Bonding remote team over "Dungeons and Dragons"

While remote work has a world of benefits, it has one big disadvantage. The feeling of disconnect and lack of bond creeps in when everyone's working from home, with their only interactions with the team being work-related.

But is this a solvable problem?

It sure is!

Yehoshua, the co-founder of Alpe Audio, gets his team to play "Dungeons of Dragons" over a video call. Initially, the team members were skeptical of the idea, but once they got familiar with the game, there was no going back.

Yehoshua shares how it went:

"Since we all started working remotely. We needed something to bond over as a team. So we started playing Dungeons and Dragons over zoom calls. I'd screen share and show everyone a map, then I'd open up a die roller on the internet, and we were good to go.

It went amazingly well!

I simplified D&D 5E to some basic stats and character (you can find it here if you're interested) and ran a 1 hour basic adventure. Everyone was very enthusiastic and while it took some getting used to (for many this was their first time hearing about D&D) by the end of the hour the ice had been broken and they were rolling with the punches, exploring sewers and arguing whether to kill thieves or not.

What surprised me the most was that this is a fantastic activity for remote teams to bond, explore together and get to know different sides of each other that we might not have at work. We've voted to keep on playing :)"

That sounds (& looks) so fun!

Playing digital fun games like Dungeons of Dragons with your remote team is a great way to build team bonding. Couple this with occasional team meetups and you've made sure no one on the team feels isolated and disconnected again.

In this episode Yehoshua also shares how and why he started Alpe audio, lifelong learning being a common thread in his life, having a split personality, a typical day in his life, not taking any calls before 11 AM, how constraints increase his productivity, and much more.

Let's dive in!

Yehoshua introduces himself

Hi, I'm Yehoshua, co-founder and CEO of Alpe Audio, an audio education platform built for professionals who want to learn and upskill but don't have the time to sit in front of a video course. On Alpe, you can learn anything, on the go, wherever you want. Just plug it into your ears and you're good to go.

We've topics like marketing, product management, finance, investing, and more. The audio courses are built for engagement and retention, so you actually remember what you learn. I'm a big podcast fan myself, and I know it's hard to remember the main takeaways from an episode. We're trying to solve that problem at Alpe.

Interacting with audio

It's hard to do interactions with audio content. Let's say you want to take notes, but you're on a walk, now how do you take notes?

Not being able to do this kind of interaction with audio caused me a lot of frustration. That lead me to solve these problems at Alpe. When you listen to our courses, we'll make sure to send you notes, flashcards with key takeaways from the audio course you just completed, complete with a quick summary. This solves the problem of not being able to take notes while ensuring in-depth learning.

Another thing we do is, asking questions based on course content in between. You can answer those questions in audio or via text. If you answer correctly, you can proceed with the course. If not, you can listen to the topic again. This builds interactivity in our courses and makes sure you're not zoning out in between.

Not reinventing the wheel

There's already so much valuable content in this world, that we don't need to worry about creating new content. We just find creators who already have valuable content in a different format, then we convert it to audio, complete with all the other benefits we offer.

Our goal is not to reinvent the wheel. We're only focusing on driving learning through audio.

Getting the first users for Alpe Audio

The first 400 users were our friends, family, associates, basically everyone in my Facebook messenger and slack channels.

After that getting to the first 1000 is really hard, as for that you require to go beyond your personal circles which you've already reached out to. For that, we tried out all sorts of channels, from SEO to paid advertising to what not.

Lifelong learning

The common thread throughout my career and my life has been the idea of lifelong learning, and it'll be that going forward. The need for learning, the need to upskill is more prevalent than ever before.

Having a split personality

I feel I've more of a split personality. One part of me loves to invest. I've been doing that for the past several years and enjoying it. In my view, investing is a lot about curiosity. You've to be familiar with a lot of different fields to be able to correctly invest.

The other part of me loves to build. To push things forward, to ship things. Most of the things I work on at Alpe are focused on creating helpful content to help creators create valuable audio courses. I'm not a great coder, so I put more of my efforts into the marketing and growth side of things.

Things that can't be taught via audio

There are surely things that can't and should not be taught via audio. Programming and art are 2 good examples of that. For anything, if the primary content is visual in nature, then audio won't be the best medium to teach it. Besides, anything that requires your hands at work while you're learning, shouldn't be delivered via audio.

That said, 90% of the curriculum can be taught via audio, 10% cannot.

A typical day

I don't have a family yet. So I don't have a significant other that I've to spend time with. My day is usually divided into few chunks. Most productive hours being before 11 AM. On good days, I try and get most of my deep work done before 11 AM. This is why I've my first delivery scheduled on Mailman only after 11 AM.

I have a crash in the afternoon. Also, since I'm 31 now, I've to take care of how much I eat because my metabolism has started to betray me. In the afternoon, I usually do shallow tasks. Basically, tasks that I can check off a checklist. After I'm done with those, I get back into my deep work zone, usually between 4 & 6 PM.

Patterns in the calendar

I feel remote work has been a godsend for me. I'm not a lover of meetings. Until 11 in the morning, my calendar has nothing scheduled. At 11, we have our daily standup for the team. After that, we have some meetings on the product, sprint planning, and thing like that.

We try to keep things as asynchronous as possible. Just to allow people to schedule their days properly. Then most of my meetings happen in the evening because of the different time zones of the people I have meetings with.

Constraints increase productivity

It's interesting that when you have less battery in your laptop, your productivity increases. Similarly, when the wifi is spotty, you weirdly get more done. It's kind of funny, but these constraints help you get more productive.

Sometimes I put my phone to charge in another room, this creates slight friction for me to use the phone, hence I get distracted less often and as a result get more done. Imposing such constraints is definitely a great productivity booster.

On saying 'yes' to random requests

I have an 80:20 split here. 80% of the things I do are planned, while 20% I'm open to serendipity. That's because I feel you never know what can lead you to what.

In my 80% plans, I'm pretty ruthless in what I want to prioritize and what I don't. I try to align it with our team's sprint planning. If something is in this week's sprint, I'll prioritize it, otherwise, I'll push it to later. That's the idea of having this sprint planning so that everyone can prioritize their goals based on it.

Talking about the random requests, I usually do consider them but I don't shy away from saying 'no' if it's not a fit for me. I also make sure to mention the reason behind my 'no', just because I like to treat others the way I like to be treated myself.

Forming new habits

Firstly, I failed in forming a lot of habits. To take an example, I tried to make it a habit to do some daily learnings in all kinds of formats. I tried Duolingo and I failed to make it a habit.

But there's one habit I succeeded with. That is creating flashcards for myself. I read a really good essay on how making flashcards can help you augment your long-term memory. I'm happy that it's one thing I've started doing.

So whenever I am doing a heavy reading, at the end of it, I'll sit and create flashcards mentioning the key takeaways from what I just read.

On killing time

I've 2 sites that I visit whenever I've to kill some time. One is chess.com and godsunchained.com, which is a magic to gathering card game. The other thing I do for making good use of time is going cycling.

My chess.com username is @yehoshzl, you can add me there and maybe we can have a match someday.

Playing "Dungeons and Dragons" with the team

Since we all started working remotely. We needed something to bond over as a team. So we started playing Dungeons and Dragons over zoom calls. I'd screen share and show everyone a map, then I'd open up a die roller on the internet, and we're good to go. It was very fun, more fun than any of us had thought before playing.

I simplified D&D 5E to some basic stats and character (you can find it here if you're interested) and ran a 1 hour basic adventure. Everyone was very enthusiastic and while it took some getting used to (for many this was their first time hearing about D&D) by the end of the hour the ice had been broken and they were rolling with the punches, exploring sewers and arguing whether to kill thieves or not.

What surprised me the most was that this is a fantastic activity for remote teams to bond, explore together and get to know different sides of each other that we might not have in work. We've voted to keep on playing :)

One extra hour

If I had 1 extra hour in my day, other than playing Dungeons and Dragons (laughs), I'd spend it reading. I read fantasy and historical fiction are 2 genres that I read for fun. Besides, I read macroeconomics, finance and business are the kind of books I read out of interest.

How to reach Yehoshua?

The easiest way to find me is on alpeaudio.com. I'm also on Twitter @yehoshzl or yehoshua@alpeaudio.com, feel free to write to me, and don't forget to say "why not" if I say 'no' to your request (laughs).