How to rock at remote working
Remote working has arrived. It’s been around for a while now however the majority of people still worked in fixed locations until we got hit by the Coronavirus pandemic.
Whist personally, it’s been a goal to have the freedom to work from wherever I choose for a few years now and a goal that I attained a couple of years back, I’ve realised that for the vast majority of people, the transition to remote has been a struggle.
Remote working has a lot of benefits, however there are certain conditions and nuances needed to ensure you get the most out of it and ensure you are productive whilst fighting off any feelings of isolation or loneliness.
As a seasoned remote worker, I’ve got a few tips that you can follow to ensure that you make the most of having the freedom to work from where you please.
Tip 1 — Space
The first and one of the most important tips is ensuring that you’ve got the right space in order to do your best work. Whilst sitting in the lounge with the TV on in the background may have worked for you when doing a day from home on Fridays, it just won’t be conducive to high productivity and undisturbed work if you’re planning on being remote for the long haul.
How you arrange your space and what it looks like is up to you and personal preference. I like to work from a desk however a lounge chair, a sofa and coffee table, a standing desk or the floor are all viable options. What’s important is that the space is exclusive to you and cut off from other distractions. It’s also important to have a separation away from other rooms where you may eat, sleep or relax.
Firstly, a separate space (hopefully) means free from distractions. If you work from the kitchen table, then you could get distracted by a pile-up of dirty dishes, or other people making food or eating. If you work in your lounge in front of the TV, then there will be no separation between work time and non-work time. The time in the lounge is for you, not your work. You want to be away from work and fully present with whatever your doing, be it spending time with your family or catching up on the latest Netflix series.
This is the same for the bedroom. There are probably people out there who will swear that they can work perfectly well whilst lying in bed. However, my recommendation would be to keep the bedroom for sleeping and keeping your work and any other technology as far away from it as possible. It’s just not healthy for your mind.
Finally, your work space does not always have to be at home. I would recommend having a dedicated work space at home, however working remotely does not equal working from home. This space could be a shared office space like WeWork. It could be your garden. It could be a quiet bench in a park or on a remote beach.
This is the beauty of remote work. It’s remote. It can be done from anywhere (within reason). Modern technology allows us to hotspot 4G (soon to be 5G) and get high-speed internet in a wide variety of places. At the time of writing, it’s summer and I’ve found that the beautiful common surrounded by woods and a cricket pitch is the perfect place from which to work in the mornings before heading back home for lunch when the sun gets too hot.
Tip 2 — Plan
This tip isn’t actually unique to remote working. It’ll benefit you just as much in an office however it’s much easier to get distracted and procrastinate when working remotely.
Planning your day and creating a structure for your work is essential. The beauty of remote work is that in many cases, you save a lot of time on commuting. Make sure you use that time wisely.
I personally used to read on my commute. I commuted quite a bit and would get through quite a few books over the months and years. Then when I moved to remote I missed reading. Suddenly I didn’t have time to read. This is obviously ridiculous though since the time was still there. It was just taken up by some other task.
This is why planning your day is crucial. If you don’t then your time will get filled with non-essentials.
If you enjoyed reading on your commute, then build reading into your day. You can be flexible with it. Maybe you want to start work earlier since you no longer commute. That’s great. You can schedule in an hour of reading after lunch. Or finish the day early. Or do it before lunch. It’s up to you!
I personally schedule my day in 30-minute blocks. Some larger tasks can take up more time than this and I just box them together into multiple blocks. What’s crucial is that you plan out your entire day. Add in lunch. Add in breaks. Add in that phone call you make to your mum. Add in time to relax.
You won’t stick to it every day. That’s OK. Some tasks sometimes take longer. Some get cut away altogether. The purpose of this exercise is to visually map out what your day looks like and create those mental timelines for when tasks need working on and what tasks are in the pipeline. You will also get a better understanding of how much you can fit into a day.
Here’s a nice prompt to help you with the planning. Every morning ask yourself this question:
‘What’s the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?’
Tip 3 — Move
I believe that by working remotely, we can all become healthier and are empowered to use our time how we choose. There is however a dark side to this. If you choose to work from home and have got a nice space set up in your home as suggested in tip 1, you may end up spending the whole day in the same place without any form of movement or activity in between. I’ve personally definitely been guilty of this. I walk up to my office, I plan out my day and get to work. Before I know it, I’ve missed lunch and I’ve not even stood up from my desk once.
Please do not fall into the same trap. Movement is crucial for both physical and mental wellbeing. As humans, we have evolved to move and a daily movement practice is critical to ensure you stay in good health.
What you do for movement is entirely up to you. However, it’s best to do multiple small sessions a day rather than just one big session. So for example, you may have your main workout in the morning, then you start your day’s work. You could add in a short walk after lunch. Walking is amazing for you. Everyone should strive to do at least 30–60 minutes of walking daily. Then you might get up and stretch, maybe do 5 mins mobility or stretching every few hours. You could take all your phone calls standing up and walking around. You could get a standing desk or just a tripod to put your laptop on. It doesn’t matter what you do for your movement, as long as every hour you get up and move for a few minutes. Your body will thank you for it and your mind will too.
Tip 4 — Socialise
Working remotely doesn’t have to be lonely. We all enjoy a bit of water cooler banter at the office and it’s nice to sit down with people and have a coffee break. You don’t need to abandon this when working remotely. We live in an age of technology and there are many ways in which to get in touch with other people.
It can get quite depressing if you’re just sat on your own working for 8 hours straight every day. Make sure you socialise. It doesn’t need to be long. You don’t need to do a zoom call every hour with a colleague. And you don’t need to limit yourself to just your fellow co-workers on slack.
You can pick up the phone and call your family. You can text your best friend. You can play a game against a mate via an app such as ‘words with friends’. You could facetime or whatsapp video or any other app with whomever. Or maybe work remotely with friends, loved ones, family. You don’t need to be a social butterfly and do this every day. But humans are social animals and a bit of contact with the outside world will help.
Tip 5 — Have a hard stop
Finally, when you’re working remotely, and have all your apps on all your devices, it can be really hard to switch off. If you’re like me and have got slack, gmail, trello, intercom and a variety of other apps and programmes that you interact with for work, and you have them synced with your laptop, tablet and phone, it can be impossible to get away from work and the notifications, even when you’re trying to relax.
There are a few ways to go about this. You can leave your work devices in your work space completely separating you from them. Or you can use the ‘do not disturb’ mode on your device when not doing work-related stuff or when trying to relax. Or you can just switch off all notifications from work apps since you can check the apps regularly when you are working anyway and then they won’t disturb you and cause unnecessary stress and anxiety when you are spending time with your loved on.
Finally, you could just delete those apps from your personal devices and use them exclusively on your work devices.
There are many ways to do it. But it’s essential to ensure that you don’t even see any sort of work notifications popping up when you are spending time away from work. There’s nothing worse than putting a strain on your relationships because you aren’t present when spending time with them and instead keep getting caught up in putting out fires at work.
Conclusion
Working remotely is empowering and amazing. I highly recommend it to anyone since it can really improve your standard of living and your work-life balance. You do need to go about it smartly though and ensure you have the right checks in place and the right set up to ensure you can excel and not either get distracted by outside forces or end up being overworked because you never switch off.
Finally, have fun with it and be creative. If you want to work outside, work outside. No garden, just go to a park. If you want to read more, no problem, you can build it into your schedule. And finally, get out and move and ensure you spend enough time away from work to recharge.
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This article was written by Stuart Munnich. If you’d like to know more or receive notifications for future articles, please head over to the Agoge Project Website or subscribe to updates right here!
