WLP346 What's Going On: Can We Really Work from Anywhere?
In today’s episode, Maya shares her challenges trying to embrace the “work from anywhere” spirit. Our co-hosts also talk about how the popularity of Chat GPT has opened up the need to reinvent education, how they’re using the bot and why we should all be vigilant when reading current research on the impact of remote work in organisations.
Recorded on 29 January 2024.
Maya spoke recently at the CIPDE 2024, (Congreso Internacional de Plataformas Digitales Educativas) conference in Mexico, talking about her 25-long journey to an audience NOT made up of remote work advocates and enthusiasts, but to educators and academics. The conference ended up being mainly about the different challenges brought about by AI - which have led to a range of innovations to make the most of this new tech.
For example, some of the experiences shared illustrated the fact that children are being encouraged to show what they’ve learned in different ways: through video, design tools, multimedia… And teachers need to focus on creating individualised learning paths for each child, rather than relying on the more traditional methods of regurgitating information in writing.
(By the way, listeners, get in touch if you have any examples about how GenAI is changing primary and secondary education.)
Has the widespread use of GenAI opened up the conversation on modernising education methods in the same way as the pandemic opened up the conversation on new ways of working? We certainly think so - and hope so!
11.30 MINS
Why Maya is a Rubbish Digital Nomad
Maya loves travelling and taking her work to new places, but she is now very conscious that she cannot do all types of work at all locations. During her trip, she found herself putting off several tasks until she got home. For most work, she needs a comfortable set up, great connectivity and the right device for the right type of work. She has developed great admiration for digital nomads, who can truly work from anywhere.
Sometimes the challenge lies in finding the headspace to work in a certain environment, with a specific device. Is it all about mindset? Even though we are behind the “work from anywhere” movement, it doesn’t suit everyone - the same way as some people are not suited to working 9 to 5. Just because the tech enables us to work from different locations , not everyone becomes a digital nomad.
There’s also a question of the boundaries you set for yourself, and your relationship with work. This extends to where in the home you work from and what devices you use to access your work. “Flexibility” doesn’t always extend to every aspect of your work. Pilar has a similar issue - she associates some types of work with a specific location (even if her computer is the same one) and cannot do that type of work in other places.
By the way, this topic is something that has been on Maya’s mind for some time. Remember her blog post from 2018? Remote Working: Anytime, anyplace, anywhere, any way…
All of this is part of how we see our work-life dynamics: how much we want the different aspects of our life to merge, or separate or “balance”. There are so many different ways of looking at this now, that it can also affect your work relationships with others. (Pilar has some thoughts on this which are shared in the more recent post: Beyond Balance: Mapping Out "Work-Life” Dynamics.)
26.55 MINS
We couldn’t have a What’s Going On episode without our hosts commenting on some news.
The release of GPT Teams has just happened - what will this mean for collaboration? Will it help teams, especially those generating content? Or is it coming too soon after people are finally getting their heads round all the online collaboration tools?
(Listeners, if you are using this, let us know how you’re using it!)
And of course, the ChatGPT store is now open! Here’s what Maya and Pilar have created:
Healthy Happy Homeworking Advisor
Beat Procrastination
Podcast Planner
Both our co-hosts think it would be good to have more space and different ways in which to tell the GPT to use your knowledge base before giving generic advice from what the bot has been trained on.
At the end of the day, the best way of finding out what ChatGPT can do is to play with it and see how it can best help you. Before Pilar goes off to explain how she’s written a book with ChatGPT, the conversation turns to the large amount of research that’s coming out talking about remote work.
34.50 MINS
Nicolas Bloom recently questioned where the data for the article Remote Workers Bear the Brunt When Layoffs Hit came from: Remote Workers Bear the Brunt When Layoffs Hit
Listeners, have a look at this for yourselves and make up your own minds whether this is social listening or research?
Nick Bloom’s post on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nick-bloom-86b79510b_wsj-news-exclusive-when-layoffs-happen-activity-7156670698369732608-6m2K/
And a different type of research carried out:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jason-salt_remote-worker-job-changes-in-2023-activity-7156690158833082369-pK25?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
41.08 MINS
Back to what our co-hosts are up to.
Pilar has been writing under the pen name Sam Byte, while co-writing with ChatGPT, as this might be important to some readers. Working in this way with ChatGPT has allowed Pilar to write on a topic that she’s not an expert in, Time Management, although she’s interested in how the topic is different for remote workers. She’s let the bot lead in the writing, because its style is more suited to how-to topics, even if it needs heavy editing.
In the end, if you want the bot to write content for you, you have to know what “good” looks like and that there’s enough good work in its training data for it to be worth it. Meanwhile, Maya has been using it to analyse some of her contracts, to look for the weaks spots and red flags.
What else is going on with our hosts?
Pilar was in La Gran Renuncia talking about leading remote teams, and how online collaboration can lead to self-organisation.
And Remote Work Europe Connected is opening its doors again on 1 February. Sign up to their community here: https://www.remoteworkeurope.eu/connected
We’d love to hear what you think about all this! And if you have any questions or any recommendations for future topics, do get in touch!
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