In this episode, Daphne interviews remote work expert Marissa Goldberg. Marissa has been working remotely since 2015 and has managed remote team members across 20 countries. Her business, Remote Work Prep, helps companies create healthy, effective, remote work environments. If you are interested in a remote role, this episode is for you.
Listen to the episode in the podcast player below, or find it on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
Communicating in a remote environment
Daphne:
Hi, Marissa. Thank you so much for being here today.
Marissa:
Hi, how are you?
Daphne:
I am doing pretty good. I’m excited. I mean, it’s a little bit ironic, I would think, that you and I are going to talk entirely about remote working environments and we started off with some technical difficulties and troubleshooting. But that is part of the process, and we have made it to the interview stage, which I’m really excited about. Do you mind sharing a little bit about yourself, your background and what you really are focused on now?
Marissa:
Yeah, absolutely. So I started working remotely in 2015, so well before the pandemic and back when there weren’t a ton of resources out there on how to do it right. And I figured out quickly that what I was doing was very wrong. It led to burnout. It led to communication issues with my colleagues. But I also fell in love with the autonomy aspect of remote work, and I really loved working from home and being around the people I chose, and I felt like there was so many awesome benefits that I felt like there had to be a better way.
So I started researching and figuring things out with my team, and eventually my team just became the most productive one in the company. Other managers started coming to me being like, “Hey, what are you doing? What’s so different about what you’re doing with your team versus what I’m doing with my team? How are you not in meetings all day?” All these questions. So I started Remote Work Prep, just a side thing to help people do remote work better, and that was in 2018. In 2020, Remote Work Prep exploded, of course, with the pandemic, and we offer fractional Head of Remote services and courses to help people have an awesome effective remote work experience. And that’s been my full-time thing ever since.
Marissa breaks down the top challenges to working in a remote environment
Daphne:
Yeah. And for so many people who are listening in the audience right now, they are either brand new in their remote work environment or they only really have experience during that distant learning chapter of school, which was, as we can all agree probably unanimously, not very effective, or organized, or well put together. Can you provide a brief overview of a couple of the biggest struggles you see happening in a remote work environment?
Marissa:
There’s a lot of ways to answer this. There’s a lot of different problems. So the number one thing is I think burnout. People are going into it without setting up virtual boundaries. They’re not recognizing that when you live and work in the same place there needs to be different setups than what you would do in the office. A lot of people are just attempting to replicate what they did in-person remotely, and then that leads to burnout, that leads to like communication problems, that leads to a lot of different things. So just recognizing that this is a different method and that it requires a different approach is extremely important.
Daphne:
Yeah, I can 100% vouch for the burnout of working remotely. I left the classroom in 2017, and my first role outside of the classroom was actually a remote work job for a Fortune 500 company. There was some travel involved, sometimes seeing people in-person, but the majority of my work was remote. And back then, everybody, because no one had worked remotely before, was like screaming from the mountaintops, “How did you get this job? You’re so lucky. What is this?”
And eventually I realized there were times in my career, from 2017 to 2023, that I was the weirdo that paid extra to rent an office, to leave my one bedroom apartment so that I had that separation, that work-life balance of when I’m here I’m working, and when I come back home I’m not working anymore. Because it’s really easy to just be working 24/7 if your computer that you use for fun is also used for work. You’re constantly kind of going in that habit of working. Do you feel like that’s something that people across the board really struggle with?
Marissa:
I think what’s really interesting about remote work is that everyone ends up approaching it differently, because their individual needs are different. And it really puts it into perspective that the office environment is created for one type of person, and we need so many different environments to actually work in our best way. So for you, having that coworking space was probably great for that period of time, and then for me, I hate coworking spaces, so I will not go that route whatsoever. But that’s great because we’re both working remotely and we can both do it in our own way.
One thing that I’ve seen that is helpful for absolutely everyone is creating virtual boundaries. So you brought up having the same computer for work and the same computer for personal life. That’s what I’ve had from the beginning as well. But it’s very important to have things like multiple browser profiles, so if you’re logged into your work profile, you can’t really get into your personal profile things. And then also having separate password managers, so if you’re in your personal life and you’re trying to like watch Netflix and then you remember a work email, you can’t actually log into that work email very easily because you’ve logged out of that password manager. So creating virtual boundaries. Even if you’re on the same device, you need to create some friction, so it’s not so easy to jump between personal and work tasks.
Daphne:
Yeah, that’s a really good piece of advice that I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say before. I also know that communication is going to be something that we probably talk about throughout this entire podcast, because it is one of the biggest challenges in a remote work environment. What struggles do you see happening? And I know that these can definitely vary from company to company, but what struggles do you see happening when it comes to still effectively communicating with managers, with different team members, with colleagues, in this new environment?
Marissa:
There’s several different things that I can think of here. So again, it goes back to this is a totally different method and it requires a different approach. And instead of providing any sort of training, a lot of companies just kind of like throw you into a remote work environment, and they’re just like, “Go for it.” Like, “Just do the same things as usual,” when really there should be training around virtual communication, like when do you use Slack verse when do you use meeting verse when do you use Notion or whatever document management system you use.
And then on top of that, there’s also this thing called peripheral communication. So in the office you might’ve seen someone talking to someone else, or you might’ve passed someone in the hallway who was mentioning a project, and that’s called peripheral communication. It didn’t happen because it was intentional, like people came out and said, “Oh, we’re doing this,” or “Oh, I talked to X.” It was just you saw it out of the corner of your eye or while you were doing something else. And that’s taken away when you’re in a remote environment.
So the very first thing is to have some awareness around that. And two is to get in front of that. So that means being proactive with your communication. You need to be able to put forth saying like, “This is what I’ve been working on. These are the questions I’ve had.” You need to kind of have that initiative more than you would’ve had in the office. In the office maybe your manager saw a confused look on your face, and then went over and asked you like, “What are you struggling with?” In a healthy remote environment, you have zero eyes on you. And that can be an awesome thing and it can be great, but if you’re expecting that kind of proactiveness from your manager when they can’t see you, you’re going to run into some problems.
Daphne:
And that’s something that I think is a struggle for everyone, especially people who are new in their role. But for me as a leader of a company that’s remote, I’ve never been a manager before, and so some of the employees that I’ve hired, I’ve never trained someone to work remotely, I also am learning what their expectations are in their role, and so some of this is going to not as intuitive even for the most intelligent people of, “Hey, how do we figure out this system?”
One thing that we ended up doing was, when someone was brand new in their role, we just put a 15-minute calendar meeting, that that was a meeting once a week until they wanted to have a little bit more autonomy and they felt a little bit more comfortable with even those day-to-day tasks. So once a week we check in and they just say, “Hey, will you watch me? Like physically watch me do this? I’m going to share my screen, but I just want to make sure I’m on the right pace.” Because writing that Slack message feels intimidating of, “I’m struggling with am I wording this email correctly?” Like, you don’t want to bother someone with some of these types of questions, but it is important when you’re in a healthy environment to be able to ask those types of questions. Because like you said, in-person environment, you’re sitting next to someone and the stakes feel a little bit lower when you’re asking one of the, you know, just getting to understand the role type of questions.
Marissa:
Yeah, for managers, it’s really important to create an environment and an atmosphere that encourages all questions. Like, “There are no stupid questions. I want to hear what’s going on.” That’s the kind of culture you’re trying to create. It’s also important to provide outlets where they can ask those questions. So one of the things that is pretty common with the managers that I coach with is we set up synchronous Slack hours, so “You can expect an instant response from me between 3 to 4 p.m.” And then those people can go in and they can ask their questions and not feel like they’re bothering, because a lot of times people are like, “I don’t want to just bother them. I don’t want to be in the way.” And so by saying like, “I’m having these synchronous office hours now. You are invited to them. We are encouraging this kind of talk.” That’s one way they can do that.
As for new hires, if maybe your manager isn’t so great about doing these kind of things, it’s important to be proactive in explaining like what you’re working on, what you’re working on next, and any questions and blockers you may have. So one way to do this is just simply an email with a bullet point list saying like, “This is what I worked on today. This is what I ended up having issues with.” And just sending them at the end of your workday can be really great at keeping your manager informed that, hey, you’re doing work.
And then two, keeping track of things that you’re asking for. So instead of it being something where in the meeting they’re like, “Oh, I’ll get back to you about it,” and they have 50 other things on their plate, and you’re not really sure if they’re going to give you a response, you have like a written tracking system of saying like, “These are the things that I’m still waiting on.”
Marissa shares time management hacks when working remotely
Daphne:
Yeah, I love that suggestion that you gave of having a, like, “This is the time we’re all online.” And everyone can Slack each other, you can ask all these different questions, and it’s almost like an in-person environment where you’re able to all work together, maybe even hop on a call if it makes a little bit more sense for everyone to screen share during that moment. Do you also encourage times that are blocked off just for project time, just to get something done, where Slack is paused?
Marissa:
So I think that should be the default. So I don’t set specific hours for that, I set specific hours for the synchronous time. I don’t think synchronous should be the default, because that ends up like pinging everybody while they’re trying to get some actual work done, and then like no one’s getting anything done. So by having the async and the like Slack off by default, and then having synchronous hours, like saying, “3 to 4 I’m checking. 9 to 10 I’m checking.” Whatever it is for you, whatever works for your team, that way you’re being very explicit, like, “It’s okay if you don’t respond to me instantly. You can turn off Slack. You can stay focused on the work that you’re trying to do, and you can actually get stuff done.”
Daphne:
I have to pause, because it is the first one-third of the interview, and we have focused on really, really great suggestions of a very healthy remote work environment. And as much as I wish that I could tell everyone who’s listening that this is what it’s going to be like if okay, you saw a job, it says it’s a remote job, and you’re going to hop on, and your first week you’re going to find out how you’re going to have all this autonomy, and you’re going to figure this all out. Not all jobs are like this. And I know that that is hopefully pretty obvious, but I’ve seen so many companies that really struggle with this, and they struggle with it for a lot of different reasons. I think a lot of it is just not having good benchmarks in place, and like how to actually measure whether or not their employees are successful, and so they default to, “We want to see cameras on.”
I’ve had someone that I am very close with that ended up leaving a company, was only there for a couple of weeks was. It was, “We have cameras on for eight hours of a day. We want to hear every phone call that you’re on. We want you to send us a message if you need to turn it off and go walk to the restroom,” and that’s worse than an in-person job. To me it feels more tense, it’s more stressful, and it’s not productive for I think many people, but especially those of us that may struggle with ADHD or have other sort of needs, where we need to have hyper-focused time, we need to have zero distraction. So having a chat window that we’re forced to have on at all times, is not going to help us on a call.
Marissa:
Absolutely. Yeah, that would be an extremely unhealthy environment, and honestly, there’s nothing I can say or any tips I can give to make that better. It’s just too much of an extreme on that side, and the healthiest thing for you is to leave those kind of positions. I can’t give you any advice that will fix that, yeah.
Daphne:
Have you had any companies though that have come to you and said, “Hey, we know we’re doing this incorrectly. Can you help us correct it?”
Marissa:
Yeah, so there’s definitely. . . I think a majority of companies are between what you’re describing and what I’ve described in the previous answers, where there’s like extremely unhealthy, extremely healthy, most companies reside somewhere in the middle. And it’s primarily due to just a lack of knowledge on how to do things differently when they’re remote. People were kind of thrown in all of a sudden during the pandemic, they had to use whatever they were already using, there was zero training, everybody’s going through personal things in their life because this crazy world event is going on. So it was just very abrupt and because it lasted so long people got stuck in that state, and they didn’t really recognize that there were better ways to do things.
So that’s why I have things like my blog out there, and my newsletter, and things sharing, like, “This is what’s possible if you do things in a healthy way.” And the companies that I’ve worked with, I’ve seen it happen where they went from that middle of the line where they’re doing things in an unhealthy way, not as extreme as what you’re describing, but in an unhealthy way. But then they recognize like, “Hey, this isn’t working for us. This isn’t actually getting things done. This isn’t keeping our team members happy.” And we’ve worked together to move them forward into more of a healthy environment.
Daphne:
Have you seen companies that are struggling and they think it’s an accountability piece and it’s really just a project management piece? Somewhere in the management they just need to figure out a project management system of, “Hey, this is what we expect done this week, and then this is how we track how things are done”
Marissa:
Yes. It’s actually much more likely that it’s that over anything else. And it goes back to the piece about accountability. It’s different remotely than it is in person. In-person relies heavily on external factors like peer pressure to encourage people to get things done. And so it’ll be things like, “Oh, they showed up. They showed up in work attire. They showed up on time.” And when you actually take those things individually, that’s not actually proof any work got done, and yet it’s used as the mechanism to say like, “Work was getting done.”
But then those things are taken away remotely, and so they’re trying to encourage that peer pressure again with the unhealthy things like having cameras on, or having constant meetings, or micromanagement, or any of those things. Instead, they need to understand that accountability, while remote, is all about internal drive, and making sure that that individual has what they need in order to get their work done. And it can be in their own time, so they’re able to get through their work done better even than what they could in the office, because they can work around like their families, and their chronic illnesses, and just anything else they had going on. You can actually get more productivity out of a person when they’re able to work in a way that they can individualize to what works best for them.
Marissa shares encouragement to those struggling in a remote working environment
Daphne:
I love that, and I feel like it kind of goes well with my next question, which is, have there been companies that you’ve worked with that have had probably a small handful of employees who just really struggled to thrive in a remote work environment? And what advice have you given them? What advice or how do you support those employees?
Marissa:
The very first thing is that I recognize that usually happens because there was a lack of knowledge, and management, and just training around how to do things right. So they’ve just been guessing, and they’ve been trying all these things that hasn’t necessarily been working for them, and they haven’t been able to figure it out. So it’s usually a two-prong approach. So on the company side, we need to set policies. We need to set explicit details around like, “This is what I’m expecting. This is what I’m not expecting.” We need to set a responsiveness policy, so people don’t feel like they need to respond instantly in Slack and then don’t get any work done. So typically the responsiveness policies is, “Within 24 hours, please respond to this non-urgent matter.” So setting up things and being very explicit on, “This is what we expect,” is extremely important on the company side.
On the individual side, we need to do things like making sure they have virtual boundaries. Making sure they understand their own learning style and their own working style. Making sure they understand that they can experiment, they don’t have to do things the same way all the time, especially if it’s not working. I don’t want you to continue doing things like working 9 to 5 if that’s not working for you. So experimenting with different work hours, experimenting with different forms of communication, like doing Loom videos, and written messages, and figuring out what exactly works best for you, just trying new things out and recognizing that you need to give yourself grace. This is an entirely new way of working, that you most likely did things one way for decades, and then were abruptly switched overnight, and it’s very disorienting. And it takes some getting used to, and it takes grace for yourself.
Daphne:
I love that suggestion about Loom videos, or like Slack I think has the option to record, well just record like a five-minute video so someone can watch it at their own pace. But for me, I completely like brownout, blackout, if someone sends me a detailed message of, “Click here, and then click here, and then click here.” Even if it’s really easy to follow, for some reason that takes more mental stamina for me to get through. And what my team has started doing is, when it comes to something that’s technical, that just is like, “Hey, let me record a video. It’s over here, right-hand side, click, click, click.” And it takes them 15 seconds instead of 4 minutes of typing it out, and it also is a lot easier for my brain to process. But that even took some time to figure out what works best with the team.
For an employee who’s starting to realize, “Hey, it might be easier for me if someone does a screen share of this,” but they’re newer to a company, who do you suggest they actually talk to at the company? Or how do they approach that conversation of, “Hey, would it be okay if I start requesting people do things in a different style?” Because that can be intimidating as a new employee and someone new to an environment.
Marissa:
I think it’s important though, because when we do these kinds of things, we get to know how to work with someone better, and then that increases collaboration, and communication, and all of that stuff. So my recommendation is for team leaders to have their teams create a README. And README is something in software development that started as like, “This is how you use the tool.” Now what you’re doing is you’re creating a personal README, of like, “This is how to work best with me. It typically work between these hours. These are my synchronous hours. This is what I’m responsible for. These are the type of questions that I encourage you to ask me about. This is how I love to be communicated with. These are areas that in the past have been pain points for me, so maybe watch out. Like maybe I’m a little more prickly during these times.” Like just laying it all out there. Like why expect everyone to just figure things out and jumble it, when you can actually just lay it out on the page and just be like, “This is me. This is how to work best with me. This is basically the user manual on how to work with me.”
So if you’re a team leader, please encourage your team members to do that. And if you’re just a team member on the team, then make one for yourself and share it with everyone else, and ask your team leader to do similarly for everyone else on the team.
Daphne:
I love that. And I think just learning everybody’s different learning styles, or work styles. It’s a lot more challenging when all you see is a name on a screen. Maybe you have Zoom calls, but no one really gets to sit next to one another and watch like, “Oh, Daphne’s a little freaky. She can only do things this specific way. She has to put a Pomodoro Timer on and just completely focus on something for 35 minutes to get anything done. And I am happy I know that about her now.” But it’s hard to approach those conversations in a remote work environment if there isn’t an expectation of, “Hey, just tell me your favorite way to work. Or what works best for you, what best supports you.”
The longer you’re in a healthy work environment, the more you’re going to have these aha moments about yourself, these moments about your colleagues, and how you can better work with your colleagues. And I don’t want anyone who’s listening to this to just be scared like, “Oh, I’m going to be completely on my own. Or every company is really going to make me feel totally isolated or alone.” But I do think that it’s important to realize that you may come in and these struggles are common at many, many, many companies that are in a remote work situation.
Marissa shares how remote employees can practice self-care
I want to talk to you a little bit more. We talked about who is going to really thrive in a remote work environment and some of the challenges. One of the biggest challenges for myself, and I know that this is something that many people have openly struggled with, is their mental health and their mental wellbeing when they are working in a remote environment. I did not realize how much I depended on human interaction, and Zoom calls aren’t it for me. It doesn’t feel the same. And so I found myself for years very isolated, because I would be head down and work, head down and meetings, but not getting that same face-to-face contact with people. What strategies or routines do you suggest to ensure that people maintain their mental health if they are working in a remote environment?
Marissa:
So when it comes to the social side, it’s great that you recognize it, because a lot of people are like, “Oh, I feel so isolated because I’m not working.” But it’s also because you just put too much weight in it. You gave work so much power over your social life. And it can actually be better for your social life if you don’t do that. Because what’s happening when you put it all into work is you’re giving it basically to HR, being like, “Hey, HR, whoever you hire, that’s who I’m going to be friends with.” And maybe those aren’t your type of people, but still because you were in close proximity with them, and because those were the only people you were seeing, they became your friends. So you can actually build deeper, better relationships when you’re remote, because now you have that space, and now you are forced to create a social life outside of work. So it can be better over the long term.
But, like you said, initially it’s going to feel isolating, it’s going to feel different, it’s going to feel very confusing because maybe you haven’t tried to make friends outside of the classroom or outside of work for a very long time. So what’s important here is to recognize that remote work gives you flexibility and gives you freedom in a number of different ways.
One is where you work, so maybe you move back to where you felt happiest, you probably moved to different cities throughout your life, maybe go back to where you were when you were happiest, because now you have that freedom to work wherever you want to. Or maybe move back to being around family if you’ve moved far away from them. This gives you the opportunity to bring that proximity closer to the people that you want to be close with. Two is to recognize, “Hey, you can go out.” You can go to coworking spaces, you can go to the library, you can go to the coffee shop, you can work from any of those spaces. You can also just go out for lunch in the middle of the day with a friend instead of a coworker. Like, it’s okay. I really encourage people to take advantage of the flexibility, and the freedom, and to use it to get closer to the ones that they love.
Marissa explains remote working space best practices
Daphne:
So the last question I want to talk to you about is workplace setup. What do you think are some of the essential elements for consideration when they’re creating their first functional home office? And I know everybody’s space is going to vary, but what have you seen being the most important pieces and components of it?
Marissa:
I think the most important piece is to recognize that you don’t need just one space to work. I encourage everybody to remember that you only had one space in the office because that’s what the company could afford, and they wanted you to have like this one singular work zone, but you might be doing various different types of work.
So I know for me, sometimes I’m writing, sometimes I’m having meetings, and sometimes I’m building products, and all of those require different types of spaces. So right now I’m in a space where I have designed for video calls. I have the nice lighting, the backdrop, the audio, all of that stuff. But if I tried to do my deep work in this space, it would be so distracting and it would just mean like not the vibe whatsoever, and I wouldn’t be able to get as much done. So instead, I encourage people to have different work zones for different types of work.
And this doesn’t mean having one room for different types of work. No, okay, I want to make that explicitly clear. I started this when I was in like a one bedroom apartment, so you don’t need that much space. But for things like when I’m writing, I want to feel comfortable, I want to feel cozy, I want to feel like just very comfortable to write what I’m thinking. And so in that case, I’m doing something like being on the couch, or having like… I have an adjustable bed, so I just like adjust it up and I’m writing there. So it’s like just cozy environments. I’ll put on a candle.
Then when it comes to like meetings, I’ll have the nice desk set up. I’ll have the lighting, the camera, you don’t need as much as you think you need to, like just basic headphones. I do recommend things like gaming headphones have much more comfortability, and they have a great mic too, so that’s one tip.
And then three, like maybe you need to be somewhere where people are like bustling around you so that you feel like that pressure to work on things, so maybe a coffee shop or a coworking space, that could be another work zone. And by doing that, you’re also not sitting in one place all day long. It encourages you to get up, to move, to flip zones, so that’s one thing I encourage people to think about.
Daphne:
Yeah, that’s such a good suggestion. For me, like if I have to sit down and write a podcast episode or all the questions for a podcast episode, something that’s going to take my computer for sure, but a good amount of time, I try and either go to a coffee shop or actually go outside, because I find myself easily distracted by literally any room in the house right now. And I just had to learn that about myself. When it comes to meetings, I can take a meeting pretty much anywhere that’s “distraction-free,” and distraction free is in loose quotation marks because there are dogs everywhere…
But then I also have this piece of remote work that I think some people forget is an option, which is, I take a pen and paper and a journal, and I do not take my computer. When it comes to long-term planning and deep thinking, I feel like I do my best work with a journal. I go to a park, a botanical garden, something around me where I’m sitting for about an hour with music in the background. And I do a much better job of focusing on those like really deep complex problems if I am away from a computer screen altogether.
Marissa:
Yup, I do the same thing. I do screen-free Thursday mornings, and that’s where I’m getting everything just out of my head, I’m like drafting things, I’m writing down bullet points… I can convert it later to online, but this just gives me space from the notifications, from the screens that are constantly in my face all the time, and giving my eyes a little rest.
Daphne:
Do you have suggestions? That’s something that I’ve heard people say is trying to schedule in once an hour at like stop looking at your computer. Do you ever encourage that in a work environment? I’m not good at implementing it at all, I forget. I’ll be here for 10 hours.
Marissa:
I encourage more of these like separate work zones, because it like forces you to get up and forces you to have in-between times when you’re transitioning between zones. So if you have something more natural that way, so some people like to do the Pomodora Technique of where they’re working for an hour and then they’re doing a 15-minute break. And just making sure you get up and get away from the computer during that break, instead of scrolling through Twitter, is just incredibly important. So I think do what works best for you and experiment. Like I said, what works best for one person is not going to work great for another person, and that’s okay. That’s kind of the point of remote work, is you can optimize it for yourself, but first you need to figure out what you personally need.
Daphne:
Yeah, absolutely. Marissa, this has been such a good in-depth conversation about everything remote work, but I know that there are probably people who want to learn more. Because this is all you’ve dedicated the last bit of your life to just researching and creating really helpful resources all about remote work. Where can the audience find you if they want to connect with you and learn more from you?
Marissa:
Yes, you can find me at marissagoldberg.com or remoteworkprep.com. I encourage you to subscribe to my newsletter, Remotely Interesting, where we explore different ways of work and how to revolutionize how you live by changing how you work.
Daphne:
Awesome. Thank you so much, Marissa, this has been so helpful and just such a pleasure to talk to you.
Marissa:
You, too. You, too.
Mentioned in the episode:
- Find Marissa at marissagoldberg.com and remoteworkprep.com, and subscribe to her newsletter, Remotely Interesting
- Our career path quiz at www.teachercareercoach.com/quiz
- Explore the course that has helped thousands of teachers successfully transition out of the classroom and into new careers: The Teacher Career Coach Course (If you are a Teacher Career Coach Course member, you can also sign up for our one-on-one Career Clarity calls.)
