Each week, we publish a portrait of someone who plays Paatch. It's a very short format that talks about remote working habits and Paatch's experience! Paatchers come from different backgrounds, from different professions, from different cities and have different statuses (entrepreneurs, employees or freelancers) but they share the same credo of free, productive and friendly teleworking.
This week, we present to you Noémie.
Who are you? What is your job?
I am Noémie Kempf, I am Brand & Content Strategist, I support brands that want to reinvent themselves and adapt their content strategies to be visible and audible to their audience. I am also the creator of the podcast The Storyline, which explores how sociological, technological, economic and political developments therefore impact our consumption patterns. And finally, I co-founded Komuno, a school to learn how to create engaged communities!
Where (TV) do you work from most often? (city? campaign? from home? coworking space?) How often remotely?
You can say that I am full remote since I live a nomadic life! So I work in cities and places that change frequently.
When it comes to these workplaces, I like to vary according to the type of tasks to be done: at home for the big efforts of concentration, in cafes or coworking spaces when I am in a more social mood, and in the mountains or at the sea when I need to recharge my creative batteries!
What advantages do you see in teleworking?
Working from home brings a certain amount of freedom, including the ability to explore other places and lifestyles.
I also find that by teleworking, you are autonomous and responsible for what you produce on a daily basis, and you can go from a form of face-to-face work that is sometimes experienced in the office to a job that works on clear deliverables and trust — much more fulfilling, and which allows you to regain control of your work rhythm and schedules!
It therefore allows you to free yourself from small daily elements of mental load: no more trips to work morning and evening, the ability to do short errands, extra-professional activities during the day...
In short — for me, this mode of operation offers a form of balance and really makes it possible to create working conditions that resemble us — without losing social ties if you know how to surround yourself with other remote workers!
What are the disadvantages? What do you do to avoid them?
Sometimes, you can find yourself working in places that are not adapted or ergonomic (on a sofa, on an uncomfortable small chair, in noisy places...) — I try to avoid all this by identifying in advance the places where I will be teleworking! And I do yoga to take care of my joints and my back!
The other trap in my opinion is to completely blur the boundaries between the pro and the personal. I don't think it's necessarily bad — a lot of my friends today came from my professional background. But sometimes you lose track of time and you find yourself taking work everywhere, all the time: on weekends, in the evening, when you spend time with friends... I often fell into this trap when I started working from home and I am in “detox”! I don't want to open my computer on weekends or after 18:30 — 19:00 And finally, we get a taste for it;)
What would be your 3 tips for someone starting to work from home?
Hard to summarize in 3 tips! But I would give the following:
- Operate by daily, weekly, monthly objectives: in teleworking, face-to-face and the time spent connecting to your computer have no value. It is the quality of what we produce that counts!
- Set yourself time to disconnect: to avoid staying connected until late at night, skipping lunch time...
- Don't forget to go out and see the world: social relationships are essential for balance! So, I'd recommend trying to spend at least half of each day with other remote workers — and if that's not possible, replace those moments with lunch, dinner, or drinks with friends. In short, see at least one person every day to decompress and not become a bear in your cave!
What is your best memory when you participated in a Paatch?
There are so many! It's funny because I could mention my birthday party in the mountains, the afternoon boating/swimming in the Arcachon basin or the evening at the restaurant enjoying oysters that ended up in a cocktail & dance session in a pub...
But strangely, the moment I enjoyed the most was a fairly random evening in Morzine that we all spent playing werewolf! There was a crazy complicity between all the Paatchers, it was a very simple evening but with a benevolence and a crazy atmosphere — I remember that I was reluctant to go to bed!
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To review in images the memories of Morzine and the famous birthday party of Noémie, It's over here.