AMIR SALIHEFENDIĆ is the Founder and CEO of Doist, a fully remote company that makes the popular tools Todoist and Twist. In this interview, Amir shares some of the successful and unsuccessful experiments Doist has tried over the years to improve alignment and communication among colleagues. We also discuss the importance and power of asynchronous communication, some tips on what to look for when hiring remotely, and how to prevent overworking.

(https://doist.com/)

 

Subscribe to the Collaboration Superpowers Podcast on iTunesStitcher or Spotify.

 


Podcast production by Podcast Monster

Graphic design by Alfred Boland

 

Sign up for the Collaboration Superpowers newsletter (yellow)

 

More resources

234 – From Chaos To Successful Distributed Agile Teams

Tools for remote teams

195 – Be A Leader Worth Following

What to Look For When Interviewing a Remote Worker

191 – Don’t Invest To Get To Average


Original transcript

Lisette:  So great, and we’re live. So welcome everybody to this remote interview. My name is Lisette and I’m interviewing people and companies doing great things remotely. And today on the line I have all the way from Barcelona Amir Salihefendic. I practiced it and then I didn’t get it right. I apologize. Amir,

 

Amir:  I think you got it pretty, right. Yeah,

 

Lisette:  Sally [Inaudible 00:21] its, it’s supposed to roll off the tongue but okay. So, Amir, you are the founder and CEO of Doist, which is a fully remote company with over seventy people in twenty-five different countries. And you are the builders of two very popular apps to do twist and twist. We’re going to talk about that. But what I want to start with is the first question which is what does your virtual office look like? What do you need to get your work done?

 

Amir:  Yeah, so first of all, it’s awesome to be here. Thank you for inviting me and having me on the show. And regarding like my ritual of book space, you know, like I have like all the freedom to work from anywhere I want. But I think what I really like is kind of having my own office space. So I actually book I have like a personal office inside a co-working space. And that kind of like, lets me separate, like home and work. And then also like, when I go into the office, I know that I need to focus on work, and it kind of just like makes the switching much easier. Yeah, I mean, I have like before, I sometimes like work from home, but it’s very, like, it’s not that often, like maybe once per week or something like that. Or like, I sometimes will do like coffee shops, but that’s also not really, that often. What I really want to do is like I want to go into like my space, and just, you know, focus on the work. And then after I’m done, I just quit and I don’t really work anymore.

 

Lisette:  Yeah.

 

Amir:  I mean, in my early career, like when I started out, I’ve actually only been A remote worker. So I have never actually worked in an office environment.

 

Lisette:  How lucky? Some might say.

 

Amir:  Yeah, but in the beginning, like, like, I live in a dorm with a lot of other students, and then I switched and worked from like, my own apartment. And that was like really, really destructive because like, there was no you know, like separation between like work and like life. And I would actually just like overwork because, you know, you don’t really know what you need to do. And then, like work for me, is kind of, like I really am very passionate about my job. So I can kind of work a lot if I want to. So you know, this is kind of like a block for me to kind of create this operation. Yeah.

 

Lisette:  Okay, and so what kind of and what, what is your setup look like? Do you have a bunch of monitors? Do you have special headsets? What does your setup look like in your co-working space?

 

Amir:  I usually work with like external monitor and external keyboard and a mouse. Yeah, but I also enjoy just like working from my laptop. I recently got like a MacBook sixteen-inch, which is the new MacBook. And they are like really, really nice and you don’t really actually need an external screen to really be productive there. Yeah. And then I also use like noise-canceling headphones from Sony. And I actually I’m kind of like a fanatic of noise. I had like a bunch of them.

 

Lisette:  Oh, okay.

 

Amir:  Yeah, so Sony are kind of like the best ones. And…

 

Lisette:  You have one of those?

 

Amir:  Yeah, yeah, for me at least like me also have the bows. Yeah, so and I also have like the ear pods pro, which are also like noise canceling. So actually, there’s a lot of like two main cancel noise and this is especially useful if you are kind of co-working in an environment that is very noisy.

 

Lisette:  Okay, I was going to say what’s important about noise-canceling for you like, what is it that you need that you like about it? Besides, of course, background noise, but is it that you needed to be quiet when you’re working? Or do you get overstimulated by noise or what’s important for you about that?

 

Amir:  Yeah, I really dislike like, noise and a lot of co-working space. I much like if you have worked from a co-working space, but people really don’t respect, you know, like that. You have, like people sitting around you that are trying to like focus. So they have like, you know, coals and they just, like, speak loudly or something like that. And that really affects my like, focus.

 

Lisette:  Yeah, I can imagine. Okay, now you are the founder and CEO of Doist, which a lot of people out there that are listening to this podcast are going to know about so I’m super excited to have you on this show. I’d really like to talk about your company. So I read that it’s a fully normal company, you’ve got over seventy people in twenty countries. First tell us what does do us do it tell us how and the products that you have the Doist newest product, which is a productivity product, like project management, and Twist, which is more of a communication product. So, first I say, Tell us about your company, and then tell us about your products and then we’re going to get into why you work the way you do.

 

Amir:  Yeah, I mean, you know, like, our kind of like goal and mission is kind of, like, invent the workplace of the future. So, you know, like, for the looks, place of the future you really like need communication. And then you need to, to organize yourself. So those are like two of like, the really hard problems that we’re tackling, and we kind of like try to tackle it from kind of like, first principles thinking. So like, for instance, like twist is like [Inaudible 05:56]. So that’s kind of like built you know, for remote teams like fully distributed remote teams that work across many time zones. And on the market is actually nothing related that this, like Twist. Yeah. But of course, like, you know, most teams and companies aren’t fully distributed yet. So we’re kind of like, you know, living in the future and like building for the future. So that’s at least how I like to think about it. And today’s is really like, you know, a to-do app. But it’s like more to actually like manage your work and manage your life. And you really have a system for that. Yeah. So that’s about it. Yeah.

 

Lisette:  Okay. Um, so now, why did you start this company? What was it that motivated you to do this?

 

Amir:  I actually started this. Like I built to this for myself in 2007 as a student. Yeah. So I actually like I didn’t start this like, I’m going to start a company, I started this I have a problem like, which is basically I want to create, like, an amazing to-do application that can kind of help me manage my life and my work. And that’s what I did. And so afterwards, it’s kind of like, you know, we have built like a company around that. And we also build, Twist and Twist is the same thing. It’s kind of like, we are basically solving our own problem, which is basically communication across like many different time zones, you know, like, we have, I don’t know, like twenty-five different countries are ton of time zones. And you can read like real-time communicate that easily. And you need to have like modern ways of communicating. Yeah, so far, it’s like we actually adopted slack in the beginning and we built space because for slack does not really work that well like across time zones.

 

Lisette:  Okay, so let’s dive into that because time zones are a problem that plague teams. I mean, I get asked every presentation I give, I get asked about time zones. And I always say, it’s a hard problem because it’s a physics problem. We simply can’t squeeze the world closer together. What are some of the ways that your team manages time zone problems?

 

Amir:  Yeah, so I think it’s kind of like our culture, it’s like asynchronous. So this means like, when you actually like do post something, you do like a big post where you kind of like, outline everything, you know, the whole problem and like the asks you have, and stuff like that. That’s like, one core aspect is basically like, and you need to move towards like asynchronous communication, like you can’t really communicate in real-time. And when you communicate, it kind of like needs to be deep and thoughtful. So the same thing is kind of like when you’re responding that that also needs to happen. So that those that is like kind of one thing and the second thing is maybe like having self-managed people that connects like on blog themselves, or like, you know, Work on multiple things at once. Because in this environment, you will get bored, you’ll get stuck. And you just can’t say, you know, I’m now I’m stuck. I can’t really work on anything else. You kind of like need to figure out like, what can you do instead? While you wait for an answer? Yeah. So, I mean, I think those are probably two of the biggest things, but there’s probably a lot of more that, you know, that are related to this.

 

Lisette:  So you guys are focused in on rich communication, like really giving context and outlining the problem and then providing also thoughtful answers. And then also hiring self-managed people, people who want to hit a roadblock, they’re like, Okay, I’m going to go on to task B, and I’ll, as soon as the people wake up for task A, I’ll get back to that. So then that begs the question, how do you find self-manage people? How do you know that they can self-manage when you’re in during the hiring process? Is it luck? Or is there something particular that you ask people or test people on.

 

Amir:  I mean, honestly, I think like hiring is probably the hardest thing that you can do. And it doesn’t really become easier. Like, even right now, like when we actually do a job posting, like we get, like, for some job posting thousands of applicants.

 

Lisette:  Wow.

 

Amir:  But it’s still like, it’s, you know, we need to kind of find the right person and that is like, really, really tough. But there’s kind of like some indication that can use here like, like personal projects, for instance, or like if they have actually built something on their own. Those are some like pretty good indicators that, you know, like people, can actually like be self-starters and like self-managed and like self-motivated. Like, if you can do that for your own project, then we can most likely also do it for some of our staff. So there’s just like one indicator, of course, like you can just like discriminate people and say like if you haven’t done any personal projects and some like you would want to get hired, but at least like some of our best people that we have hired have kind of had that profile, you know? Yeah, so that is one thing. Another thing is maybe freelancers as well, like some also other people that we hired is basically people that, you know, work as freelancers and had to actually find, you know, like clients work for the coordinated work. It’s basically you know, like, remote work is kind of like freelance work, but you just have one client, you know. Yeah. So, so, those are also some good indicators. Probably a bad indicator is like if you only have worked in an office environment, and you think, you know like remote work is kind of like, you know, being on a beach drinking you know, Pina Coladas and working a bit then you like you will have a wakeup call because like that isn’t really the reality.

 

Lisette:  That’s what we like to say. It’s like.

 

Amir:  Yeah.

 

Lisette:   Like I’m out of my pajamas. But yeah. Okay. So then on your team. So very interesting. I really like the idea of people who have personal projects or people are Freelancer or people who are freelancers, because you at least understand the mindset of needing to organize your day and needing to organize your tasks in order to accomplish something. I’m very curious about what you struggle with on your team of seventy people. What’s something you said you mentioned communication, which is why you build twist, but like, what are some of the things that that Doist struggles with just sort of on a regular basis? It can’t all be roses, right?

 

Amir:  Well, we don’t have any issues that’s [Crosstalk] we are going to sell the dream, you know, like…

 

Lisette:  You have got the silver bullet, I’ve got an audience who’s ready to buy.

 

Amir:  Yeah, I mean, honestly, like there’s a lot of issues and problems especially like as you hit scale. And as you become more and more people, like precise communication becomes harder, you know, share, like, a vision becomes harder. And so though and then maybe even organization becomes harder, like you just have like a lot more like moving parts and a lot more like synchronization needs to happen. And that makes things much more complicated. So something that we really struggled with for a lot of time, and I think we have only now kind of unblocked it a bit, is basically like, you know, get getting stuff done with all people. Like are actually when we were most productive. We were probably around 20-30 people. And then we hired you know, like, maybe doubled our headcount and we actually got less things done. So, like getting, you know, the machine really up to date, the process is up to date. And like really figuring that out lead is really, really tough. So we actually struggle for this like for maybe a year to where we just kind of had to figure it out, like, you know, how do we actually get more done with more people? So maybe that’s, I don’t know, it’s like, if that is intuitive or not, but all times actually hiring extra people, it doesn’t really make work go faster. It sometimes like it goes slower, because, you know, you have like more people providing input, more people discussing stuff, more people that need to know to be aligned. Yeah.

 

Lisette:  Yeah. I like, would you say that there’s a lot of moving parts, like all of a sudden, like, with 20-30 people you can coordinate pretty well, because it’s not you know, it’s manageable in terms of just you can oversee it in your head. Most people once you start to get like, more than that. I would even say like, that’s pretty impressive. That group of twenty or thirty people can align so well. Once you start getting more than that. I can imagine it just increases, increases the chaos and stuff so how did you? How did you what were some of the experiments that you guys did to try and fix this?

 

Amir:  I mean, honestly, like, we tried a lot of stuff. Like, we’re not really afraid of trying stuff, but like most of it didn’t really work. Unfortunately, yeah.

 

Lisette:  What’s something that didn’t work? I don’t know if you can think of it off the top of her head. I’m putting you on the spot here. But what’s something that didn’t work that you thought would?

 

Amir:  Yeah, so I mean, I can give a really great example. And I think like a lot of people will probably have this like, you read a great book on OKR’s. There’s a one like it’s written by John [Inaudible 15:35]. And we have also done that and like, you know, we’re going to have OKR’s and like, OKR’s, are going to like solve all of our issues and then like we rolled out OKR’s like it was much more chaotic. It didn’t work at all like people were like very bad at actually like setting the OKR’s like following them updating them. And yeah, so that’s like, one thing is kind of The OKR system like maybe, you know, that can work for like Google. But our experience with that is basically like, it didn’t work at all. Yeah.

 

Lisette:  Okay. Very curious. I had the same experience. By the way, our team also tried OKR’s and we failed miserably. We tried for years. We really hung on to it for years, we were so convinced it was the right way because theoretically, it sounds really good. You know, like, the theory behind it is awesome. Maybe we needed some sort of a coach though. So that Okay, so then what’s something that you tried that did work?

 

Amir:  Yeah. I mean, honestly, like, I think something that’s like, very important is kind of like just understanding context. And also, you know, like the, the environment maybe like the people that you have and stuff like that. So I don’t actually think like maybe something that works for this will not work in your team. Yeah, but like something that has really worked for us. It’s kind of like this Quote, notion and working cycles.

 

Lisette:  Okay. Could you write down a little bit?

 

Amir:  Yeah, yeah. So, so basically, I mean, but our system is kind of like insanity like I would

 

Lisette:  Like its okay. I think people just want to hear like, what is it that you tried? And how does it look for you? It doesn’t mean that they’re going to copy you, right? It’s just like, they just want to hear like, Okay, show us your insanity, and then they’ll feel better about theirs.

 

Amir:  Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, when I tell this story to farmers, they’re like, what are you doing like, this does not make sense. But the thing is, like, we work in cycles, so this kind of a new trend where you basically like, you know, allocate like, one month like, some companies do like six weeks, for instance buffer. And then you basically have like a cycle of six week when you play plan work for that cycle. And that can be like so many projects that you want to do all that are some like long term projects that actually take multiple cycles. So that is something that I think is like very, very powerful because people kind of like a start and end date. And like that you kind of have like these planning sessions. And you also have like, checking like every month or like every cycle where you can just like, do a status check on things and see like, how are things going, because if you don’t have that, and just like a never ending project, you know, then like you just like add more and more to the like scopes. And then someone like something that should take maybe a few months takes like years. So we have been in that boat like where we were just like a project and we didn’t have like a time specification and maybe we had like a deadline but like that deadline can easily move and stuff like that, like cycle is kind of like okay, in this cycle, I want to achieve this and like everybody inside the company plans and does that. So this quite powerful. And the thing where we kind of like are different from like some other companies like buffer or like. Spotify are kind of like the spot, they have fixed squads. So this means like, you work with the same people every cycle. With us, we have like dynamic allocation. So every squad is kind of like different people. So this means like, you work with a lot of different people. And of course, like this isn’t really that effective, but it kind of like teaches you, you know how to work in a very dynamic environment and you kind of like need to adapt every cycle to the new environment. So, the and then also we have like squad leadership, so anybody inside a company can become squad leaders and lead the squad. So the way that we like, you know, efficiency kind of goes down because it’s much more efficient to be like a fixed team, and work on stuff then like be a dynamic team, but we kind of train people towards like, demandingness Just being able to change quickly like environments and people they work with, and also like leadership. So, you know,

 

Lisette:  I love the idea, actually because, to me, it sounds like you know, like, I would love to lead a project sometimes. But I don’t want to lead a team for the entire year, for example, but like, I might be interested in a few projects here and there. And I also love the idea of this dynamic allocation because you put people on, you put specific people on a problem to solve that, depending on what the best people are for that problem. And then for the next problem, you pick the next group of the best people that can solve that problem. So I love that idea. I think it’s a sounds very modern, probably hard to organize. I can imagine.

 

Amir:  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think like it also requires like specific people, because like this, I mean, there’s like some really hard things about this is basically like you have to have people that are very adaptable. And most people aren’t really dead like most people actually prefer to just like work on one domain, you know, set of people, and then you kind of like built these bombs and this tribe mentality. Yeah, so… [Crosstalk]

 

Lisette:  Also work the other way, right. Like it could work. Like there’s people that you don’t like working with, but you could be like, oh, it’s just for this project. So it’s okay, I can handle it for the next six weeks, and then after that, we don’t have to work anymore. I mean, that can also be a good thing, right?

 

Amir:  Yeah, yeah. I mean, definitely, like, you know, we have stuck with this. The thing is, like, we still need to kind of like prove that it’s a better way, but I fully understand like, why most while why most other companies actually prefer like fixed squads or dynamic squads. But for us, I mean, you know, we can, like want to have people that are very adaptable and like can change and are not really stuck in like one domain or like, one specific problem. And that also, like, I think, leads to more happiness because people you know, never get bored, like, you know, in our environment like you just are thrown into many different problems. So you know, feel like stuck in something. Yeah.

 

Lisette:  Yeah. Sounds uh, yeah, for the right kind of person. It sounds like the perfect environment. But of course, you have to find the kind of person that would enjoy this kind of environment. So probably really good to look at freelancers who are used to sort of hustling and changing projects and doing this. So I can, I can see where you went on that. Now, you said before, and the number of different articles and interviews that I’ve been listening to, that you guys use asynchronous communication to your advantage. So we’ve already touched on a little bit about, about the importance of asynchronous communication because you’re a global team. So not everybody’s going to be online at the same time. And that when you need to provide context and so that you’re providing sort of these rich, context filled posts so that when you’re doing asynchronous that people don’t have to guess or wait for what you mean, in so that you’re really writing the full thing. How are you teaching people to work in this way to take more time and to pay more attention to their asynchronous communication? Are you hiring for that? Or do people just understand when they start working for you do is there some sort of a team agreement that you have? How do you get people to really be good at asynchronous communication?

 

Amir:  Yeah, I mean, I think there’s like two things here. Like first is maybe like using asynchronous two, and like having like a base that’s kind of like asynchronous first, and, like, twist is kind of like that. So that’s why we kind of build it, you know, and it uses like, different, you know, design patterns that kind of promote, you know, thoughtful communication instead of like one line communication. So I think it’s probably like, you need to use the right tools and like even email can actually work like this. The problem with emails really like that. You don’t really have like a share history and also it can easily become like distracting you know that you get like an email from outside, like you want to work on a specific project or whatever. And then some, like, you have a spam email, like, you know, something just like blocks your focus and then like, suddenly you’re gone like somewhere else. So, so that is like one aspect that I think like using the right tool for that, and that, for us is like, very important. The second thing is also like I think writing is kind of like a core skill for remote work. And maybe work in general, because it’s based on conveying ideas. And you need like, we actually test everybody for writing skills. Because it’s kind of like the baseline is communication and like, you need to be really, really good at communicating. And our baseline is also written communication. So you really need to be able to express your ideas, like in written form.

 

Lisette:   And do you have just one language on the team or are there multiple languages?

 

Amir:  I mean, it’s like maybe ninety percent English, but like everything that’s kind of like Sweden that Mr. English but you know, sometimes like we have, you know, like Russian developers, I don’t think like between them they actually, you know, speak English. I think they prefer like, oh, like we have also Portuguese

 

Lisette:  Oh sure I mean anybody with their own language speaking to somebody else in their own language? Of course you’re going to speak.

 

Amir:  Yeah, exactly. But like everything that’s written is kind of like in English. Yeah.

 

Lisette:  Okay. And, and do teams at Doist have some sort of team agreement with each other? Like here’s how we’re going to work together or is it sort of an informal as you come on to the team you feel how you’re going to work or your get shown how you’re going to work together? Do you have anything formal in place?

 

Amir:  I mean, we have like the cycle system that I talked about that is kind of like global for the whole company, and also like how we you know, allocate and You know, focus and stuff, like that’s also global, but how teams actually work, like the tools that they use the process that they use, you know, the meetings they do, like, it’s really up to them. So like some teams like the windows team does, like [Inaudible 26:24] and some other team, like Android does not do that at all. And we don’t really like do any imposing stuff and like our design team as well, like, you know, he works very differently. And we just, like let people optimize their, you know, work environment for like, their job type and like their personality. Yeah.

 

Lisette:   Do you have anybody that ever takes advantage of this kind of working that is that you’ve hired that, you know, they don’t know they say they’re going to do something and then they don’t or they say they’ve got a particular skill or they don’t or you weed them out pretty well?

 

Amir:  Yeah, I mean, I think like something that’s like very important is basically building the culture and then like having the culture like, be the enforcer. So, you know, if like somebody doesn’t really fit inside a culture, like, it’s really easy to spot and like people will flag this and then you know, like, we will depart with the person. Yeah, so I would say it’s kind of like, it’s not really like done by processes more like done by people. Like, if you work with somebody and like they are, they communicate poorly, you know, they don’t really keep their word like this one really function for a long time. Because at some point, like people who flag this, you know, yeah.

 

Lisette:  Okay. Sounds super interesting. I think people are going to really, hopefully, you won’t get more applications after this, but you might. So that’s always good to have more choice, I suppose. So I have we’re almost at the end. But I’ve got a couple more questions that I want to ask about because you’ve mentioned this before which is, um, you’ve separated your home and your work life by going to a co-working space. And there’s you’ve also in some articles that I read, it says that you really encourage people to have deep focus at work and manage their own interruptions. So there is and you said something really interesting, which was when I worked at home or when I was working in my own apartment, I tended to overwork all the time instead of you know, we sort of because life and work was blended, and then you just tend to overwork because I think that’s really interesting because so many managers are afraid to let people go remote because they think they’re going to be lazy. And I see over and over again that the opposite is true. People tend to overwork. How do you manage like in your company, and maybe for yourself that whole always-on feeling because you’re the CEO, right? Like everybody wants your attention. So I can imagine you’ve got messages and stuff coming at you all over the place. How do you manage that?

 

Amir:  Yeah, I mean, honestly, like, it’s really, really difficult, I think, to do that, especially like in our environment, but like, you know, creating like separation like physical separation between like the workspace and like your home space is really powerful or even, like, you know, having a specific room inside your house, we work. And then when you’re there you work and when you’re outside, you know, you’re at home, they can also work. So I think that’s a really important component and those for me that that’s critical. And then also having I think, like for us, I mean, that’s why like, I care so much about asynchronous communication because I think it’s like kind of alike, antidote to actually this always-on culture because you can kind of disconnect without like missing out. You know, like, I can kind of like, disconnect after this call and not really look at any messages. And I wake up in the morning and I go to work and like, nobody will actually be blocked because I didn’t, you know, respond right away. Because like, the whole system is kind of built that, you know, you have a different, like response times, and people don’t really require you to respond, right away. Of course, like you have sometimes like emergencies, but like emergencies are kind of like, you know, the old one-off. So people, you know, have my phone number, they can actually call me, like, I think the last call I got, like, was two years ago, because, like, something crashed or something like that. But the thing is, like, people kind of use this as the default way of communicating. So I didn’t actually like if we moved away from like, real-time, you know, disruptive communication, and we move to like asynchronous, where you basically, you know, have like more space and time to actually respond. And like control when you’re going to respond, I think will be like much happier. Yeah.

 

Lisette:  I struggle with it myself. It’s just I have a rule like I don’t work before 9 am and after 9 pm in my own time zone, that’s sort of a rule that my husband made me set for myself. But I must admit that I’m way happier. Putting those boundaries in, like, I don’t check social media or email or anything I really like just turn off and do other stuff. And it has helped me and I’ve separated my office in my house. And that also helped. You’re right. It’s not necessary, but it’s really powerful. Because like, this is the only room in which I work, and I don’t do any work anywhere else. And it does really helped me keep my boundaries. So yeah, thanks for sharing your tips. I think that really helps. So second to the last question. Last one’s really easy. Secondly, the last question though, is what would you suggest for people who are just starting out on the remote working journey? What either as a person or as a company and whatever tip whatever angle you want to take, what would you advise people who are just starting out what should they pay attention to for a newcomer

 

Amir:  I would actually really recommend that they go in and work from a co-working space and you know, get like some colleagues that I may be also remote like me, there’s some like really, and really cool co-working spaces, at least like in Barcelona where I live. But I think like everywhere, maybe they are like kind of being created. And that could create an environment and like also do the separation thing like between home and work and then you can also have some colleagues that you can share with, so it doesn’t really become like very lonely. Yeah, so like in my co-working space, I, you know, I do like gym sessions and like I play squash with the, you know it’s kind of coworkers, but we don’t really work on the same company like we do launches as well. So it’s really, really great and I can definitely recommend that even though like you will need to pay a little bit more for that and even like all of remote companies actually have this as a third like including us, we would just like be for co-working space of people.

 

Lisette:  That is a nice perk. So why did you guys decide to give that perk

 

Amir:  Because I didn’t like it. One of the biggest struggles that you have as a new remote worker is a kind of loneliness. Like if you’re used to working from an office environment and have like people around you, and like people who can chit chat with, like, just like going cold turkey and like work from your home like that. That is pretty brutal. Change. Yeah,

 

Lisette:  That’s true. It is really brutal. All of a sudden, you’re alone in your room, you get as many video calls as you want. But it’s not the same as exactly just hanging out with Joe, Bob and Harry at the office. Yeah, for sure. All right. And so very last question, I promise, which is if people want to learn more about you, what’s the best place online to get in touch with you?

 

Amir:  Yeah, I mean, twitter, for sure. Like my Twitter handle is amix3k. So that is one thing and then we also have like an amazing blog, where we go into like remote work. Like productivity, you know, team communication. A lot of us Like, things around that topic. So it’s basically a Doist blog? Yeah. And we have shared like hundreds of articles on like best practices like what do we ever learned, like over the last ten years doing this? Yeah,

 

Lisette:  Great. I’ll put that in the show notes too. And I can definitely highly recommend your blog, because I, there’s a lot of really good articles coming there. I see them on social media all the time. So you guys have done a really good job, in terms of the depth of the content. And then also in terms of the marketing and getting it out. It’s really, it’s really everywhere. So kudos to you and Kudos for that. Thank you so much, Amir, for being here today and for sharing your stories. I hope that this has been valuable for the people listening. Thank you so much.

 

Amir:  Well, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure and some really good questions and I hope you know, people can take something out of this.

 

Lisette:  I’m sure of it. I’m sure if it Look, I took tons of notes so people can there if I took tons of notes and others are taking tons of notes too all right. So Thanks again and for everybody listening until next time, be powerful.

 

 

Work Together Anywhere Workshop by Collaboration Superpowers

VIRTUAL ICEBREAKERS

Download our guide to icebreakers for better meetings and events

Success! Check your inbox to download your virtual icebreakers!