About how many hours of productive work do you get done a day? Comment anonymously if you prefer.
Coronavirus and the Remote Work Experiment No One Asked For
“We’ll never probably be the same. People who were reticent to work remotely will find that they really thrive that way. Managers who didn’t think they could manage teams that were remote will have a different perspective. I do think we won’t go back.”
Jennifer Christie, Twitter’s head of human resources, in BuzzFeed News
This is not how I envisioned the distributed work revolution taking hold.
It has been a challenging time around the world—from how we live our daily lives to how we keep our kids safe in schools and our family members healthy in assisted living communities and hospitals.
And then there’s how we work. Seattle (and all of King County in Washington State) is encouraging companies to have their employees work from home. Given that Automattic is already distributed, we’re receiving requests from the press and other companies about how to navigate what is turning into a massive global work-from-home experiment.
It’s not ideal on any level. Even at a remote-friendly company like Automattic, we rely on in-person team meetups and conferences to strengthen our connections and get work done. For now, we’ve canceled all work-related travel.
But as the BuzzFeed story notes, this might also offer an opportunity for many companies to finally build a culture that allows long-overdue work flexibility. Millions of people will get the chance to experience days without long commutes, or the harsh inflexibility of not being able to stay close to home when a family member is sick.
Or even when you’re sick yourself. How many people in America go into an office even when they’re feeling under the weather, because of pressure from the company or managers, or because their sick days come out of their vacation days? This might be a chance for a great reset in terms of how we work.
For those asking for tips, my Distributed Podcast has a wealth of advice and stories about how we operate. But here are four good ones to start with:
- Operate as if everyone works from different time zones, because one day they might. This means more communication, likely written, that is accessible to people even if they can’t attend a specific meeting or be in a specific place. If you can minimize the number of real-time meetings, do so. Embrace asynchronous communication.
- If you are hosting a real-time meeting, improve the audio (and video) quality. Don’t use conference call lines with grainy phone audio. Sign up for Zoom, which allows for crystal clear audio calls or videoconference chats. Make video participation optional unless it’s planned well in advance. Record these calls so folks who can’t attend can catch up on what they missed. Everyone must use good headphones with mics (I love Sennheiser) to minimize external noise. Krisp.ai is also cool. Need a quiet place without distractions? Try a parked car or a closet.
- We use our own WordPress blogs, called P2, instead of email as our central hub of communication so people throughout the company can access every team’s long-form notes, documents, and priorities. We’re bloggers by heart, so we blog a lot. There are other similar tools, like Basecamp. Make it your new office.
- We also use Slack for real-time chat, social connection, and urgent conversations. Check out Matrix for an open-source, distributed version. Use it to chat and connect with your colleagues, but don’t let it replace your long-form planning notes in No. 3. Also create an etiquette that doesn’t force people to become chained to it all day and all night. When you ask a question in DM, do not expect that person to respond immediately, and ask your question upfront. Never write “got a sec?” and let it hang there.
The truth is, there are a thousand ways to do remote work, but it starts with committing to it at all levels of the company. If you assume positive intent and place trust in your coworkers and employees—knowing that if they do great work in an office they can do great work anywhere—then you will all succeed.
Papal WordPress
The United States Papal visit has a WordPress.com blog. Nice! I’m going to be in New York City this weekend at the same time, maybe see mass in Yankee stadium?
Fruit Bowl
WordPress founder to use million-dollar trumpet as fruit bowl. Ah, the internet. If you thought this was real, don’t feel too bad, I got a call from my mother about it.
Comment Moderation Notifier
The WordPress Comment Moderation Notifier puts a little thing in your Windows mini-icon tray that let’s you know when you have a new comment, much like Outlook or Thunderbird do with email. Cool! Now we just need a Mac version, maybe using Growl? Update: There is now a Mac version.
Blogging Autosave
This Blogger autosave feature is something I’ve been wanting to do for WordPress for a while, but I had envisioned it as an asynchronous javascript updating the draft every minute or so if the post was over 50 words long. Perhaps this cookie approach is better. Anyone want to try it for WP?
Firefox Worm
Adam Kalsey doesn’t recommend Firefox because it doesn’t address the needs of users who don’t understand what a “browser” is and he jabs at the Firefox site. I’ve helped people like this and it’s a humbling experience. The IE info page is much worse, especially if you click on any of the links, but people don’t worry about it because IE is always there. Which prompts the obvious answer: a worm that transparently replaces IE with Firefox.
Dilemma No More
The Blogging Software Dilemma. On this day, 6 years ago, WordPress was conceived in the comments section of this blog. Hat tip: Mike Little!
Keep WordPress Secure
How to Keep WordPress Secure, by me on the WordPress dev blog.
General Comments
For the funding post, if you have any questions post them there, and if you have any general comments post them here.
Travel Minimalism
The best part about traveling is the forced minimalism. My life at home, as it has evolved, is quite complex and full of stuff. On the road I’m reduced to what I carry in a small backpack and hand bag — clutter becomes a physical burden. I really enjoy this simplicity as it helps me focus. One of my favorite things to watch as a friend or colleague travels more is how their bag gets smaller and smaller with each trip.
Squarespace 38
Squarespace has raised $38.5 million dollars to compete with WordPress and Six Apart. I used to chat with Anthony on AIM forever ago, and they’ve come after our VIP program before when they made a screencast showing how they could recreate Scoble’s blog in 15 minutes using their design tool. That’s quite a chunk of change, so it will be interesting to see what they apply it to.
18 on 30 Under 30
Inc. just announced their Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30 and I came in at #18. Cool! Some really young ones on the list though — I’m getting old.
Wandering Around Bangkok
Arriving in Bangkok at the Peninsula, and wandering around the streets for a few hours.
Zeldman Switches
I can now tell my kids about the day the inimitable Jeffrey Zeldman moved from almost 11 years of hand-coding to use WordPress. He wrote a bit about his thinking in Why WordPress? I’m about to walk out the door to go to Austin for SxSW, which last year was amazing and I thought it couldn’t get any better. When I started WordPress I had a one or two people in mind that in my wildest dreams would someday use the software, and that drove much of the development. Zeldman has switched, and I couldn’t be more honored. Now there’s even more work to do.
Crunchies Win
The Crunchies were tonight, and we were fortunate enough to win in two categories, WordPress for Most Likely to Succeed and Toni Schneider for a well-deserved Best Startup CEO. My heart was racing a thousand beats a minute going up to the stage, which never happens anymore, but I think because there were so many people I knew, and so many startups that I liked there, that it was different. Congratulations to the entire WordPress community for this win. Just wait until they see 2.5. Update: If you want to see the shortest company introduction ever and me dork out on stage, check out this video and seek to 33:40.

Seoul, Jakarta, Singapore, Tokyo, Osaka, Manila, Melbourne, Sydney, Wellington, and Auckland
Later this week I’m heading on a speaking tour of a number of cities in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand talking about the past and future of WordPress and some of the things I’ve learned in the past few years of building WordPress and Automattic. It’s been a number of years since I’ve visited these countries, and I’ve never been to Korea, Singapore, Melbourne, or Auckland before, so really looking forward to meeting the local communities in each of these cities and learning about how we can best set up WordPress for the coming decade of growth, especially in languages other than English.
If you’re near any of these cities and want to come by check out the following links for more information. Even if it says “sold out” already, as many are, put your name on the waitlist anyway because I know some places are already searching for larger venues, and there could always be cancellations or spaces open up at the last minute.
Asia
- Sunday, June 1: Seoul, South Korea
- Monday, June 2: Jakarta, Indonesia
- Wednesday, June 4: Singapore (info)
- Friday, June 6: Tokyo, Japan
- Saturday, June 7: Osaka, Japan
- Monday, June 9: Manila, Philippines
Australia & New Zealand
- Thursday, June 12: Melbourne
- Monday, June 16: Sydney
- Tuesday, June 17: Wellington
- Wednesday, June 18: Auckland
The schedule might be a little exhausting, but I wanted to make it as many communities as possible in the short window of time I have before I need to be stateside again.
Keys
I’m reminded of Mark Pilgrim’s post on keys as I take one off my keyring for the last time and simplify life just a little bit. Current count? Four: home, mailbox, car door, car ignition.
Your Blog Name
WordCamp Weekend
There’s not one but three four WordCamps this weekend. I just got back from China, where both the Beijing and Shanghai events were great. (More pictures coming soon.) This Saturday you can check out WordPress events in Portland, Salt Lake City (I’ll be attending this one, they asked me first), Vancouver, and Birmingham.