Experiences Archives - Ipsem

The 10 Things That Keep Me Sane While Working From Home

Ipsem Blogging Team — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 08:52:37 +0000

Hope you are all well during this lockdown. Today I want to share with you the ten things I do every week to stay sane during this time of distancing and despair.

I live in a small student flat and spend my lockdown days working as an intern for a sports marketing agency from home. Additionally, I pursue social media/market analysis, as well as various private projects for university research. Altogether these work activities cover roughly 45 hours per week.

It is easy drowning in one’s work or entering an unhealthy lifestyle while sitting on your room all day. To remain healthy, balanced, and mentally sound, I devoted myself to the following habits and activities:

1. Start with passion

I like to start my quarantine days with breakfast, followed by blog-writing and platform building. Writing and building things that I feel genuinely passionate about always feels like the correct take-off. Life is too short to spend the entire day working on analytics and marketing reports, even while in lockdown.

2. Take regular and varied breaks from work

Allow for a wide variety of breaks; in my case, they are reading, walking, running, fitness, and cleaning. I would have a break after every 45 minutes of working. If I work longer than 45 minutes, I extend the break. Combining activities in one pause works well. I would, for example, walk past the Thames, read from twenty minutes, and call a friend as I walk back.

3. Facetime with friends, family, colleagues, and teachers at least twice a week

Use Facetime, Zoom, Skype, and other telecommunication apps to stay connected to society. On the one hand, these platforms offer the benefit of conference calls which facilitate corporate meetings during the lockdown. On the other hand, I use them as a tool to connect to society. Being able to conversate with family and friends lessen loneliness for me. You can even do a pub quiz with your best mates.

4. Refrain from drinking alcohol on weekdays

It may be tempting in the beginning, but I would not recommend drinking alcohol on weekdays. If I drink, it will solely on Saturday or Sunday. Since we are always at home now, this is the one way to differentiate the weekend from the workweek.

5. Fruit

The daily fruit break is vital for me. I eat two pieces of fruit at 4 pm. It’s is merely a consistent and healthy break from my work.

6. Expand, practice, and improve cooking skills

Developing your culinary capacity is, in my opinion, an opportunity since we spend much time at home these days. Also, I believe cooking should be an exciting aspect of student life anyway. It is part of becoming more independent from your parents.

7. Make sure not to look on the news too often

Keeping abreast of the latest lockdown measures implemented by the government is smart. But in the beginning, I was looking at the news the entire day. Keeping the bingo card of the number of deaths across the world is not beneficial in my experience, mainly because we can’t influence or control these figures at all.

8. Reading before sleeping

Reading helps me relax and thus sleep; I prefer to sleep at least 8 hours so that I can effectively work on my projects. It helps me raising productivity every day.

9. Roommate chats

I live in a house with three other students. We don’t get too close to each other because of the virus. However, in the common spaces, we daily see each other. Having short talks and making sure everyone is doing fine is a beautiful piece of conversation we still have.

10. Build something

No matter what it is. Just start building, designing, drawing, and conceptualizing ideas you never had the time for before. It helps me to stay sane and keeps my mind focused on things that I can control. As these newly built projects progress, you are going to start caring more and more about them. Consequently, investing your time in making your ideas a reality – regardless of the format (digital, physical), and whether it contributes to the COVID-19 climate – suddenly becomes worth your valuable time.

These were the ten things I do to stay sane during the Coronavirus lockdown. Please let me know in the comment box what you are doing to get through this unique time.

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My Experience With Culture Shock in Japan

Ipsem Blogging Team — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 12:10:08 +0000

Steve Jobs ones said that “Coming back to America was, for me, was much more of a culture shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work.”

In 1974, the ex-CEO of Apple travelled to India and stayed there for seven months. He became a practitioner of Zen Buddhism. Furthermore, USA Today Reporter Daniel Burke even stated that Steve considered moving to Japan to maintain a lifelong appreciation of Zen.

Here is where I come in as a Dutch student of economics. In 2019, I moved to Japan to live and study for seven months. Steve Jobs’ experiences absolutely intrigued and inspired me to go abroad. However, my journey proved very unalike.

The culture shock I experienced when I first came to Japan, or Asia for that matter, lasted for about three weeks. During these weeks, I travelled the country and settled in my new home, Tokyo. Later I discovered much about Japanese culture, especially my part-time job as English teacher and the football allowed me to come close to locals.

Obviously, the Japanese culture is extremely different from the Netherlands. It felt as if the most distinctive and conflicting dissimilarities between the two cultures are physical or mental effects of the deeper norms and values. In Japan, the nature religion called Shinto is dominant. In short, the Japanese believe that nature and the natural world is an embodiment of divinity and therefore sacred. Nature religions are not “identifiable religions” such as Christianity.

An unambiguous example of the Japanese being appreciative toward nature would the moment just before eating. Japanese thank the Shinto spirits for the natural elements in the food by putting their hand palms together and saying “itadakimasu”. This literally means “I receive this food”. It also expresses thanks for whoever worked to prepare the meal.

I believe that Shinto is visible in certain aspects of daily life in Japan. For example, natural elements such as trees, rice field, fire, wind, or water are interwoven in the language and used to express unnatural things. The language definitely was the first major unfamiliar feature of Japanese culture that I had some trouble with and made me feel anxious. However, as you gain experiences and study the language, daily life becomes a lot more unproblematic. After seven months, I was even able to read quite a lot when walking the streets of Tokyo.

Japanese people bow a lot, not just as a greeting, also to thank someone or to show respect. I was part of the university football team, and given my Dutch point of view, one of the most bizarre occurrences during practise was that Japanese players would bow to thank the grass for forming the pitch upon which they played football.

During the first few weeks of acclimatization I certainly had to adapt my old lifestyle. Eating rice on a daily basis in order to save money, left driving traffic, wearing facemasks, and extreme punctuality were absolutely aspects I had to adjust my lifestyle to.

And some of these aspects come from the Shinto history. Cars drive left because years ago, the samurai (who also believed in Shinto) wore their swords on the left side. Driving left therefore prevented two warriors’ swords touching which meant fighting.

Altogether, the experience of adapting to a new culture will require uncomfortable situations. But ones you get passed the culture shock, incredible opportunities lie ahead. I like to see culture as an iceberg, and that you will only see the cultural aspects beneath the surface if you adapt, accept and endure through the culture shock. Wonderful adventures await.

Please let me know your opinion regarding this particular approach of ‘culture shock’ in the comment box below!

Resources:

– Steve Jobs https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1177613

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The Final Days of Normal Life For Me

Ipsem Blogging Team — Tue, 14 Apr 2020 08:48:19 +0000

It was the 9th of March 2020, life in most parts of the world was normal, serene, calm and relatively uneventful. As I live in the UK, I must say that the people here started to slightly worry about the in China originated COVID-19 virus that started spreading and had reached Italy and several other European countries.

As the spread in Italy started to intensify, we knew that this virus was definitely going to hit Western Europe as well. Subsequently, our normal life ended, and lockdown measures were imposed. Nobody knowing when it would or will be lifted.

In the period just before the virus began its spread through Western Europe, I started working as an intern for a PR and sport marketing agency in London.

My main responsibility was to deliver monthly coverage reports for ten leading golf brands. Besides that, I focussed on online fan engagement and marketing, platform strategies, writing press releases and social media analysis.

The first day of the internship was obviously just an introduction. There were new colleagues, a new office which meant new software, and a new way of working I had to adjust to. Throughout the following four days, good guidance and mentoring quickly made me feel more familiar and comfortable with my tasks, the office, and the new way of working.

This first week absolutely felt like the week in which I had to prove myself. Therefore, I suggested two ideas.

Firstly, I was asked to research the Dutch golf market. I had to ascertain the leading media companies, retailers, brands, and other golf associations in the Netherlands. When I made the suggestion to create and distribute an online survey in order to obtain data concerning the Dutch golf market, the agency directly welcomed the idea and expressed their enthusiasm.

Secondly, I realized that the coverage reports I was creating were largely focussing on physical exposure, such as magazines for example. And on the one hand, this made sense because magazines are booming in the UK golf business, on the other hand, I was wondering what online opportunities there might be.

By delving deeper into the essence of coverage, considering it could mean in terms of competitive advantage, I discovered an effective, live, and easy-to-use tool called ‘Fanpage Karma’. The correct utilization of this tool enabled me to compare clients’ online platforms to their competitors’ platforms. The agency was again quite satisfied with the result and extra data-based coverage details that they could provide their client with.

The next week, all my colleagues started to work from home due to the rapidly spreading COVID-19 virus. On Monday and Tuesday, I actually still worked from the office because I preferred it to working from home. But eventually, as of Wednesday the 18th of March, I started to work on all my projects from home as well. The virus totally disrupted normal life in the UK, London suddenly equalled something close to a ghost town, and my internship experience was going to alter completely.

Please let me know your experiences during the final days of normal life before the COVID-19 virus forced governments to impose lockdown measures. Were you working like me, studying, or meeting friends?

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The Intern’s Dilemma

Ipsem Blogging Team — Sun, 12 Apr 2020 08:47:34 +0000

Internships, from my perspective, means that students are encouraged by a university to experience working for an in their particular field of study specialising company.

In my case, it is a five-month stretch, and I work for a sports marketing agency focussed on PR and branding for golf clients in particular.

Getting an internship position is often experienced by students as a rather stressful undertaking. They are talking to companies, basically selling yourself as a brand, providing reasons for them to hire you instead of someone else.

What I always liked about it is that students are encouraged to find ways that distinguish them from others. Besides, it is necessary given that many students aspire the same few positions in the beginning, ‘dream internships’ I call those.

Anyway, now that I sold myself as a brand and got the internship I wanted; a dilemma has appeared.

Both the company as well as my university require, expect, and want me to do different things

The company I am interning for wants me to create as much value for them as I can, especially since I am a low-cost employee. If I would not be here to work on administrative reports, then a more expensive employee would have to commit valuable time to the work I now cover.

Dissimilarly, the university requires me not just to comply with the responsibilities and task the company gave me. They expect me to delve deeper into platform/market analysis so that I, ultimately, present more relevant, data related, academic, and professional advice.

In my opinion, both the company and the university’s views on the internship are comprehensible. Nevertheless, it puts me daily in a position of choice, which I sometimes experience as a dilemma. On the one hand, I want to make the company happy, that is one of the primary purposes of being an intern.

On the other hand, I also understand that it is essential as a student to analyse the marketing and particular situations first before taking actions. Also reflecting on your choices, behaviour and sticking to facts to keep it academically seems logically of importance for interns.

Finding the right balance between contributing value and learning can be difficult. Most of the time, I am prioritising the company over the university as I am learning tonnes while executing my tasks.

I am curious about how other students confront this dilemma, especially in this time of crisis. Would you prioritize, the university or the company?

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