Ever wondered why everyone wears headphones at work?

It’s week 2 of Ironhack’s UI/UX Bootcamp and we’ve been challenged to improve the wellness of office workers. Here goes nothing…

Why Work?

On average we spend 90,000 hours working, that’s 1/3 of our entire lifespan.

So for many that work in offices, their work environment has the ability to shape their physical, mental and emotional health.

This is a Case Study of a 2-day design project that questions to what extent, and how exactly, office environments impact the wellbeing of those that work within them, in an effort to improve them.

Step 1. Initial Thoughts — What’s an office?

As a career-long freelancer and startup-employee, who has never worked in a ‘traditional office environment,’ the life and habits of office workers have always been a curiosity for me.

Amused as I am to write it, my picture of ‘office life’ has been formed by a combination of the TV show ‘The Office’, listening to fellow Freelancers talk about how they ‘made the leap’ and to Future of Work industry experts talk about how ‘9–5 jobs are unproductive and antiquated’ at conferences.

So, when tasked with selecting a project centred around occupational health, my curiosity about how the ‘other side’ lived and worked, got the better of me and I decided to delve deeper into the shoes of average office working joes to ask myself “What is the office like?”

Step 2. Identifying Assumptions- Working Joe

Early on in the design process, I challenged myself to identify my prejudices and assumptions about what I thought office working was like. Within 5 mins of jotting down my thoughts, I realised that every single one of my assumptions had come indirectly from the ‘battle stories’ of born-again freelancers. Let’s see if you can tell:

• Unflexible office hours, aka “the 9–5 thing”, affect the health of workers negatively.
• Stress is the chronic disease of the office working person.
• Lack of purpose and the desire to seek fulfilment motivate career decisions more than monetary reward, but the traditional office system doesn’t reflect that.

Step 3. Feeler Interviews — Where to start?

With such broad assumptions and so little understanding of the realities of office work, it was difficult to know exactly where to start. So I decided to conduct a couple of ‘feeler interviews’ with traditional office workers, Alex, 24 in Barcelona and Philip, 38 and in Cape Town.

Equipped with a script of questions, I asked them to describe their daily work routine from getting up in the morning to going to sleep on a workday. This threw up a number of interesting lines of enquiry, particularly as they described their break, meeting and lunch patterns.

Eager to explain what they loved and hated about their office spaces, it became clear that the way that their offices had been designed was something they thought about a lot. In Alex’s case, design even convinced him to take the job, whilst in Philip’s, it persuaded him to stay in it.

Alex: “I took this job over the other one because the office has such incredible views and natural light. I love telling people where I work.”

Philip: “Thank god management realised that open-plan wasn’t productive. When they redesigned the office they gave us mini-offices with our own sofas so we could break-out. It was a game changer.”

Step 4. Survey Design — What’s your office like?

Armed with insights, but slightly apprehensive towards the prospect of designing a digital solution for what was shaping up as a ‘spatial problem’, I used a ‘Lean Survey Canvas’, a rapid design technique used to ideate effective User Research Surveys, to carefully design and send a survey to other office workers across the globe.

To my surprise, 89% of respondents worked in an ‘open plan’ office space.

To my surprise, 89% of respondents worked in an ‘open plan’ office space, and what’s more, those that did, adopted what I can only describe as a ‘headphone coping mechanism,’ to the distractions of open-plan office space.

71% used headphones when they needed to concentrate, whilst a further 35% regularly moved their position across the office, from the sun to sofas to quiet corners. They tried to adapt the open-plan space to their need for privacy.

Step 5. In-depth interviews — What does it all mean?

My next step was to organise further interviews with office workers from Sweden, Spain and the US. My goal: to listen and observe in an attempt to unearth existing habits and behavioural patterns specifically related to open-plan office experiences and coping mechanisms.

Key interview findings

1. Open-plan office design is loved for expedient team communications but loathed for its distractions:

“I love the ability to be in the middle of things with my team, and just speak to people whenever I need.”

“Sometimes the office can get too noisy to concentrate. It’s not bad if a few people talk, but if they all start talking, it’s loud.”

2. Headphones are a universal coping mechanism:

“I went to our US office and the entire team was wearing fancy noise-cancelling headphones. It was eery because the effect was dead-silence…”

3. Bosses don’t sit in open-plan spaces, which creates a sensation of surveillance:

“Except for the 2 Directors who have private offices, everyone sits in open-plan. We’re around 400 people in this office, across 6 floors.”

“I used to feel like I was being watched by my boss. He could see my screen, but we couldn’t see his. It was hypocrisy because I could see his screen reflection and he wasn’t working.”

4. Managers enjoy helping their staff but struggle to do their own work amidst all the questions:

“I break the rules and book a meeting room two times a week so that I can concentrate, have privacy, make big decisions and use the whiteboard creatively. It’s a bit like a private office.”

“I have a lot of responsibility and I like helping people, it’s my job, so when it gets too much, I go to the meeting room and everyone knows not to bother me. I’ll tell them to Slack me for anything urgent.”

Step 6. Patterns — Clear behaviours

At last satisfied at the clear patterns that were emerging, I set to work on producing an Affinity Diagram.

At last satisfied at the clear patterns that were emerging, I set to work on producing an Affinity Diagram to organise my thoughts into themes. An Affinity Diagram is a useful method for organising research, data and ideas, it enables researchers and designers to tease out patterns and understand correlating behaviours. It is, like most product design methods, best executed with post-its and more or less looks like this:

What I found, was that there is a direct correlation between open-plan office design, the need for quiet places to concentrate and increased stress levels in employees, especially managers.

There is a direct correlation between open-plan office design, the need for quiet places to concentrate and increased stress levels in employees, especially managers.

Managers clearly struggle to balance their desire to help others by answering the questions, with managing their own work. They use a number of different strategies to cope with the distractions of open-plan offices such as headphones, changing desks, and booking meeting rooms to get away.

They clearly suffer from a lack of private space in which they can focus when they are forced to work in open-plan office spaces.

Step 7. Problem Statement and Persona — Who’s Mikke?

With my behavioural insights and patterns, I was able to define a crystal clear Problem Statement. A Problem Statement is a concise description of an issue to be addressed. It identifies the gap between the current (problem) state and desired (goal) state of a process or product.

From this Problem Statement, I was also able to generate a clear User Persona — a fictional character based on the overlapping characteristics, motivations, goals and problems of those researched and interviewed. This User Persona is designed explicitly to help concentrate my mind on who exactly I am designing for and what is important to them.

So Meet ‘Mikke the Manager’: A busy middle Manager, Mikke works in an office, lives for helping those in his team succeed and keeping his bosses happy.

He is positive, organised and kind, but sometimes the responsibility of managing others and achieving his own goals can leave him stressed and eager to escape.

Step 8. Prototype & Testing — Focus and Space…

Drawing upon the insights of my research, ‘Mikke’ and the above Problem Statement, the next step was to dive into sketches with Design Studio’s Crazy 8 ideation technique — a commonly used design method to help designers translate their subconscious ideas onto paper in just 8 minutes.

As you can see in this sketch initial thoughts were centred around a meeting space booking application with a number of features designed to help my User Persona ‘Mikke’ focus.

From these initial sketches, and with the help of a clear User Flow — a shorthand technique to define the exact interactions a user should take to complete a goal — my first ‘Office-Focus’ App Low-Fidelity Prototype was born. A Low Fidelity Prototype is often paper-based and does not allow user interactions.

Low Fidelity Prototypes enable rapid user testing and iteration on design concepts and ideas. They are often sketchy and incomplete encouraging user testers to give more candid and honest feedback on concepts.

Here you can see the core flow of the app. It invites ‘Mikke’ to ‘find a quiet space in the office’, by booking meeting rooms and setting his office communication channels on ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode or ‘DND’.

Step 9. User Feedback & Iteration — Where am I?

The first 3 Low-Fi Prototype tests concluded that elements of the app’s information architecture were confusing to users. The navigation buttons were unclear and needed improvement as users were not sure how to move from one feature or page to another. Overall the concept was understood as a “meeting room booking app”, which whilst encouraging missed the main purpose of helping managers find space to focus.

The joy of paper prototyping is the speed in which new concepts can be explored and refined, so I quickly took user feedback back to the drawing board to refine the navigation and improve the ‘focus features’ into a final Paper Prototype and test again.

10. Final Design — Drum Roll Please…

In line with the scope of the project, I had been asked to produce a mid-fidelity prototype in Sketch and InVision UX Design tools. With this in mind, I designed a simple black and white Prototype, keeping the UI simple by restricting colours to their explicit function (such as selecting an available office space) and fonts to basic Helvetica. I settled upon calling it the ‘Work Well App’, as I felt this best expressed its purpose.

Core Features: The App enables ‘Mikke’ to search and book meeting rooms within his own office space. It helps him locate available meeting rooms, book-on-demand, in-advance or automatically repeat bookings.

Other features include the ability to automatically block emails and Slack chat notifications for the period of the booking and notify colleagues that users should not be disturbed.

It has been designed specifically to aid the existing behaviours of Managers who sometimes find the stresses of open-plan office spaces too much. You can explore the full prototype for yourself here and leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

It’s worth mentioning that whilst I’m pleased with the results of this project, no design is complete without user testing, so this InVision Prototype is ripe for further testing.

Lessons about the creative process, successes and failure

The ability for designers to separate themselves from their ideas are core to the UX profession so no product design project is complete without reflection upon the process, findings, successes and failures.

Firstly, I enjoyed this project immensely. Not only has it satisfied my curiosity about how ‘the other side live’, but it has vastly increased my empathy levels for office workers, their responsibilities and their dedication to their jobs. They may well be the unsung heroes of the working world.

Secondly, whilst exploring potential problems that office workers were experiencing, I initially shied away from pursuing research related to physical office space, despite the clear indication from interviewees that space was a huge problem for them and the fact that they had developed their own coping mechanisms. I instead forced my questioning to focus on digital problems.

This stemmed from a fear of unnecessarily trying to solve a ‘3D’ problem with a ‘2D’ digital interface. This was misguided, and I’m glad I was able to take the advice of my teachers and peers to take on the challenge, as I’m pleased with the results. In the future, I will be quicker to take opportunities as they arise, no matter how difficult they may seem.

Finally, concept and interface design are far removed from information architecture. Designing App navigation is a discipline for me and I now know that I need to explore this area in more detail, studying navigations and intuitive ways to lay out information. I look forward to the challenge!

Appendix

Survey Results.

Interview Question Scripts — Feeler Interviews:

1. Do you work in an office?
2. Could you walk me through your daily routine going to and from work?
3. Do you remember your first day at work? If so could you describe something that impacted your wellbeing on that specific day?
4. Do you use any apps, websites or methods to help you improve [Problem outlined by office worker]?

In-depth Interviews:

1. Do you work in an office?
2. How is your office designed?
3. How would you say you use your office space?
4. Do you feel that your office space impacts your wellbeing?
5. Do you use any apps, websites or methods to help you improve [Problem outlined by office worker]?
6. How do you cope with distraction when you need to concentrate at work?

1. The Soundtrack to your success — the ultimate motivational beats

“If music is the sound of getting a groove on, play on and get down” — Flylancer team misquoting William Shakespeare

There’s a good chance that if you’re reading this right now, your mood isn’t quite up to it today, so let’s start with the basics and see if some good old music can’t get you in the mood.

Just like a movie soundtrack sets the scene, this ‘ultimate motivational playlist’, is designed to ramp up your hustle, so grab those headphones and get those tunes pumping.

Don’t worry if it’s not working for you at your desk — Why not try and take it outside and have a brisk walk to the beat. You don’t even need to feel bad about it, there’s a ton of research out there to suggest that creative procrastination is great for problem-solving and productivity.

If Freddie Mercury can’t turn that frown into the triumphant fist, then we’ll eat our computers…

2. Get your Sandra Bullocks in order — write that sh*t down

“I like lists, I’m controlling, I’m difficult on every level” — Sandra Bullock

Here at Flylancer, we like to take our notes from Sandra Bullock, she’s one of the most successful actresses of all time — and we take all our prompts from those that have well and truly made it (not to mention her being Miss. Congeniality herself — a crime-fighting, double agent).

There’s a lot to be said for making lists. Perhaps most importantly, the fact that writing stuff down gets it out of your head.

Let’s face it, our minds aren’t designed for optimal prioritisation, it’s very easy for important tasks to get mixed up with our shopping lists, and for us to misinterpret their urgency or significance of given tasks.

So if you’re feeling pressured, or jumbled up — get pen on paper. Mindmap, list, doodle, come back to it and add as you go along. Once you get it on paper you’ll feel much better and your mind will clear.

3. How to write the ultimate to-do list — warning: for highly effective people only!

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing” — Stephen R. Covey

Now you’ve got it all on paper you can take it to the next level — and become a ‘highly effective person’. Not our words, but the words of the godfather of productivity and motivation, Stephen R. Covey.

In his epic book, “7 Habits of Highly effective people” — Stephen outlines 7 insights and practical solutions to becoming ‘successful’ — starting with redefining what we understand to be ‘successful.’

But what’s this got to do with list making? Ah, in chapter 3 Stephan lays out one of the most kick-ass (and by kick-ass we mean effective) ways to manage and prioritise your to-do list we’ve ever seen.

It starts with a simple cross in your notebook, and before you know it, you’re ruling the world. But seriously — it’s ace.

This method helps to distinguish the difference between an urgent task, and an important one — because, there really is a difference. For example, sending an email campaign to your customers to hit a deadline is urgent, but that doesn’t necessarily make it an ‘important’ task. Whereas making time to the gym every week, may not seem urgent, it is however extremely important (it’s your physical health)!

Think about it, how many times has ‘going to the gym’ slid to the very bottom of your to-do list? Exactly.

Using Stephan’s simple ‘time management matrix’ you’ll be able to focus on what truly matters and leave the unimportant to another day.

4. Eat that frog — For the accountability and French cuisine lovers in the house

Ever kissed a frog to see if he would turn into a prince? Well how about, ever tried eating frog to have a glimmeringly successful career? — sic.

Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.

This is also the premise of Brian Tracey’s Productivity Manifesto “Eat that Frog: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less”. Its basic concept: get the thing that you least want to do done as quickly as possible — first thing in the morning — then move on.

How to spot a frog?

• Things you don’t want to do, but actually, need to do.
• Things you want to do and actually need to do.
• Things you want to do, but actually, don’t need to do.
• Things you don’t want to do, and actually, don’t need to do.
• If it goes ‘quack’ and has extremely long bent legs…

What to do with a frog once you’ve identified it? Try making yourself accountable and letting your whole team know what your daily frog is at a stand-up or in slack, that way you’re accountable for getting that slimy b*stard boiled and smothered in garlic!

5. Knowing your end-game — What’s your why?

Let’s face it — sometimes procrastination can get downright existential. How did I get here? Why am I even doing this? Before we get melodramatic, sometimes it’s actually a good idea to check in with your underlying motivations for going to work every single day.

Check what you’re working on is it a step towards your end-game. What do I mean by end-game? -We’re talking your own personal medium to long-term planning.

Maybe your end game is to become an expert in the field of marketing, and your current internship with all difficult learning curves are a step toward that end-game.

Maybe you’ve got loftier ambitions, and want to make a recognisable dent in the world by working on something that will change the future of work (ehem — no peeking please), so boring admin tasks are part of the journey towards that.

Or maybe you’ve got something specific that you want to prove to yourself or others around you?

Whatever your end-game truly is, only you can know it, so check in with it. Sometimes it changes, but generally speaking, its foundations will have something to do with your general motivation and core beliefs in life, aka. to be rich, to be clever, to be loved, to be accepted.

Make sure what you’re working on right now contributes to your end-game.

6. It’s a race to the top — harness your competitive nature, measure your success

“And now, here they are! The most daredevil group of daffy drivers to ever whirl their wheels in the Wacky Races! Competing for the title of the world’s wackiest racer!” — Wacky Races

Have you ever noticed that some of the most successful people that you know have a competitive streak — with themselves? That’s right, competing with others is for kids and Wacky Racers, if you really wanna ramp up your game, proving to yourself that you can achieve anything that you put your mind to, will take you there.

So, with your end-game in mind, and with the help of your team/manager if you can, identify how you’re getting on at your job.

It’s as simple as asking for a performance review with a numerical data point attached to it. Say, if your boss tells you-you’re at 40% achievement level with your position, you can then use that number to benchmark your progress. Get it from 40 to 60 to 80 to 100 and see that promotion you’re angling for.

Even better, identify KPIs, Key Performance Indicators, to help you observe and measure your progress. These are metrics that can be used to measure your performance in certain areas, like ‘number of people opening the newsletters I write’ or ‘time taken to submit projects as done’. Use them to try and beat your dastardly self at regular points in your month/year and push yourself along.

Make like Penelope Pitstop and use those check-ins and benchmarks to win your one-man race!

7. Public praise — It’s about the karma chameleon baby

Ah, we’ve all been there, it’s the daily slog and in the multitude of things that need to be done, gratitude falls by the wayside!

But occasionally a little bit of recognition for our toil is hard earned and totally necessary — hell, that endorphin rush when someone sees and affirms your contribution is downright addictive.

So how to get it? Give it. Think of it as workplace karma. If you want to see more praise in the workplace, the best place to start is by dishing it out.

We’re not talking “Thank you for the world’s best photocopying Jeff” but carefully observed and thoughtful praise like “Thank you for always doing by photocopying in such a timely, efficient and kind manner, I really appreciate it and I think the whole team should give it up for your care and efforts.”

Public gratitude is really a question of culture, so if you’re in it for the long game (and want your teammates to always show you da love), how about going really public on their asses and posting your praise on LinkedIn? Or handing them a certificate for ‘extraordinary contribution’ in the office.

After their blushes have passed it will leave them feeling warm, fuzzy and motivated all week.

8. Dance like the team is watching — do a dance and forget about it!

Finally, if all else fails and nothing on our list has helped you, stuff our pseudo-startup advice and just dance.

In the words of the classic 1967 track by The Hombres — “Nobody knows what it’s all about, it’s too much man — let it all hang out” “

When we’re really not feeling it at Flylancer, and need some serriiiiioouuuussss motivation to get something finished, we do a dance and send it to our teammates. Why? Because in our surreal minds the dance is a kind of accountability to the task we’re about to commence. And there’s no way our colleagues will forget that we needed to get it done.

Just remember — you can and will do it. Eventually.

Ps. If you read the entirety of this article your procrastination level point score just reached 100. Congratulations you hit your new record!

What to do, when you don’t want to do, what you gotta do — Notes from a Remote Startup was originally published in Flylancer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The elephant in the room — Loneliness

Remote work is about embracing individuality, freedom to choose and life experiences. It’s liberating, progressive, almost anarchic.

But for many remote workers around the world, there’s still a big elephant in the room that people seem unwilling to talk about: loneliness.

You may login to Facebook or Instagram sometimes and feel a pang of envy at what seems to be an infinite scroll of sun-kissed, smiling colleagues perched triumphantly at the top of mountains or watching the sea lap gently at their feet, laptops open for business.

Yet as we all know, but always seem to forget, social media does not tell the whole story. Behind the enviable location and beautiful scenery, there is an individual with worries, fears and concerns. And working alone, under pressure, sometimes with no close friends or family by — that individual has probably at some point felt feelings of loneliness.

Loneliness, the darker side of remote working, is caused by a number of reasons.

Not being on the same schedule as friends and family. For many freelancers, whose bedroom is also their office, work/life separation is almost impossible. The most significant, I think, is not having the physical presence of a team to support you when things get rough — or just to say hello to in the mornings.

For digital nomads, these feelings are even more amplified, as they travel across the world and move home on a regular basis. Having to continually pack and unpack, make conversation in the hotel breakfast queue, foster professional networks, essentially start your life again from scratch… is deeply exciting, but extremely tiring. No wonder it’s common that remote workers often feel lonely, depressed, or frustrated.

But did you know that loneliness also has an effect on productivity? An academic study in 2011 found that loneliness has “significant influence on employee work performance,” and fascinatingly, people who say they have a best friend at work are statistically more productive.

It only takes 20 seconds of physical or eye contact to create a connection with someone

In remote workers, loneliness has terrible effect on performance, productivity, and most importantly, happiness. So what can we do about this widespread, growing problem?

We are so used to apps bringing us unique solutions to specific problems, that talking about loneliness seems vague and unsubstantial. Want to chat to your teammates real time? Ping them on Slack. Set company goals and monitor progress? Assign tasks on Pivotal Tracker. Can’t be bothered to blow out your own birthday candles? There’s an app for that!

But loneliness can’t be fixed with an appliance, tool or app. It’s not about finding the right product or service that will make this problem go away. Isolation, loneliness or simply feeling distant are complex human emotions only alleviated by meaningful, human interaction.

This is the principal reason why we started Flylancer. Our goal is to create a meaningful global community for professionals to foster quality interpersonal relationships.

So what exactly is a meaningful community? Most people associate professional networking solely with professional success, and don’t understanding the potency of connecting with people on a personal level. Just ask yourself: when was the last time you went to a networking event with the sole goal to make a friend?

Creating a meaningful community is more than collecting connections on LinkedIn. It’s making friends for life, sharing skills, ideas and projects. It’s about goofing around and laughing at in-jokes, being able to confide in people you trust by asking for help, embarrassing yourself at after-work drinks on a Friday, or even falling for a future boyfriend or girlfriend. (It’s been estimated that 1 in 5 people meet their significant other at work!)

There is no such thing as a virtual hug

With the best intentions, there will never be online solution to an offline problem. As Bernard, a Flylancer member part of the Barcelona community, eloquently put it, “Meaningful relationships are built offline, and you maintain them online, not the other way round.”

This is what Flylancer is trying to do: be the bridge for communities of freelancers, remote workers and digital nomads to develop meaningful relationships offline and then follow them up online, which incidentally, is exactly how Facebook works — the world’s largest online community.

In the Flylancer online local community, everyone knows each other, cultivating an atmosphere where people help out, pull together in support, share knowledge and ask for advice.

“It’s somewhere between a cult and a support group for Digital Nomads.” — Greg, Barcelona Flylancer

This is what we need for the future of work to succeed, but the people who are trailblazing the remote work movement — all of the members of Flylancer — can’t do it on our own, and we don’t need to. This network exists to support and empower each other.

So freelancers, location independent professionals, digital nomads, I urge you: next time you’re in a coffee shop or work space, reach out to the person next to you and say hello. And if you’re feeling brave enough, throw out your arms and go in for the bear hug. Because it’s these moments of meaningful connection that bring our world closer together — and there’s no such thing as a virtual hug.

— — —

Flylancer is a global networking community for location independent professionals and for digital nomads to meet, share and collaborate with each other. We’re making people hug strangers in Barcelona, London, Buenos Aires, Milan, Lyon, Moscow, Melbourne, Ubud, Chiang Mai and Berlin with more on the way!

Loneliness - the darker side of remote working was originally published in Flylancer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s nice to be taken seriously.

As a remote working freelancer, I used to really highlight this when pitching or reaching out to clients. I wanted people to see that I was serious about my work, and went overboard with my professional courtesies to prove it. Now I realise that was all nonsense.

The thing is, I don’t actually meet the vast majority of my clients, and yet I speak to them on a daily basis. I generally don’t know what they look like, how old they are or what their relationship status is, but I’m pretty sure they’re all real people. And because they’re real, I want them to like me, as well as take me seriously.

You see, I care about being liked. And I care about you being liked…

The way I see it, typical business correspondence for most remote workers and freelancers goes one of two ways:

1. You can go down the ‘Dear Mr or Mrs Client, I’m pleased to inform you that my schedule currently permits me to bla bla bla’ route.
2. Or you can opt for that fake chumminess, where you finish your emails with a line about the weather or some other empty comment like: ‘I hope you find some time for a well-earned pint tonight!’ (the equivalent of David Brent-style finger guns)

But why can’t we scrap this hangover from corporate life and just be genuine? I think there’s room for being informal. As long as the quality of our work goes unaffected, what’s to stop us being ourselves in our professional lives? After all, there’s more to us than just our work.

I want Mr or Mrs Client to know that I’m a real person too; that I take my work seriously, but that I also have a great (i.e. sarcastic) sense of humour. That I have other interests, like trying to seduce the world with my bass guitar, or getting weird tattoos just to justify my hipster beard; essentially, that I don’t only exist on a screen in two dimensions. I want to be real so that Mr or Mrs Client have a chance to like me! And I want the chance to like them back.

Now I realise ‘like’ is a strong word, and I don’t necessarily expect my clients to like me, but I want them to at least know a little bit about me. It’s too easy to totally bypass the human side of work when you spend 95% of your working life without coming face to face with another person. Skype and phone calls are the highlights of my remote working days. I won’t let that chance to interact with real living humans pass me by, trust me.

Here’s an example: I remember when I was trying to work out the perfect tone for a pitch (nobody tells you this stuff right?), so I experimented a little. The more human they were, the better the response. The first time I used a smiley in a proposal, I got one straight back (and was hired).

It was a gateway into realising that every email has a human behind it. Besides, if it were a real life interaction, wouldn’t we be making the effort to do that same — big yellow emoji smile?

Trying to establish a relationship with people I don’t actually know is the perfect way for me to feel like I’m not simply working with machines all day long. I can ask my clients how their weekends were, and I genuinely care about the response. I can tell them that I went to a great gig the night before and that my ears are still ringing, and I know that I’ll get a little insight into their lives in return. It pays off.

Last week I had a stressful week and was perhaps more rushed than normal in my communications. Out of the blue, a relatively new client emailed me to ask whether everything was okay and wished me well. No talk of work, just a friendly message, to see how I was. — It made my bloody day!

Of course, people liking you in a work context isn’t just a personal plus, it’s a professional one too. It’s a gateway to future collaborations, recommendations and relationships. It helps no end in terms of word-of-mouth marketing, and without a doubt it makes people want to work with you again.

I work as a freelance translator, and as a remote employee for an artist management company in the US. In these sectors, caring that people like you helps indefinitely, in fact I’m pretty sure this is a universal truth.

But maybe there are other sectors that demand formal professionalism at all times. Does that apply to you? Or does it genuinely make you smile when someone asks how you are in an email, tells you about their family, or cracks a joke?

I’d love to know what other Flylancers and remote workers think, but until then I stand by my shameless cry for love and attention; people liking me is awesome.

Author: Jeran Richardson, Barcelona Flylancer

Yes, I work remotely for you, but I’m a real person too. was originally published in Flylancer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At the last Barcelona Flylancer meetup we were given free beer. Maybe I hadn’t eaten much for lunch that day, or maybe I’m just a lightweight in general (who knows?) but my tongue was loosened a little by the time it came to playing a networking game.

We were asked to find someone who was wearing similar clothes to us and tell them three things we were passionate about. Their job was to then ‘sell’ us to the other Flylancers in the group on the basis of our passions and interests.

What came out of my mouth when it came to explaining my passions surprised me (I was amazed about what my partner Flylancer Leire shared with me, too). Somehow I managed to tell my lovely new friend — and incidentally myself — what I cared about most in my life. Now that the effects of a fuzzy beer brain have worn off, the importance of what we spent our five minutes talking about is just starting to sink in. Here I go…

I care about people having the ability to express their true selves…

… despite that statement looking a lot more wanky in print than it sounded at the meetup. It’s true & I stand by it.

I care because there is nothing that makes me sadder than to hear someone say ‘I always wanted to…’ and trail off into ‘…but I’m too old now’ / ‘…but I don’t have time anymore’ / ‘…but I can’t afford to these days’.

Okay, if you wanted to be an Olympic gymnast and you’re approaching 62, then probably you are too old. (Sorry.)

But if you just wanted to be able to do a handstand, or a cartwheel, or a back flip… maybe not. Who knows? Maybe a roly poly will do. I hear such a story begin and my brain is immediately in overdrive, thinking about how to point the person in the direction of someone who can help, or break it down for them myself if I know how. (I do actually want to learn to do a backflip, so if anyone can help me with that one…?)

I care because it’s more serious than somebody simply wanting to have a crack at something different. I care because helping someone to experience & try something they’ve always wanted to is how we become full members of society.

Because I truly believe that life is about finding the courage to not simply ignore things just because they’re messy and difficult to achieve and that there might be some awkward conversations involved. Trying is part of it, and helping is part of that.

I’m talking about empowerment and confidence and exploring a fuller life; about not limiting yourself or anybody else. It’s far too easy to fall into the trap of diminishing other people’s dreams & then applying the same to yourself. You see this everywhere in our media and it’s deeply rooted in our ‘system’. Instead of celebrating people’s attempts, we focus solely on the black and white of achievement vs failures. I believe that simply putting yourself out there and trying something different, whether it works or doesn’t, should be lauded. Life is a journey, after all…

Why do I care so much? Just imagine what the world could look like if — instead of criticising and instilling fear in other people’s ideas — we had their backs. What if your friend who always wanted to write a novel, did it? What if that novel changed the world? What if it didn’t? Who cares? It would certainly change their world.

We need to find ways to not limit ourselves or allow others to limit us. The best way to do that is by empowering each other in our everyday life. To help where we can. Just like that game.

There are so many alternative paths waiting there for us to tread. For me, moving away from my home in the UK to Barcelona in Spain fortunately proved the suspicions I had been harbouring for years as a part of the ‘system’. There are so many alternative ways to live and work and it’s worth trying them.

In Barcelona I now share a co-working space with other Flylancers who are blazing their own trails, and I feel in awe of them. They take an idea and bring it to life, and it’s amazing to see. It even inspired me to start up my own project, learn to play an instrument, take life one day at a time, and keep exploring.

I did all this with the encouragement of others (and a few free beers). I’m surrounded by people who are willing to listen, go out on a limb to help me, encourage me and even ‘sell me’. And that’s the secret sauce — supporting each other.

Sure, there are days when I look at my friends’ careers back home and I get panicked that I’m not keeping up. I have to battle those demons regularly, but I would fight that fight a thousand times over to keep the experiences and lessons I have had in my time Flylancing in Barcelona.

I feel more and more confident in myself and the world around me. The sky isn’t going to fall in if my idea doesn’t work out. But if I had never tried, I might have always regretted it. And in my view, that’s just asking for trouble down the line.

So tell me,… What frightens you? What are your most hidden desires? What stops you from making them come true? Can I help? Can we all help you? Can we ‘sell you’ and your amazing ambitions? Let’s make them happen together.

Author: Laura Hopkins, Barcelona Flylancer

Express Yourself. You might be surprised. was originally published in Flylancer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Can they limit a generation that knows no borders?

Digital nomadism, location independence, remote working and flylancing have all fundamentally changed the way that we think about work. Whilst Brexit raises some major concerns for British nomads, this news also cast the dreams for many other European location-independent workers into doubt overnight. Threatening both our prospects and our identity.

We may not be able to solve these deep divisions ourselves, but now, more than ever, we need unite across the continent and help each other by offering friendship and community to our fellow remote workers. Together we can harness our collective knowledge and creative problem solving skills to build our own globally connected community in these uncertain times. We can overcome and innovate together.

Location independence: How did we get this far?

Walk around a European city today and you’ll find young location-independent entrepreneurs, freelancers & digital nomads everywhere. We’re in pubs, we’re in cafes — anywhere there’s wifi.

Why are there so many of us? Because, when we graduated during the biggest global recession since the 1930s, there simply weren’t enough jobs to go around.

But instead of simply accepting the hand dealt to us, an entire generation of newly initiated graduates started to think outside of the box and create their own opportunities online. The crisis forced us to get creative.

Many of us took huge risks; either founding our own businesses or becoming freelancers. Two out of my three University flatmates went on to found their own businesses immediately after graduating. The other became a freelancer. They haven’t looked back.

With hindsight, it sounds straightforward, but it was far from easy. Before the recession, both freelancing and starting-up in tech were unchartered territories. None of us really knew what we were doing. Now startups born during the economic downturn such as Airbnb and Uber are household names and billion dollar companies.

We were forced to develop our careers without the framework we have today, and in extremely hostile economic conditions. We had no choice but use our ingenuity to create our own opportunities. Harnessing the power of the internet seemed like the best way to go about it. In doing so, we unwittingly pioneered of the so called ‘future of work’: location independent professionalism, making it what it is today.

Fast forward 8 years and innovation hubs, accelerators and coworking spaces are commonplace. Online entrepreneurs and freelancers are able to run their businesses anywhere they can connect to the internet. Progress, innovation and entrepreneurialism have become synonymous with the term ‘millennial’, wifi has practically replaced oxygen, and even major companies are comfortable with hiring freelancers and remote working teams, hurray!

We’re coming out the other side of the downturn having ‘taken back control’ (- oh, the irony -) of our lives and our career paths in a way that feels both rewarding and healthy. Our newly engineered lifestyle means we can avoid paying soaring rents to private landlords or endure the low living standards that many major cities offer us. All this, without having to sacrifice our careers. We can simply take our laptops, our work and our online clients onto greener pastures.

Amazingly, where we choose to live is becoming irrelevant to our careers, and the EU’s open borders has played a huge role in making this dream of ‘digital nomadism’ a reality.

Limiting a generation that knows no borders

Amongst the political turmoil and surreal situation that last week’s Brexit has left us in, it’s easy to forget all the EU has done for us. There are well-documented issues with its political structure, and while we don’t ignore these, Europe’s open borders have been quietly offering professional and personal refuge for the young during an economic slump. It’s no coincidence that 75% of 18–24 year olds voting in the UK’s EU Referendum wanted to remain within the union.

The truth is, open borders in the EU signify a lot more to our generation than simply access to a free market. They reflect the openness of our new identity. A borderless generation, on a borderless continent and a borderless internet full of endless opportunity.

Vast and busy capital cities with outrageously high living costs such as London and Paris have been busy out-pricing us, but across the continent, cheaper alternative cities with higher living standards and abundant wifi, such as Barcelona, Berlin and Bucharest have become internationally recognised hubs for innovation, attracting talent from across the EU, and welcoming us. The EU has made that possible.

Cities no longer hold the monopoly over us. We can even choose to reject urban life altogether and live in rural areas without having to sacrifice our careers, or our sense of community. Fully-fledged innovation hubs and coworking spaces popping up in the forests of Germany, and on the beaches of Mediterranean islands. Where there’s wifi, there’s a career to be had.

For those armed with a laptop and ambition, digital nomadism and the advent of remote working have become the alternative lifestyle. Sadly Brexit threatens to eradicate not only this way of working for British nomads, but with it, their identity.

As Nicholas Barrett eloquently commented in the Financial Times last week:

“The younger generation has lost the right to live and work in 27 other countries. We will never know the full extent of the lost opportunities, […] Freedom of movement was taken away by our parents…”

So will Brexit make Digital Nomadism more difficult?

The answer is yes, most probably.

From a practical perspective, if Brexit closes the UK’s borders, we (British nomads) are probably looking at visas to travel, limits to how long we can stay in the EU zone and more paperwork in order for us to offer our services to EU based-clients. We may even be taxed for the pleasure.

On the other side of the English Channel, things look equally as complicated for non-British professionals hoping to collaborate with the UK. They will almost certainly not retain the right to live and work in the UK and digital nomads will no longer be welcome.

In the British Home Secretary, Theresa May’s own words;

“Nobody necessarily stays anywhere forever.”

This will be a huge loss of talent and creativity, not to mention a colossal cultural loss to a nation that has previously prided itself on great cultural diversity.

Creativity in times of crisis

Fortunately, as a group, location-independent professionals, digital nomads, flylancers, remote workers, whatever you want to call us — we’re inherently resourceful and full of energy. It was only eight years ago that we overcame a recession with ingenuity and resourcefulness, and look how far we’ve come. Let’s simply use the crisis as a springboard for creativity and as an inspiration for change. If ever we doubt ourselves, just remember that we did it before, so we know we can do it again.

As Barack Obama once wisely said:

“Progress isn’t guaranteed. It’s not inevitable. It’s something that has to be fought for.”

So let’s not go down without a fight.

Whether or not the UK is in or out of the EU, our sense of unity will remain. I believe passionately that if we unite across the continent in a show of solidarity to both our UK colleagues and all those experiencing instability in the EU, to create Europe’s first borderless community for location-independent professionals, we will be able to overcome this together.

We’ll start by uniting across the continent in meetups and online communities. We’ll create our own space to exchange, inspire and empower each other everywhere in Europe, In Barcelona, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Athens… everywhere. We’ll organise it ourselves and keep it free of commercial interests. Together we will be able to harness our collective creativity and expertise to create our own globally connected community.

If we unite, the world remains our oyster. The trick is sticking together.

Our first borderless community: Flylancer

On 27th July, the Flylancer community will be launching in London for the first time in the UK.

We’re calling on all those that feel passionately about our way of life and believe as strongly as we do that unity and creativity is the best way to overcome this division, please join us.

Our community will host a totally free and self-organised event offering free beers and hugs to all location-independent flylancers & digital nomads (we know you need them).

We will stand by each other in discussing how we can best overcome this shock together in workshops and discussions by building our own member led community. By live streaming the event to Barcelona, our founding community, we’ll work together with other flylancers from across the continent to fight for our shared values.

The Internet knows no borders, and neither do we.

Special thanks to fellow Barcelona & London flylancers for kindly and patiently co-authoring & editing this piece: Mr. Crinks, Katie Jones, Jeran Richardson, Abbie Long, Rach Cruickshank, Danielle Karlsson and Laura Hopkins —

“Are we calling it Flylancer, because we’re fly?” — yes we most definitely are. Thank you guys.

What does #Brexit mean for the Digital Nomad Community? was originally published in Flylancer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.