Productivity, Work From Home, The SAP Community

[mmcisme1]

Productivity, work from home and the SAP community, how do they tie together? Read for my answers.   Perhaps you'll find something interesting that you didn't know about.

Productivity:

To continue to be productive when working from home.  Well I've been doing this for close to 10 years now.  Cool, right?  It can be.  As long as people know you ARE working. So my productivity is basically how they determine if working from home is going well.  Perceptions on what/how you are you are doing can become reality.  Perceptions = Reality.

1.  Interruptions to a minimum:
   
   
   
   1. What is so nice for me is that I'm not interrupted very often.  I don't know if it's human nature or it's just the hassle of doing one more step.  But, people usually try finding a solution first before calling me.   A lot of times they find their answer.  This leaves me more time to work on my project(s).
   
   
   
   


2. SAP Community for help
   
   
   
   1. There aren't people running by my desk asking why I'm on the internet so often.  So I can take advantage of google search to lead me here.  Most of the time I find the answer in the community or the archives.
   
   
   2. If I can I look at blog posts in the morning.  It improves my ability to suggest answers and know what can be done.  Productivity?  Yes, because it helps my company when I grasp a concept enough to suggest it to them.  It may save days of research in the future.
   
   
   
   


3. Deadlines - what's in a deadline anyway?
   
   
   
   1. Working from home improves my communication.  I tend to document what I'm doing more.  If/When I miss a deadline, I and my boss have a clear understanding of why I missed it.
   
   
   2. Deadlines become very important to me.  If I set one I tend to work heads-down to met it.  Heads down with little interruptions - see above.  It really helps me stay on task.
   
   
   
   

Work from home

1. Well you can tell from above - it ties directly  into better productivity.


2. No drive into work.  Time saved for you to do other things with it.


3. Save money on lunches.


4. More time to spend with my family.


5. I can take a nice long walk during my lunch time.  I enjoy walking behind my house  (15 acres).  It really clears my mind.  It makes me a very happy employee.

Sap Community

1. See above how reading blog posts really help me out.


2. With more people working from home, I can see more people active in the community.  That is a huge benefit.


3. If I have an idea of something I think will work, I can double check on the community.  Usually someone else has done something similar.  I can tell if it will work.  I might also get some tips and tricks along the way.


4. Training.   Lots and lots of training is available right now.
   
   
   
   1. There is free SAP courses that are always a good thing to think about when I use them.  They get deeper into a subject.
   
   
   2. Of course SAP training courses themselves get even deeper into the subject.  Right now there are so many on-line.  It saves on airfare, hotel fees, and meals.
   
   
   3. There are amazing tutorials that I take advantage of.
   
   
   4. There is an SAP HANA Academy on Youtube.
   
   
   5. ABAP Freaks have come back.  You'll find them on Youtube.
   
   
   6. Webinars - a lot of things are virtual right now.  There is a big event coming up.  24 hours of SAP on-line SIT with many speakers.  Maybe even you?
   
   
   
   

Bringing it all together

So what does everything above have to do with each other?  You've probably noticed that I reference a paragraph above on some of the things.  That's because as you can tell a lot of the things I do working from home tie to each other.  The benefits of working from home are amazing.  They help you and they help your company.  If you need face time with a person - wait for it - there is an app for that.  I'm using too many different ones to list them all.

If you hate working from home, I hope I've given you some other things to look at that will help you.

For me the community itself is just amazing.  If you get depressed during this time, there is even a #SAPCommunityHeadsUp to follow on twitter.  It's a fun easy going thread.  Another fun thing to do is to stop in at the coffee corner every now and then.

As an added bonus there is even a way to connect with other people!  That's much needed at this time.  There is a blog it forward initiative going on RIGHT now.  You can virtually meet some of the people you would like, and some you didn't know you were going to like.  Also it's a fun time to create a blog post of your own.  When you do, don't forget to come up with some questions you've always wondered about someone else.  It's always fun to see what they will answer.

My questions to you - not for BIF (blog it forward), but for comments:

What do you like about working from home?

Agree / disagree with anything above?

[grassl]

Hi Michelle,

as always a great blog and read with plenty of helpful tips and even better to call out everyone to chime in.

When I started to work from home due to a move I never thought this can work for me. I loved to go to the office, catch up with the team and meet folks for lunch. Switching to home office showed me a few things

1) You can get a lot done if you focus on it. After initial failures and too many distractions I started to make a list of items which need to be done and I use GTD to track them.

2) The flexibility is great but it needs to be managed and I use a dual calendar to ensure my personal  commitments are blocked at work and vice versa

3) More time with the family is a big plus. Here I learned to schedule all lunches, dinners and time with the kids. One additional thing I do is to plan out the week before I start on Monday morning.

What do I miss, the random conversations, we just started this more in the team to do Happy Hours within the team and they are fun.

Looking forward to more tips and insights from other community members

-Thomas

[mmcisme1]

Now Team Happy Hours does sound like fun!  I think I might pitch that one to my boss.  Great tips from you too.  Thank you!

[sveabecker]

I love being in the office but you are true, Michelle, there are much more interruptions and also more meetings, because people want to see you. And of course, I am saving time working from home, because I have a 50 km drive. And not to forget that I can look after my children, when they return from school (usually 😉 ). So it's really an advantage working from home and I love being so flexible with my working times (kudos to my management). But I will also return going to the office at least once or twice when it's possible again, because besides all the advantages, I miss chatting with my office room mates. I really have to call them more often 😉

Thanks for your post, Michelle. I realized I am even more active on SAP Community these times so I agree that it really brings people together.

(In my dreams, I would like to work from a library nearby as iinside does ...https://blogs.sap.com/2019/02/28/finding-my-best-location-to-work..whats-yours/) 🙂

 

[mmcisme1]

Thank you, for your comment.  I took a trip to iinside blog post.  So I had excellent reading material this morning.  My best place to work is still my home office.  But if my internet doesn't work, I now have a different secondary suggestion.  The library.

[audreystevenson]

Like you, Michelle, I've been working from home for over a decade. The tools have gotten much, much better over that time (I love my current Jabra headset, for example), and I've also had time to focus on making my WFH space very usable, with dual monitors, an ergonomic chair, etc.

I love that you included all of those great links to online learning possibilities. I'm bookmarking your blog post so I can go back to those easily.

My favorite thing working from home (and I concede this is possible only because we have no kids): it's much easier to concentrate if I am working on something that requires dedicated effort without interruptions. On the other hand, I do miss connecting in person with colleagues, so once things are up and running again (I won't say "normal" because those days are gone) I will still occasionally drive into the office to meet for lunch and work there for a day.

Thanks again for a great post!

[mmcisme1]

Thank you for the nice comment.

Yes, my workplace at home has all the good things needed.  (Dual Monitors, Chair, Printers beside me...)  I guess that is an advantage that people like us have over others that are just now working from home.   I've read some posts where people only have a small area where they can work.

And yes, no kids at home for me either.  Right now my son is home; he just graduated college in the fall/winter season.  Yes, right now isn't a good time to be looking for a job.  He's also frugal.  He likes to save his money by no rent and no food bill.   However, at 22 I tell him to leave me alone and shut the door.  (He already had learned that earlier, but sometimes it makes sense to repeat myself).

Sometimes I wish my work were close enough to drive to.  Oh well, I'm more happy working from home than I ever was making my way into work.