Freestyle Tips for Working Hybrid

Image Source: By Martin Rulsch, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, CC BY-SA 4.0, 

Managing your calendar

Last week’s Google calendar update to set your working location is a great new feature for hybrid work! Be sure to also set your working hours to let people know what hours you are available every day.

Check out this Daily Plan template from Google that covers the day’s top three priorities, to-do’s, mindful moments, hour-by-hour plan and the next day’s priorities

Create a calendar event directly from an open email message. Click the three dots at the top and select Create event. The subject of the email becomes the title, anyone in the To or CC line will be added as a guest and the most recent email text will be added to the description.

When you respond to a calendar invite, let them know whether you are attending virtually or in person.

Staying organized

Overwhelmed with email? Check out Gmail’s Priority Inbox. It separates your inbox into 3 sections - Important and unread, Starred and Everything else. Gmail determines what’s important based on the messages you open, the people you frequently chat with, and the keywords and content in the messages. I was a skeptic at first but it really works. Gmail keeps learning from you and gets better over time. Give this one a chance!

Can’t say this one enough - set up filters in Gmail to automatically clear out the clutter!

If you haven't explored Google Drive Priority and Workspaces, you are missing out! I even recommend setting Priority as your default Drive homepage (in settings). With Priority, Google will display documents it thinks are most relevant to you based on what you've been working on, what you regularly open at a certain time, upcoming meetings, etc. Workspaces allow you to add multiple files that are stored in different locations into an organized group. 

Install Google Drive for desktop to access your Google Drive files directly from Windows File Explorer. This is great when you need to transfer files between Google Drive and your computer. Google Drive for Desktop also lets you select files you would like to make available offline for when you don’t have an internet connection.

Use Google Tasks to stay on top of your to-do list. It's integrated with Google Workspace so it's easy to find on the right hand side of the screen from any of those apps. I recommend downloading the Google Tasks app to your mobile device so you can access your to-dos from anywhere. You can also use Google Tasks with your team. 

Hybrid meetings

Reduce the number of meetings you need by using asynchronous communication tools like Google Spaces or Slack. Make sure everyone is aware of the conversation and has an easy way to contribute. 

Use a project management tool with your team like Trello, Asana, Notion or Slack to make your meetings more productive. 

Save time by using the comments and suggestions options in Google docs.

Collect input from your colleagues before the meeting so everyone has an opportunity to share their ideas and this also gives you something to start with at the meeting itself. You could use Sli.do, Google Forms, or even the polling add-on in Slack.

Create a meeting notes document right from your calendar and it will automatically add the event information in the document and attach it to the event. You can also create a meeting notes document by typing “@” in a Google doc and then selecting which meeting to attach it to.

Taking care of yourself

Use Focus time to block out and protect time for uninterrupted individual work. Select a block of time on your calendar and you will see the Focus time option under the title. Focus time works similar to the Out of office event type where you can choose to automatically decline meeting requests during this block of time.

How is your home office setup? Who knew that an exercise ball is not recommended for a primary chair! Do an ergonomics self assessment and explore the DEHS resources.

Hide your self view in meetings to avoid meeting fatigue. Studies have shown that seeing ourselves on video for many hours every day can be taxing and stressful. Use the “hide self view” in Zoom - hover over your own video, click the ellipses button (...) and choose Hide Self View. In Google Meet you can remove or minimize your self-view. Hiding your self view in either Zoom or Meet, will keep the camera on for participants but you don’t have to look at yourself.

I hope IT Goldy's freestyle tips were helpful. Now, onto the Olympic challenges of the day:

TODAY'S IT GOLDY OLYMPIC CHALLENGES

1. Quiz of the day. Collect up to 80 points from today's quiz!
2. WORDLE of the day. If you want 5 points for playing, copy/paste your results in the Ext Connect Slack #ext-winter-carnival channel. 

10 EXTRA POINTS will be given if you post a photo with flat IT Goldy in the Ext Connect #ext-winter-carnival channel sometime during the week.

Don't forget to register for  IT Goldy's Winter Olympic Closing Ceremony on Friday at 11 a.m.

Check out the IT Goldy Olympic leaderboard!