Ok. Hi, everybody. My name is Guri and I'm here today to talk to you guys about um, life, work harmony and staying motivated. Um Let's talk a little bit about, you know what this pandemic has done to us during this uh during this time.And let's hope you can actually start seeing my screen. I do have a presentation for you guys. So just a little bit quickly about myself. Um, you know, I live in New York City and I work at Uber right now. I work as a senior engineer manager here where I'm responsible for running the reliability platform teams and in my free time, I am a huge believer in early education uh for young, uh for young girls. Um, you also see a picture of two of my kids here and during the pandemic, I picked up a new skill set. Uh that was uh indoor gardening. Let's talk a little bit about what we're gonna do today. Uh We are gonna talk about five stages of work from home during pandemic. We're gonna talk about what's even work life harmony. Is that something that's possible? And primarily we're gonna talk about how what does it mean uh to stay motivated? Um So going in right into our first, um you know, so everybody remembers that, you know, when we started off as the first stage of pandemic, uh you know, it just seems like such a great, uh you know, such a great time. Everybody was free.

We said, OK, you know, I could get out of bed at any time. I could start working at any time and work from home just seemed like such a fun thing to do as we went through the pandemic. We realized that, hey, you know what, all the family and the friends time that we used to not be able to share, we have the opportunity now to do, you know, you could actually meet your, uh, family and actually have lunch and breakfast and, um, you just meet them in person during the day.

So it was a lot of fun. The third stage during the pandemic is when we realize that the reality starts sinking in. You realize that it's not as easy as you thought it was. Uh, you know, this is the time now where you actually have to start. Um, you know, reality sinks in, you know, that if you are a parent, you also have to work from home, but you're also a parent, there is a whole bunch of things that you have to take care of outside of just working and then you start working around the clock, you are responsible for running your day to day.

You are responsible for running your uh afternoons. You're responsible for taking care of the kids responsible just for your own mental health. And the one thing that you'll end up doing is work around the clock. And then finally, the last stage is, you know, you really want to start practicing social distancing, truly, right? Not just with yourself, but then also with your family and friends and you just want to stay away from everybody. So let's talk a little bit about what do we, why do we need this harmony? Right? Uh And if is harmony a word and is it even something that is um you know, is possible today it's very easy to talk about, you know, let's try to do a work life balance. But in my mind, you know, let's not fool ourselves. There's nothing called as balance, I guess. I just think that, you know, we all have to start getting used to the fact that work and uh life and everything else that happens outside of it is all part of the same uh day, a couple of things that we really need to focus on and why do we need the harmony here?

Is, is just just the it enhances the ability to be present, right? And it improves your relationship. And at the end of the day, it all just comes down to, you know, bringing happiness and fulfillment uh to everything that you do. So, the one thing that I do want to talk about is, you know, staying motivated and just pulling this back into the conversation. I do feel like, you know, you're really never truly satisfied by work until you're satisfied by life, right? So we all have to just pause a little bit and think about what really motivates you. So let's talk a little bit about what helped me through during the pandemic. Uh I have two kids as I said in my introduction and it wasn't a, it wasn't as easy as I thought, just being able to work from home. I started off this thinking, oh, it's very easy. I'm working from home. I spend more time with them and I quickly realized that it wasn't helping. So I just want to talk to you guys a little bit about, you know, a few strategies that work for me. And I hope that you can, you know, if anything you take away from today's conversation, I would love for you to take a couple of things from here.

So the way I, you know, I dealt in the last year and a half was, you know, uh these five things. So I, first of all just decluttered my physical and my mental space. I, you know, I found a little space for myself. I was able to create a small office and, you know, just make it my own space I created work in communication agreements with my team and household. Um You know, I just wanted to be very upfront with my teams. Uh and the, and the engineers and the folks that actually work on my team as well as with just folks at home. I started creating themes and I really took my days off seriously. And finally I carved out some me time. So let's just delve into what each of these means, right? Uh declutter your physical and your mental space. So if everybody, you know, if you guys haven't seen this, you should look at Marie Kondo on Netflix, right? She talks a lot about uh what is it, what does it mean to declutter and what does it really mean to keep things that make you happy? So just starts from there and you realize that it's really a system, right? And um the one, the one thing that I did is I created a little space for myself. Uh I created a little space for just writing my thoughts and just, you know, create a carve that space off from your uh other space at home.

The second thing that I find very important was really creating the um you know, the communication agreement, right? Which is, you know, I have a very, I have a shared Google calendar with my team. We talk about um you know, and we are very transparent about our work schedules, we talk about breaks, you know, sometimes I also just add in my lunchtime into my calendar and I make it public so that everybody can see it. Uh Likewise, I also have a shared Google calendar with my family. What that means is, you know, we are able to talk and be very upfront and be transparent about, you know, how do we plan our day? How do we plan our weekends? And then finally, we came up with shared team conventions. And what does a shared team team convention mean? Really just means uh talking about um you know, what does it mean? Uh When do we log in, when do we log off? How do we do on calls? Who logs in and who, how do we manage vacations? Uh When do we all start our day? Uh Well, how do we do? Team hangs? How do we get coffee? Now in a virtual situation? The third step that I really do is I started creating teams and the way I did themes was, you know, I would just, I would block calendars and assign things that are personal and put that on my calendar.

But I will also assign things that are, you know, that are, you know, one on one. So I'll assign some time for creative work. I'll just assign something, for example, for school pickups, right? So I just started creating themes on my calendar and started sticking to it uh throughout the pandemic. And I just feel like this is something that I will continue to do after, uh all of this. So, for example, my, my most productive time for me is early mornings and late evenings. So I just ensure that I know I don't have any meetings during that time and I use that time to be able to think creatively. Uh I just make Tuesdays my one on one days with my teams. Um, Mondays and Fridays are my most creative days and Wednesday and Thursday are project operation days. And this kinda, this kinda just gives me a system on being able to manage my day and my week and f you know, and finally creating the me time. I, this is something that I knew was important before getting into this pandemic. But then in the last year and a half, I feel like this has become even more important. Um, you know, just ensuring that, um, you know, and first of all, recognizing the fact that self care is not selfish, right?

Uh You can probably, you know, you can be a 10,000% more effective if you are able to, uh, take care of yourself. And the way I do it is, I mark me times on my calendar and I really, really ensure that I take the time off seriously. Uh, in the last year and a half. Uh I've picked up a couple of new hobbies. I've started tending to my plans more closely. I've started doing indoor gardening. Um, I'm also rekindled an old hobby but then just ensure that you are carving out time for yourself. And when you carve that time out you are doing it by, you know, pausing and being very, very, um, you know, you're being very careful and very, um, you know, you, you give that time for yourself and then, like I said, you know, taking the day off seriously, uh, this was something that I, you know, I used to in the past but then now I just take it to the next level.

I really wanna plan my days off very carefully. I wanna be sure that, you know, if it's a vacation or if it's just going and having coffee or just meeting a friend, I ensure that I am taking those days seriously and I just do not take days off without planning on planning, uh, for what I'm gonna do on those days. Um, a few things that, you know, a few ideas that you could think of is, you know, you could just pick up an Air b, you know, you go to Air BNB experiences and just learn a new skill or get a new experience or just go outside and, you know, meet a friend now that, you know, you know, people are starting to get out.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is as we talk about work from home, uh, and thinking about, you know, where do we wanna go? Uh And how do we manage our day to day? Another thing that's super important is how do you create opportunities for yourself? And do you really like what you're doing? And you know, how do you create those opportunities and stay motivated at work? So this is a, this is, you know, this is, this is something that I would just advise and suggest everybody to do, you know, once a year. Um You know, just being very uh careful and thinking about, you know, are you, are you excited about what you're doing or not? But a couple of strategies that I've used to create opportunities both for myself as well as for my team members are here and I listed them down here. Um I, I kinda engage others in my journey of self-improvement. I'm very explicit about new skill sets that I wanna be able to pick up. I'm very explicit about my own weaknesses and also very explicit about uh my strengths. Uh I'm very transparent and uh with transparency comes the fact that you become vulnerable and uh ability to just go outside your comfort zone and we can do relationships. Do you know, how do I stay motivated?

I kinda wanted to just jump to the fact uh of what does it mean uh to be motivated? Um a couple of things that I do uh when it comes to being motivated are here, right? Uh I believe greatly in setting goals. But then I also realized that uh setting smaller goals uh helps a lot and just the ability to strike them off of your to do list just gives an immense amount of satisfaction. So setting small daily goals, like, you know, what does it mean for work life, health relationships, just setting those out and then writing it down just helped me greatly. Um Another reason how I try to stay motivated is I kind of remind myself as to why I do what I do. You know, I ask, I ask myself, why am I doing this? Uh, you know, why am I doing this job or, you know, why am I here at Uber? And what, what am I building are these really aligning to my both long term and short term goals and reassessing these, um, you know, uh in, you know, every year is not really, is not really a bad thing and it just helps you remind yourself as to why you do what you do.

And finally, I would just say, you know, uh, stay social, right? You know, try to be connected as possible, you know, in the last six months, it was much harder to get out and meet people. But then now, I guess, you know, people are out out there more, everybody is getting vaccinated. Just remember, you know, that it's ok and, you know, just rekindle all those relationships that you were having virtually and make the impact and the effort to be able to meet them.

The one last thing that I wanna leave you guys all off with is the fact about, you know, I only feel motivated when I uh build new things, right? This is a very common myth wherein if I am not building a new thing at work or I am not doing something new, it no longer motivates me. And the one thing that I would uh encourage all of you to think is, you know, how do you define new, right? And new is basically, you know, it just could be uh you know, you could innovate on your day to day and you could innovate on your in just general in your life, right? So I would really coin innovation as something that's useful, but then also not a novel and I really wanna push all of you to think about uh you know, moving beyond either or, and really thinking about both and, and right, and um just give yourself credit on being able to, you know, build newer things or just innovate on a day to day, like just, you know, building a new platform or taking on a new role is not just new, right?

Uh Being in the pandemic and being able to uh work during the pandemic is also a new skill set that you picked up. I would also push all of you to think about. Um what does it mean to innovate at work, right? Uh Especially when everybody is not in the same room and you still have to be thinking about um you know, new um uh new ways uh to, to connect and collaborate. Remember that innovating is not just about uh you know, getting together and writing on the white board, it could either be a process innovation, it could be, you know, making your life simple at work or it just could be a small, it could be a small uh change in the way you and you know, in your product so that your customers interact with your product vendor.

Um I kinda wanna leave you all with the final fact. Um uh that uh you know, in innovation is, is innovation and staying motivated during the pandemic is um you know, something that you continue to just double down and focus, I just feel like, you know, give yourself the opportunities, be more uh open to and more forgiving to yourself and then really just take, you know, seize the day and seize every moment.

If you guys have any questions, I'm happy to answer. If not. Uh Thank you very much for attending and good luck.