An ideal work environment is not the fake answers we give in interviews. To work in a workplace for a long time, you have to be yourself, work at your best times, and also to have spaces to think and to develop your personal skills, even via part time jobs.
One of the most worthless questions I often get from all of my past interviews was: “What is your ideal working environment?”
My inner voice screamed: I have no idea man. I have to work first to know if that workplace culture fits me.
But professionally, I had to say: “A dynamic working place where everyone has their own voice…”
After around 1xx times going to the interview, I used this lie to a level that I actually believed that it was really my thought.
To know if the working environment is fitted or not, in reality you cannot guess. You actually have to be part of that community, work with them, chat with them everyday, to really judge if you truly belong to that organization…
To describe the ideal work environment for you…
My ideal working environment is that I don’t feel like I am working… I really enjoy what I do daily. Everyday I am doing what improves my skills…
Also, my company has free snacks every Friday… I need to know that my boss does things unharmfully to me or anyone at the workplace.
A raise is great to be honest, but that’s not what keeps me around.
If I already had the skill sets which the market desires and improved that everyday, then I wouldn’t have to worry about the money…
In the end, we only have 40 years of working life (if you’re healthy enough). So, let’s not waste it into a dead end job which constantly erodes you.
“Describe your ideal day at work”
Breakfast is my ritual. I am morning person, so I need beef, “Bún bò”, “Phở bò”, an hour later, an Americano or a Latte is perfect.
Since I am having a baby now, my breakfast is cut short. I would only grab a set of “Cơm nắm” (Squeezed rice cake) or “Xôi ngô” (Sticky rice with corn), with pork jerky and boiled chicken eggs.
Getting to work around 9.00 – 9.30, I would start my day with difficult or urgent tasks in the morning, then bigger tasks in the afternoon.
The morning tasks
- Keyword research and planning (costs a lot of neurons)
- Workflow tasks (setting up workflows for a big task or to work with lots of people)
- Project performance review
- Send tasks to team members (so they would have more time to do it)
- Set up new projects/workflows
- Read related articles about the related topics to my jobs (new tech, new workflow, new Marketing trend…)
The afternoon tasks
- Data work (defining, scraping, evaluating…)
- Writing contents and designing materials
- Meetings
To make my day more energized, I often do what I like first, whether it’s for company or my personal project. For example: Write a short English article on an interesting topic and publish it to my site. I need to practice my English, this is an optimized task, also to get my own channel on-air. But, this opening note should take no more than 30 minutes.
To have this ideal and highly productive workday, I realized that just a main job is not enough. I need another source of ‘food for the brain’ to keep my mind sharp: a side job.
Why does side hustle make the main job more interesting?
It’s ok to have a side job, that’s a great way to improve your skills, and also not-being-bored of your main job. Personally, a side job also helps you have extra cash, to keep your network open, and also to keep you updated with the market.
However, you will need to have a smart calendar to balance your jobs. My main job is to work as a SEO expert, with an opening window at my company is to be a Data specialist. Data is the key to everything, also it is becoming a hot trend; in Marketing, data is the vital element to analyse products towards the customer behaviour.
But, in my opinion, I still need to maintain full skills as a marketer with deep knowledge in the Vietnam market. So, I still squeeze in to take a few Advertisement jobs, which are suitable in terms of timeframe, and also to maintain relationships.
What does the ideal working environment have to do with these?
Many companies don’t want employees to do freelance jobs, since they are worried that the work quality would decrease when their employees are distracted. They aren’t wrong… In reality, lots of people just do ‘fine’ with their job, to have more time to think about their parttime jobs.
- An HR Manager who recruits seasonally for a new hotel brings fresh talent acquisition strategies back to their main corporate role.
- A DevOps Engineer building a frontend web app on the weekend gains a deeper empathy for the developers they support from 9 to 5.
The fact is that the human brain can only work in one field at a time; therefore these jobs are actually supportive to each other in order to enhance the employee skills, leading to higher-quality outcomes.
The main issue here is that some companies don’t realize their potential. Instead of pushing it away, a healthy, ideal working environment should arrange rest times for employees to take breaks, think about their work, and improve their mindset.
People who keep their brains active and continuously learn new things simply perform better than those who stick to one job but lack updated skills and market awareness.
