The COVID-19 storm has come so suddenly. In just a few weeks, it seems the world as we know it has changed completely.
In the US, travel has been shut down. Social distancing is in order. And now cities are seeing shelter-in-place coming into effect.
It's not an easy time for anyone. Some countries have been hit really hard. Thinking of you Italy, China, Iran. Wishing you the best.
And everyone everywhere is feeling some level of anxiety. Sending you love.
If there's an upside to this at all -- and that's not to take away from the crisis by any means -- it would be that this may be a broad trial run of working remotely.
Of course, not the kind of trial run we'd hope for. In echo'ing the words of Matt Mullenweg, WordPress & Automattic founder, this is not how we envisioned the distributed work revolution to take hold.
With Pulp has been remote since day one. To be able to work from where we'd like is one of the main reasons we formed the studio.
Having learned a few things over the years, we thought we'd share what's worked well for us:
- Over communicate. Because we operate in different timezones, most of our work is done asynchronously. We try our best to communicate mindfully. This means putting communications in a place where it's easily retrievable by teammates and going above and beyond when we deliver updates.
- Set aside a few hours for synchorizing every day. We do this on Slack mostly. When it gets particularly busy and written communication gets in the way of the work, we organize brief audio or video calls. It's rare that we meet for more than 30 minutes.
- Set aside a few tools that we use regularly. We use Slack for communication, Google Meet or Skype for audio/video meetings, Google Suite for planning, long-form notes and collaboration, and just recently rolled out this Gatsby blog for blogging/team updates. We're flexible and happy to try new tools, and encourage folks on the team to propose their own. But having some tools handy helps reduce decision making fatigue.
- Take weekend work very seriously. All of us work on our own schedules. Our focus is on getting the work done as promised. At the same time, we take time off very seriously and do our best to limit new requests to the next business day.
Again, we wish you and your loved ones safety during this storm. And we're happy to be of assistance in anyway we can.