Remote work

Remotely work is no more the extravaganza. It’s the reality of many people. It’s not easy. It requires a good strategy, a swift execution and constant retrospective and adjustments. But it gives a freedom, flexibility and in the end more time to focus on what matter the most. For me it’s my family.

I work remotely. What does it even mean?

Piotr Zagorowski
July 17, 2022July 13, 2022
Remote work

I’ve recently done my quarterly retrospective. One of the topics I chose to review was my workflow, especially in a remote work context. A couple of recent years accelerated the remote work movement. The most popular variation nowadays seems to be the hybrid approach. We spend some time working from home and some time in the office. If we spend even one day working from home and if we have even one person working from home – we work remotely. But what does it even mean?

🏨 Remote work from the hotel? Why not?!

Piotr Zagorowski
July 8, 2022July 8, 2022
Lifestyle, Remote work

We have a few bank holidays in Great Britain. Usually, the extra day off is Monday. The week is shorter, or, looking more optimistic, the weekend is extended. This fact inspired us to do a little experiment. We decided to visit our friends who had moved out of London. The place is three hours away by car, so the trip should be longer. We decided to do something crazy.

Mastering the art of remote working

Piotr Zagorowski
January 26, 2021January 23, 2022
Remote work

I had the great privilege to be a guest in Cisco Solutions IT Huddle. I met with a fantastic DevNet community talking about technology, friendship, family and mastering the art of remote working.

How to Baseline Remote Team Culture

Piotr Zagorowski
September 24, 2020October 26, 2021
Podcast, Remote work

I was recently a guest in The Align Remotely podcast, where Luke Szyrmer, the host, focuses on leading distributed teams and everything associated with that subject, like leadership and operations to help achieve together. It is particularly relevant now when nearly everyone works from home. It was a broad-ranging conversation, but we mainly focused on the topic of how to baseline the remote team culture.

3 lessons from The Unicorn Project

Piotr Zagorowski
September 3, 2020February 4, 2022
Leadership, Remote work

I try to read (listen) one book per month. It’s been mainly self-development books. And to be honest I got a bit tired. However, recently I talked to a friend and a colleague who recommended me a fiction book with a unicorn in the title… I read the full title and immediately started to listen. I could not stop, I emerged completely. Today I would like to share three main lessons I learnt from The Unicorn Project book. Let’s go!

Team agreement | Good practice for high performing teams

Why high-performance teams need team agreements

Piotr Zagorowski
August 27, 2020September 4, 2020
Leadership, Remote work

We start the new team. We gathered a group of talented individuals and we want to grapple with the new challenge. How can we accelerate the team forming, storming and norming phase? We should start with team agreements. Once done, this exercise will boost team productivity. It will also help to create and maintain the team identity. It shouldn’t be the detailed documentation of the team proceedings in the wiki-style procedure. Instead, we should agree on things that are important for our team. Let’s take a look.

How to improve the immune system and develop a Spartan mindset in 60 sec per day

Piotr Zagorowski
April 23, 2020May 11, 2020
Lifestyle, Remote work

Stress is generally not good for us. When we hear about stress, we think about anxiety, increased heart bit and definitely nothing good. This is true for stress caused by our thoughts, and as a result, difficult emotions. However, there is another type of pressure that we would like to embrace moderately. It is stress that helps our bodies to grow and indirectly helps our minds to be more resistant to the bad stress. Staying fit is nothing else than putting pressure to our bodies to improve. Another type of good stress that we can easily apply is exposure to cold. It has a long list of benefits. It helps to strengthen an immune system and to develop the Spartan mindset.

3 practices that will help to stay sane in crisis

Piotr Zagorowski
April 9, 2020February 21, 2022
Lifestyle, Remote work

Have you noticed that working these days seems more tiring? I do pretty much what I was doing before. The “only” difference is that kids are always at home. And of course, we have constant information noise about the current situation. Even if we limit access to the television, the news comes to our minds one way or another. I compare the current situation to a long-haul flight with no noise cancellation headphones. There is a constant sound of engines and air that makes us more tired at the end of our journey. I would like to propose three practices that will help to stay sane in a crisis, but also be more positive about the surrounding world.

3D Augmented Reality – a snake in my shower and a bear in my garden

Piotr Zagorowski
March 29, 2020January 12, 2023
Remote work

In the previous post, I presented a list of on-line resources that may help when we need to work from home and also manage with homeschooling, education and also entertain our kids. It looks like it is a popular topic these days, so I would like to present another way to keep the whole family entertained. Google 3D Augmented Reality. Thanks to this technology you can experience real size animals like tiger in your living room, a snake in your shower, or a bear in your garden. Thanks to Google collaboration with NASA, you can also generate some planets, including the Earth 🌏 load into your bedroom and have a vertical journey with your little astronauts before you go to sleep.

On-line resources for working from home with kids

Piotr Zagorowski
March 26, 2020August 19, 2021
Remote work

Working from home with kids and your partner at home is challenging. We need to create a new routine. We need to be flexible. Work needs to be synchronised with your team and spouse, especially if they can also work from home. But how about kids? They need to carry on education. Children need to be entertained and taken care of. First of all – take it easy – try to agree with your partner when you can take care of children and when your spouse can spend time with them as you need to take this call or do something on your list for today. And secondly, make sure you get creative and prepare a routine for your kids and yourself. Below is the list of some online resources that can help to compile some activity lists for our little ones.