill start but that's all you can do you're

Like if these are, these are strange times, you know, they all over the world, they're

shutting schools and we just have to be realistic about what we can achieve in that time.

Well, that's helpful to hear about the age appropriate.

I did have a minor victory yesterday and I'll just mention that a quick aside.

So with dad jokes and parenting things, I used to think that parents, you know, didn't

know that they were wearing.

My kids tell dad jokes.

They're like, yeah, dad joke.

And it'll be atrocious.

They'll be like, yeah, I told you it was a dad joke.

Well, when I was a kid, I thought that parents didn't realize they were, you know, wearing

terrible clothes or telling bad jokes or, you know, and now I realize they know they

just don't care, right?

So like, why wear anything nice?

It's just going to get stuff on it.

You know, it's like, oh, you don't want to see pictures of my kid?

I don't care.

I'm going to show them to you.

Like, that's my recent, I've totally lost the thought of what I was going to say.

um you had a moment with you talking about oh yes yes i was gonna say my um so the curriculum

they're sending teachers are sending links and teachers are just total heroes um and my first

grader completed the second grade math assignment on her own like a stallion and i was like yes

that's my girl so and then she needed help with everything else yeah it's a glimpse of maybe high

school but i think also kids you know kids model your behavior so if they see you being disciplined

and and enjoying things um they'll pick up on that you know so like already you know my seven-year-old

has we gave her an old phone that is an airplane mode and she's constantly wants to be on it and

we're like no no no don't look at that but you know we're always on our phone too so it's it's

a good push to be better yeah yeah to not demonstrate that and not demonstrate the

yeah totally um anyway all right i just got one more thing on my my notes here it's basic rules

it says get dressed have breakfast when you're working from home get up in the morning get

dressed have breakfast make your bed put the laundry on do all the things that like make you

into a normal human being and then do some work don't don't just say what is it there's there's

this poster is it like the oatmeal that shows like the chronology of i'll find it in link the

chronology of working from home um and uh yeah you just it's self-care and discipline right like

yeah you and you're just gonna but it's mental attitude as well like if you bother to get

dressed you know if you bother to have breakfast if you bother to take care of yourself it means

yeah i i'm respecting myself and i'm respecting that i'm going i'm gonna do some work now

just because you're at home doesn't mean it's a holiday yeah well and yeah i'll put the link

it's called why working from home is awesome and horrible and part of that i think that you know

motivator is i gotta get stuff done right like i i don't have the luxury of not being productive

right whether you're working for someone else you're working for yourself yeah you know or you

have a family it's like you know i can't f around here so um so that stress and anxiety is quite

productive yeah okay great well that's our special episode um we will continue to have episodes on

jenga related things um thank you everyone for listening join us next time bye