Transcript

Episode: How to Balance Remote Work and Family Life

Megan Hyatt Miller: Hi, I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

Larry Wilson: And I’m Larry Wilson.

Megan:  And this is Lead to Win, our weekly podcast to help you win at work and succeed at life. Today we’re talking about a problem that many of you are facing for the first time: how to balance family life and remote work.

Larry: This coronavirus has really upended things for a lot of people. I know so many businesses are sending all or part of their workforce to work from home, and a lot of people are dealing with this for the very first time. Here at Michael Hyatt & Company, we have a little special expertise in this area, don’t we?

Megan: We do. We started as a 100 percent remote work company, and we’ve been using kind of a hybrid approach of in-person and remote work for the last two years. We have a common work space, but that has been shut down now, so while we’ve been working remotely sometimes, now we are working with the rest of you 100 percent of the time remotely, and those of us with kids are working 100 percent remotely 100 percent of the time with our kids. You can’t see my face, but I’m trying to pull my hair out right now.

Larry: I can see your face on video because we’re recording remotely. Yeah, this is a problem for a lot of people. So we’re bringing in a few of our team members to talk this through and help give you guys some help on finding the balance between home life and remote work. These are going to be a couple of familiar voices for anybody who listens to our other podcast, which is Focus on This. We are joined today by Courtney Baker and Blake Stratton.

Megan: Woo-hoo! Hey, guys.

Courtney Baker: Hey, thanks for having us, Megan.

Megan: It’s so fun. Blake, what’s up, man?

Blake Stratton: What is up? I put on a blazer for this, Megan.

Megan: I know. You’re so fancy. The rest of us are in pajamas, so…

Blake: I’m here. I was like, “Wow! Lead to Win. I need to… Gosh, these are professionals.”

Courtney: Before you start bragging about your blazer, maybe we should point out the other obvious thing that people can’t see, which is that you’re calling from your closet.

Blake: I am. It’s a very professional podcasting remotely environment. I’m currently between a sweater and an Oxford, and I just happened to pull down this blazer because it felt right. Yeah, really convenient, conducive space for podcasting from home.

Larry: Okay. We’re talking about how to balance work life and home life when you work from home. You guys all have had experience with this prior to the coronavirus situation. You’ve all done this before. Here’s my question: Is it harder for you now than it was, say, two years ago?

Megan: Is that a joke question?

Larry: Hey, I’m an empty-nester. My kids are grown. It’s pretty much the same for me.

Megan: It’s not the same for the rest of us. I used to work from home on Wednesdays and Fridays, mainly. Wednesdays is our “no meeting” day at Michael Hyatt & Company, so that was a good day to do deep work at home, and then often on Fridays I’m doing more project work, so I typically am working from home. However, that’s with a babysitter and no kids at home because the older kids are at school, so this is, to say the least, a little different. What about you, Courtney and Blake?

Courtney: Yeah. For me, when I started at Michael Hyatt & Company, I was so excited because I had never worked anywhere that allowed you to work from home. I was like, “This is an amazing benefit! I’m so glad. I’m going to work from home all the time.” Then I tried it out, and my extroverted self was like, “No. I do not like this working from home.” Although I do it occasionally when I need to do big projects, I generally still like to go into our office, like, the hybrid system we talked about earlier. So even the mental game of “I am here, and I am staying here, and tomorrow I can’t go to the office either” definitely makes it harder for me.

Blake: It was honestly pretty sweet the first few days. I’m not going to lie. I’m an introvert, and I did not change out of my sweatpants. I was like, “Who cares? No one knows.” I got to talk to my wife, and it was great. I really just got to be a hermit, and then a few days in, as well as the severity of things happening in our world on top of that… Boy, did I get some cabin fever. It definitely has been challenging.

Megan: Well, I think the people listening probably feel our pain. They’re in the same boat that we are. That’s why we want to give people some insight on how to do this, because you really can balance your family life and remote work. It may be somewhat imperfect right now, but it can be done. So today we’re going to share with you some steps to get you started. Also, I wanted to tell you that we put together a free resource to help you with this that I’d like to give to all of you listening today. It’s called The Remote Work Handbook: Do’s and Don’ts to Set You Up for Success. You can download that right now at leadto.win/remote.

Larry: So, we’re saying today that you can balance home life and remote work even with kids at home and all the rest. We have five steps for you. Step one is: communicate and cooperate.

Megan: This is a really important one, because if you haven’t worked at home before or maybe you haven’t worked at home simultaneously with all of the responsibilities of kids and your spouse working at home too… If you just kind of put your head down and try to get your work done without coordinating, it can be a disaster. So I think this is really important to coordinate with your spouse and also with your kids. Blake and Courtney, I’d love to hear some of the ways you guys are doing this effectively.

Blake: We’ve installed a lot recently. One of the things we’re doing is an extended Weekly Preview, because things are changing pretty quickly, and a lot of great things have come out of that. One thing I started doing was divvying up responsibilities and just clarifying, “Hey, this is how our normal rhythm used to look like, so we didn’t have to be so particular with certain things, but can we just talk about this?”

We have one baby girl. She’s almost 1 year old. Alaina, my wife, naturally is kind of the chief baby officer of our house. All of those things, those questions… She just thinks more about it. She has deeper understanding. One of the things that sort of was in flux was the household administration. Now it’s kind of in both of our faces. So I said, “Hey…” This came out of a Weekly Preview time. I said, “Why don’t I just take on chief admin for the time being here while we’re in this mode?”

I literally will make a little document, almost like I’m her EA, the night before that sort of gives her “Hey, here’s the plan tomorrow. Here’s what we have in the fridge for meals for us, for Felicity, our daughter. Here’s what my day is going to look like. Here’s where I’m going to be on calls and it’s going to be important to not be interrupted,” those types of things, so she can have clarity and vision into the next day.

Megan: That’s really good. Courtney, what about you?

Courtney: Well, obviously, communication and cooperation are key all the time. It’s just now it’s in a vacuum. It just amped it up several levels of communication and cooperation. For my husband Chase and me, it’s basically making sure at the end of each day that we have clear ends for our day. One of the ways we’re doing that is we’re going on a family walk at 5:00 each day.

Work is very different right now, so there may be times we have to come back to work, which is not something we normally try to do, but, still, to have those clear times where it’s like, “We are going to designate this time as family time.” That’s a great place for us to reconnect and set the next set of priorities for the next day. Again, the things that have worked well for you previously in your communication and cooperation… Do those things. Just amplify them to the next level. You most likely need it.

Megan: That’s really good. Joel and I have been in the morning… Normally, we have our morning ritual, which has been somewhat truncated during this process, but we do a quiet time individually, very short, and then we’ll do our daily page in the Full Focus Planner. As we come up with our Daily Big 3 and we go through the schedule… It’s really changing on a day-to-day basis. Normally, we’d look ahead for the week and it would not change very much during the week. That’s not the case right now.

So we’re figuring out, “Okay. So during that webinar, during that podcast recording, can you be on with the kids?” or “You’ve got to have that call with your team” or “You’ve got to finish that project, that free resource we’re creating,” or whatever, and we’re just trading off. “Okay. Can you start dinner, because I’m going to be on that call?” There’s just a lot of hand-to-hand combat we’re having to do together. So, talking often and then having that time first thing in the morning seems to be really helpful.

Blake: Part of what has made it so challenging is this sort of unseen emotional component to all this.

Megan: That’s a really good point.

Blake: I’m kind of an emo kid at heart anyway, but my wife and I are actually both… I know we’ve talked about the Enneagram before. We’re both Enneagram Fours, so we’re really feeling all of this. Part of what makes the coordination or talking logistics tough is, for me at least, I can catch myself having an edge. Alaina will be like, “Why are you yelling that to me, though?” and I’m like, “Because everything is crazy!” So that has been part of the challenge.

Courtney: You literally stole the words out of my mouth. I think for us, logistically, a lot of the things are still in place for us. We still have childcare in our home during the day. We’ve had some issues with spacing. Chase is now kicked out of the office. He’s working from our bedroom now. A lot of that stuff we’ve been able to handle. For us, it’s forgetting in the midst of all of these things to communicate how we’re feeling, to take a moment to say, “Oh gosh! This is hard” or “This is why I’m responding that way.” Just because everything logistically feels like… You’re just trying to figure it all out, to stop and give the space for that.

Larry: What I hear you guys saying is it’s not just communicate and cooperate, but there really is that deeper level connection you have to work a little bit to maintain during a time like this.

Megan: Yeah, I think that’s really true, Larry. I think connection is simultaneously more important right now than ever because of what Blake and Courtney have said, because the emotions are so high. All of us have fear right now. We have anxiety. We have a lot more demands on us, all of those things, so we need more connection, yet because of those emotions, we’re edgier.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve had to say, “I’m sorry” to my kids and Joel roughly 10 times a day more than normal. I think I’m pretty good about saying, “I’m sorry” normally, because I don’t have any illusions of being perfect, but I’m needing to do that more often. So I think connection is really important, both you need more of it and you’ve got to fix it.

Larry: Well, step one in balancing work life and home life when they occur in the same building is to communicate and cooperate, and we would add to that: and connect. Communicate, cooperate, and connect. That brings us to step two, which is structure the day for your kids as well as yourself, those of you, of course, who have children at home.

Megan: This is critical. Speaking for myself, I thought in the first couple of days of everybody being home, school canceled, everyone would just love being home and they would figure out what to do and it would just be some kind of homeschool utopia, and that lasted for about 12 hours. Then I realized I was going to need a plan. Courtney and Blake, you guys have probably figured this out too, that your kids need structure as much as you do. So what are you doing to bring that into your homes right now?

Courtney: One thing interesting we’ve done with her schedule and with our schedule is each day we’re trying to come up with something we can do for other people. In this current environment, at least for me, it gets easy to forget about other people, because you’re seeing your immediate family unit, basically, all day long. So each day we’re coming up with a way we can do something for someone else, and that has been a really fun activity and something we’re all looking forward to for the next day. It has been really helpful so far.

Megan: I love that, Courtney, especially because right now it feels hard to help other people. We’re not really seeing people that much or we feel like we can’t physically go to people in the way that we maybe normally would think of helping people, so you really do have to be creative and intentional if you want to have that kind of impact on people. Blake, what about you? What are you guys doing for your daughter Felicity?

Blake: Honestly, I feel like I have it really easy compared to you two. My daughter isn’t walking around yet, and when she talks, I just pretend that it’s always something really nice and complimentary, because it’s mostly like, “Eh. Ooh.” So, we do have it easier in terms of structuring around her nap schedule, but as I alluded to earlier, I’ve started to have to dig in more to what the daily schedule on the interior part of the day looks like for us.

I’ve tried to map that out in detail for my wife and I, to go, “Okay. When are we going to connect today? What are we going to be eating? Who’s going to own that?” so that, logistically, the wheels are greased enough so we can, as we talked about earlier, have hopefully less of those tense moments.

Courtney: If you haven’t set this for your kids yet, one way you could do this is actually use our free download for the Ideal Week. I know as soon as I say “Ideal Week” everybody listening is like, “Blah!” Nothing feels ideal right now, but the structure of that…You could lay out the schedule for a week for what it might look like for your kids. If you use the Full Focus Planner, you already know that tool. It’s something you could actually apply and use for your kids too. Larry, do you know where they can download that?

Larry: I sure do. They can get it right off of today’s show notes, which will be at leadto.win. We’ll have a link to that resource. So, step one for balancing home life and remote work: communicate and cooperate. Step two: structure the day for your kids as well as yourself. Let’s move to step three: find your quiet space.

Megan: We’re not talking about your happy place, which may also be important right now. That might actually be more important. We’re really talking about physically a place that you can work that’s quiet. Blake, for example, is on calls during the day. Courtney has a big team she’s leading at Michael Hyatt & Company. I’m often, it seems these days, recording podcasts or some other kind of training, so the quiet part is really important, but most of us have not set up our homes to be conducive to two working parents at home full-time plus the kids being home. So how are you guys figuring this out, Courtney and Blake, with no real warning or ability to plan for it?

Courtney: One thing we are actually trying today is using some of our white noise machines that we have in our bedrooms as a way to buffer the sound between where I am and where he is and where our daughter is. I don’t know for a lot of people listening… My house is not huge, so we have to get really creative about where we’re stationing where we are during the day and trying to do it in places where we can say, “Hey, Kit (our daughter), Mommy is going to work,” and it’s in a place that really can be separated, even if that has to be a closet. Thankfully, somehow, I won the office in our house. I’m not sure how.

Blake: Somehow. Yeah. Not coercive.

Courtney: For everybody listening, I’ll tell you exactly how I won it. I just talked really loudly on my calls, and my husband was like, “I can’t work in here with you.”

Blake: “I can’t do this.”

Megan: That’s a great strategy. Okay. Speaking of noise makers, I have to tell you a confession. I’m looking out the glass door of my home office right now, and I have not one, not two, but three noise makers outside of my door, because it is not soundproof in here, and it’s working pretty well. The favorite ones for me are called Dohm noise makers. You can get them on Amazon. They may not be available anymore. I don’t know. I haven’t bought one in a long time. These are often used by therapists. I think the frequency of the noise really helps to cover up other noise. So, pro tip: get those. We’ll link to it in the show notes.

Courtney: I will add to that. We have two of that exact brand in our house, but we also have the travel version.

Megan: Yes, the travel version is great.

Courtney: It gets even louder than the signature version, which is opposite of what you would think, but it is super loud.

Megan: If you need to block out toddlers, it’s a winner.

Larry: I have, for once, something to contribute on this subject.

Megan: Okay. Tell us.

Larry: I use Bose noise reduction headphones, which are a little on the pricey side, but they’re worth every penny. I live on a busy street right across the street from the town park, which is always busy, especially in the summertime. So it’s not for noise in the house but just noise in the neighborhood. They absolutely shut it out and help me to focus. So, Bose noise reduction headphones.

Megan: We’ll link to those in the show notes as well, I’m sure.

Larry: I would like to know, Megan, and Courtney and Blake too, how you signal to everybody at your house that “I’m in ‘do not disturb’ mode.”

Megan: Right now, I have a Post-it note that says, “Recording. Do not come in” taped to my door, but earlier this morning we were doing several recordings, and my kids kept coming up to ask me stuff. They actually did come in the other day. We had a team meeting, and they came in several times. Forty people on a call, and they came in and asked me if they could watch TV, and they were fighting over which show on Disney+ they were going to watch.

In all seriousness, I really do talk to my kids before I have to do something. After the incident where they came in three times to the meeting the other day, I thought, “I really need to sit them down and explain what I’m doing before I go into it, because I don’t want to have to explain it during a recording or during a meeting I’m leading.”

Courtney: I actually am using a red piece of construction paper. You know, red for “Stop.” My daughter is 3, so she can’t read. That’s the tool we’re using.

Megan: Smart.

Courtney: My daughter is doing great. I’m actually having more trouble with my spouse or my mom coming in and asking me questions. My 3-year-old is doing awesome. So maybe I should add some words for them. I love them dearly, but, yeah, it’s challenging, for sure.

Blake: One kind of weird thing I do… I find that signaling that I’m in work mode to my spouse is important, but maybe even more important is signaling to my own brain that I’m going into work mode, because otherwise I get super distracted with a million different things because I’m not in my typical environment. So a weird thing I started to do is I took back this part of my ritual that I didn’t even know was a part of my ritual that I relied on, which is walking to my office. Now, Megan, don’t get mad. I’m not going in our office.

Megan: Did you get that memo?

Blake: I did. But I live walking distance from our coworking space, and I got so used to that being this mental transition for me from work to home or from home to work that I’ve started to do that. So I go for a walk when I’m like, “All right. I’m going to go to work.” I literally will walk toward our office, and then I’ll just turn right back around and walk back. I noticed that mentally it sort of resets my head. I don’t listen to the news. I typically listen to something on my way to work that helps me get in work mode. When I come back to work, I feel like, “All right. Now I can reengage in a new area of focus, which is work.”

Megan: That’s a great tactic.

Larry: That really rolls into your workday startup ritual.

Blake: Yeah, exactly. I didn’t know it was part of my workday startup ritual. I didn’t write it down in my planner, and then I realized, “Why can’t I focus on anything?” I think it’s because a second earlier I was scrolling on Instagram, or something like that, or using my phone for something else, and then, “Oh, right; workday startup,” but I’m not going anywhere. So mentally, I needed those signals. That physical movement really helped.

Larry: So, step one for balancing home life and remote work: communicate and cooperate. Step two: structure the day for your children as well as yourself. Step three: find your quiet space; that is, your quiet space to work. Step four: step away from work at the end of the day. Now I’m going to guess, Megan, this is harder, again, than it used to be.

Megan: I think it’s harder for a couple of reasons. First of all, if you’re not used to working at home, as Blake just was saying, you don’t have that time where you’re literally physically going to work, you’re driving to work and then you’re leaving. There’s no clear ritual or physical practice you’re doing to mark the transition. The other thing that’s happening, for many of us, is that the nature of our business is necessitating pivots and shifts and innovation and decision-making under extremely stressful conditions, all of which cause us to feel like we need to work around the clock.

We wake up. We read the news. We start working immediately because we know we’re not going into the office and we think we’ll just check in, and then you get sucked in and you’re still in your pajamas at 10:00 a.m. and finally go take a shower, or whatever. Then, if you remember to eat at all, it’s so easy to go back and start working again as soon as you finish dinner. If you’re not careful (I actually did this for a few days in a row), you work 12 hours or more in a day. That is so not my normal, but you can get sucked into that adrenaline rush, and not in a good way.

Some people like adrenaline. I think right now it’s not a good thing. This is an adrenaline rush where you just feel the anxiety, and you just don’t stop. You get out of bed and you start, and you don’t stop until you go to bed. The problem with that is in order to make good decisions right now, in order to lead effectively in whatever capacity your role requires, you really need to be rested. You really need to stay connected with your family. Your body needs to move and get out of the office, even if it’s just your home office, all of which are really challenging.

So, in this period of quarantine over the last few days, Joel and I have really been intentional about stopping at a certain point. Like Courtney said earlier in this episode, getting outside and taking a walk is a great way to transition. Just coming up with a new workday shutdown ritual, even if there may be times when you do have to work in the evenings, either because you’re doing extra projects with work or your kids are home and you can’t work in the middle of the day…

I think that’s okay, but being conscious about it is really, really important. When are you going to be done? For me, setting an intention around what time I’m going to go to bed is critical, because for a few nights there, I was going to bed at 11:00 or 11:30, and I’m like a “9:00 and I turn into a pumpkin” kind of person. So, just remembering some of those rhythms. We can’t continue to exist in adrenaline land forever. You can’t sprint a marathon.

Larry: Let me ask you this, Blake. Do you also go for a walk to end your day?

Blake: Actually, yeah. Not necessarily a walk toward the office, because then I’m like, “Wait. No, this is wrong.” But I do try to get outside. In this time of year it’s a lot of rain and that sort of thing, but we do try to do that to exit, to move, to do something. I’ve found that my workday shutdown ritual is key in terms of just doing the ritual.

For me, just to be honest, it hasn’t had the consistency from a time perspective, as I felt like it did when I was going to the office and we had more consistency in terms of our team flow and things like that. We’re a nimble company, so we’re doing some new and exciting things, but the workday shutdown ritual, for me…

Whenever it occurs, it always does the trick for me. It’s kind of that recipe I can come back to. It’s like coming back to your mom’s home cooking. That same recipe produces the same sensation emotionally and physically for me, mentally, to exit the day and not carry anything from work into the mental state of being home.

A helpful thing for me is actually using an app to move me through my shutdown ritual. I have my workday shutdown ritual written down, and that’s helpful, but in this season and being at home where there are some distractions, I actually pull out this app, and it moves me through my shutdown ritual, which is helpful right now, because I kind of need that external “All right. It’s time to move to the next thing into the next thing.” By the end of it, I feel way more at peace.

Megan: What app are you using?

Blake: It’s an app called Morning Routine. All of my routines are stored in there. I won’t always rely on those to move through it, but particularly for the workday shutdown ritual, it’s very helpful, especially if I feel any anxiety or my brain is kind of fried toward the end of the day. There are some critical habits with the role I function in at Michael Hyatt & Company that I don’t want to slip through the cracks, so having that pushing me through, dinging, you know. I can set the time frame that something will typically be. I move through that. I’d recommend that app. I love using it. I’ve used it for years. Morning Routine.

Megan: That’s great. I think it’s normal at the beginning of a crisis like this to be in crisis mode. You know, all hands on deck. You’re working all hours. It’s just crazy. You’re trying to figure out what to do with your kids. It feels like everything is helter-skelter. The transition we all have to make is into, over time, a new normal, even if that’s evolving on a daily or weekly basis, where we start to find some equilibrium again and where we’re able to find balance. I think, at least for me, I feel like even in the last 24 hours I’ve made a transition toward that. It’s not where I want it to be, but it’s moving back to a place of equilibrium after feeling really turned upside down for a little while.

Larry: So, step four: step away from work at the end of the day. Now step five: give yourself and your family some grace.

Megan: This might be the hardest step, Larry. I wish it wasn’t. I wish the other ones were the hard ones because they required “work.” This one is hard because the stakes are really high right now. We have our families home. We’re trying to take care of our business and the people we’re responsible for in whatever capacity that looks like for you, especially if you’re a leader. All that pressure and stress combined with all the transition combined with all the anxiety of the volatility of the market, this virus, everything else…

Like I said earlier, I’m apologizing a lot more than normal, and it’s really easy for me to go to a place where I’m hard on myself, where I’m hard on my kids. I was hard on my dog the other day. I mean, guys, this is so embarrassing. My dog is super intuitive. I have a big standard-size Labradoodle, and he seems like five times bigger right now because he’s following me around like Velcro to my leg.

I think he’s anxious, maybe because I’m anxious. I don’t know. Whatever is going on, whoever is feeding off of who, but I just got so mad at him, and I yelled at him the other day. I was like, “Oh my gosh. I never yell. What is going on?” Then I just thought, “Okay. I need to take a deep breath and just be kind to myself and be kind to my kids when they’re fighting with each other.” Have you guys experienced that too, Courtney and Blake?

Blake: Well, I was just thinking about this. I think a sneaky advantage for leaders taking this step is… For me at least, this is the hard one, because I’m like, “No. I need to be great, and this needs to be great, and I don’t want to lose, and I want to…” I sound like Courtney right now, an Enneagram Three or something. I want to achieve. Right? But in a time like this, there is this sneaky thing about grace. I think it is actually a very powerful stance to stand in, to say, “Actually, I see what we lost here” or “I see what went wrong” or “I see where we fell short, yet I have grace to give.”

It’s almost this place of abundance, to sort of live from that and think of… I guess maybe even for the listener, if you’re a high-achieving type of person, to think about, “Well, how is giving myself grace still winning?” I think it does actually put you in this place of being powerful again, because there’s a lot you can’t control right now, but you can control whether or not you are going to be harsh on yourself, on your family, or you can control “Hey, do I have grace to give to extend to myself and others?”

Megan: That’s really good. I have to tell you another story. This happened earlier this week. My sisters and I were talking, and we were kind of all “rah-rah” encouraging each other. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be anxious. Let’s not share anything that would make anybody feel anxious.” They were saying that, and they were sharing different things people had shared on Instagram about combating anxiety. Basically, the goal was to not feel anxious. The goal was to not be moved by the news. The goal was to be sort of unflappable.

At some point, I just said, “What if that’s not the goal? What if there’s just no goal period? That’s not even the right way to think of it. What if we can just be gracious to ourselves that we do feel afraid and we could just move on?” It’s much easier when you stop fighting something for it to dissipate and move on than when you’re constantly… Not only do you feel anxious, but then you feel shame for feeling anxious.

That’s much harder to combat than if you just say, “Okay. So, I felt pretty anxious this morning. I don’t need to beat myself up for it. Now I’m feeling better. I took a walk” or “I took a bath” or “I did some deep breathing, and I’m feeling a little better.” That’s just being a human. So, how can you give yourself some grace for being a human right now? Because, as humans, pretty much none of us have ever been through something like this. Of course we’re going to feel snappy, maybe even at our dog. Of course we’re going to feel stressed out at times. I mean, obviously, we don’t want to get stuck there, but…I don’t know. Courtney, does that resonate with you?

Courtney: Yeah, 100 percent. I think probably, myself included, sometimes we’re not great at acknowledging that “I’m having emotions.” I like to just keep moving, but I think it is really key to stop and say, “Okay. Yeah, I see that I feel anxious,” and to acknowledge that emotion. Acknowledging the emotion is really important, and then moving forward. Trying to deny that you’re feeling an emotion is a very dangerous place to be or, on the flip side, just indulging and staying in that emotion can be really dangerous. So I love that. Such a good reminder. And if you see those flags… I keep coming back to your dog. Sorry, Megan.

Megan: It’s so embarrassing.

Courtney: I’m sure everybody listening… We’ve all had probably some red flags over the last week or so. We’re all going through so much right now, and none of us have been here before. That’s important to remember.

Larry: So, today we’ve talked about some ways you can find the balance between home life and remote work by following these five steps: communicate and cooperate; structure the day for your kids as well as yourself; find your quiet space; step away from work at the end of the day; and finally, give yourself and your family some grace. Megan, what are your final thoughts today?

Megan: Well, first of all, you don’t have to do this perfectly. You can do it good enough to make it through this season. You can get the most important things you need to get done at work and at home, but in order to succeed, you don’t have to do it perfectly, which is good news, because you’re probably not going to do it perfectly.

Hopefully what we’ve shared with you today from our very real-life examples encourages you that there are some things you do have control over to make it easier, to make it more effective. We’re going to get through this, and we’re going to get through it together best by being kind and gentle and gracious with each other, whether that’s our coworkers or our families at home, maybe especially our families at home.

Larry: Thank you, guys, for being here, especially our guests from Focus on This, Courtney Baker and Blake Stratton.

Megan: Thanks for being here, guys.

Courtney: Thank you. It was really fun. Hey, Blake, you can take that blazer off now.

Blake: It just feels right now. I’m about ready to go accomplish something great here in this thing.

Larry: I want to remind everybody once again to download The Remote Work Handbook: Do’s and Don’ts to Set You Up for Success. It’s completely free, and you can get your copy right now at leadto.win/remote.

Megan: As Larry said, Blake and Courtney, thanks for being here, and, Larry, we’re so glad you were here. And to all of you joining us today, thank you for being with us. We’ll be right back here next week. Until then, lead to win.