Remote work has been steadily gaining popularity for some years now. According to an article published by smallbizgenius, in 2019, the number of people who work from home has increased by 140% since 2005.
Now, most of the population is working from home. For most of the companies that had not adapted work from home before, this time has been an eye-opener. Many companies including the big ones like Twitter, Barclays, Mondelez are allowing employees to continue work from home indefinitely. as there is a wide range of tools that support organizational productivity, allowing employees to work remotely. From employee onboarding software to training tools, everything is geared to make workforce manageable.
Here, I am sharing a some remote working tips that I have learnt in my five years of remote working experience that could help you make your work effective personally and professionally.
- Follow a routine: When we go to the office, the routine comes naturally to us. While in the comforts of home, it can become a tough task. Having a routine in place will not only keep you in a better mood but your teammates will also know the right time to contact you.
You may have to put in conscious efforts to keep up a routine till the time it becomes a habit for you. Read here to know how to make new habits stick. A general rule of thumb to make a habit stick is to repeat it for 21 days without fail.
For me, personally, having a fixed sleep time and wake up time helped to schedule other tasks better.
Some people feel most productive in the silence of the night while some feel most productive in the early morning hours.
Any time when you are able to get your work done without distractions is the best time. Try to get the most important tasks of the day done during these hours.
For eg., you can work for an hour on one task then take a break for 10 minutes, check your Instagram DMs or listen to music, and then work on another. Or you can pick some other duration depending on your tasks and personal suitability.
Taking regular breaks lets your brain and body relax and also gives you the opportunity to spend some time with family at home or friends on a call.
The best solution is to keep a list of tasks you need to do with priority assigned to all of them. Do the most important tasks first, including the tasks you need to take care of at home.
To begin with, you can set up a mini DIY work station.
To keep myself away from any distraction and to be my productive best when it matters, I try to keep my phone away from me whenever I am working. Eventually, I stopped feeling the urge to check the phone now and then.
For some people, this distraction could be Netflix. A solution could be to plan for your work to be completed at a fixed time every day. At that time, you can switch on your Netflix and go binging without any guilt of not giving your 100% to your work. Know what distracts you from your work and keep away from it during work hours.
Communicate: Being remote, communication is what suffers the most. So, you will have to be proactive to chase away any delays due to a shortage of communication. The best way is to communicate with the risk of over communication. One solution to enhance communication when working remotely is using RingCentral, a communication platform that provides messaging, video conferencing, and phone systems, among other features. When you are working remotely, people cannot see you working. They also won’t know if you are available or not. Communicate this beforehand.
When you are working remotely, people cannot see you working. They also won’t know if you are available or not. Communicate this beforehand.
If you have a doubt, ask. If you find some valuable information, share. If you feel like talking, ping someone. This way, you will also be able to bring your water cooler conversations to your home.
This is also a perfect time to start using a collaboration tool like Slack, Asana, Trello etc to avoid any gaps in communication
So, If you ask someone a question, give them time to return back to you. Meanwhile, you can work on some other tasks.
You should also ping your team members individually sometimes to just build up on those friendships that you might be otherwise missing by not going to the office.
If you are a tester, we also compiled some tips for making testing remote-friendly.