Relate is an app that matches people on values, like how important family is to you or how crucial it is to you to live a sustainable life. Being a hybrid between live events and digital matching, a lot of things have changed  the past months for Philip Jonzon Jarl, CEO at Relate. The situation has both called for rapid changes to their business model as well as how they work and what tools they use. We see an apparent theme in Philip's tips: how staying close - to tasks, people, numbers and values - really helps in a distanced world.

Daily check-ins and check-outs: The whole team meet virtually for 5-10min each morning and each evening. In the morning we go around ”the table” to share how we’re feeling today, and what our main goals and tasks for the day is. In the evening we share how the day has been and if we managed to accomplish what we set out to accomplish. It’s a fantastic and affective method to stay focused and hold each other accountable, but also to stay in touch as a team.

MITs - Most important Tasks: Super effective tool for progress and aligning individual work in a team. Each month we together conclude on what three things that are most important to accomplish this month for the company. Then, each Monday morning as part of our weekly startup meeting we all make a post in a specific Slack channel of what our personal 3 MITs for the week are, preferably related to the overall MITs of the company that month, together with a personal intention that we set for ourselves for the week.

Scheduling regular creative sessions: One thing we quickly noticed when switching to remote working was that a lot of the innovation and design creation in terms of our product happened spontaneously in the office. Now, we schedule time every Friday morning where anyone can connect and we usually set a topic like a part of the product or a specific feature, but without any other goal than to create a space for innovative co-creation and ideation.

Bonus tips: For personal efficiency at home I can highly recommend the MacBook/iOS App Be Focused. It’s a tool for the Pomodoro method, where you super easily can create 25min sprints for yourself to complete a specific task, with a timer counting down, followed by a 5min break timer. It gamifies your workday in a fun way and keeps you focused.

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