The amount of birthday cake and cupcakes I get to eat since I left Daily Planet Productions ltd. has really decreased. There are no pizza Fridays or random baked goods showing up in the kitchen. Which might be good for the waist line but is a bit sad… There is something about that camaraderie of an office that really makes it wonderful. If there was one thing I really missed about working in a space with a team it’s the cake. Alright it’s not really the cake but the people that come with it all that delicious cake. The freedom of working remotely whenever and wherever is amazing. No matter how great your virtual team is there is something wonderful about spending thirty around the kitchen table for someones birthday. You really get to know people and build relationships that makes your team stronger. Those kind of relationships take so much longer to build online and with far less cake.

We need deadlines to get work done so I’m not saying we should get rid of deadlines all together. But I believe we should get ride of those hard deadlines we set. For instance, telling someone “I’ll have that for you at 1 PM on Wednesday” or “5 PM on Friday”. You now made yourself two deadlines, you have to have whatever you’re working done on that day but also at that time. Those sort of things are going to drive you crazy and just make you stress out. If you aren’t able to hit that 1 PM deadline you are going to have to email the client and let them know when its coming. Why couldn’t you have just told them to look for it in the afternoon on Wednesday? You would of saved the stress and avoided wasting your time having to send that email. I personally try and set much more relaxed deadlines; that’s one of the luxuries I have working for myself. I spent years living with hard deadlines. Clients emailing and calling every 15 minutes because they needed a spot by a certain time so it would air for broadcast the next day. I knew that wasn’t how I wanted to run my business. Instead I say, “I’ll have that for you by the end of the week or end of day”. It makes for a lower stress level since “end of the day” means different things to everyone and I’m not setting arbitrary times since I know most of my clients are in different time zones anyway.