5 Ways to Stay Productive While Working Remotely

Working remotely at first seems like a blessing, but without proper strategies that blessing can quickly become a curse. More freedom, in many ways, requires more discipline.

Many remote workers find that their productivity decreases after the first few months of working outside of an office. So it’s vitally important that workers implement strategies to stay ahead of the curve.


5 Ways to Stay Productive While Working Remotely

The good news is, with some structure in place, we can produce some of our best work while working remotely.


I’ve been working remotely on and off for the past two years, and by using the five strategies below, I’ve helped triple my company’s revenues and stay focused on my daily tasks at hand.

Here are 5 ways to stay productive while working remotely:


1. Set a Designated Start and Stop Time

When you work remotely, it can be easy to set your start time to when you wake up in the morning. This can be highly problematic.

We all want to sleep in, but it keeps us from interacting with our team and gives others the impression that you’re working your own hours (which can cause resentment).

If you’re working from the same time zone as your team, make your start and stop time the exact same as your co-workers, and be online and reachable for those hours.

Personally, I work in the Pacific Time Zone while my co-workers operate from the East Coast – so I start at 6AM and am online when they get into the office at 9AM EST.

It can be tempting to sleep in or leave early, but don’t give in. Don’t put things off now with the intention of getting them done on your own hours. Finish your work within your designated work hours and keep the pressure turned up. We all need a little structure in our work life – and the first place to add it is around your time.


2. Always Be Connected With Your Team

The list of benefits that come from working on site with your team is long. It allows us to collaborate and work together. Being able to bounce ideas off of teammates or getting advice on difficult tasks is invaluable.

That’s why when you’re working remotely, you need to try to come up with ways to supplement for the lack of quick access you’d have to teammates in the office.

When I work remotely, I’m always connected with my team during work hours to ensure I’m a part of the daily happenings.

With Slack, we can ask each other questions, vote on ideas, and be aware of what everyone is working on throughout the day. While Slack works great, you can also use software like HipChat, Skype, or Google Hangouts.

Just make sure that the rest of your team is on board, and that they keep you involved in the day to day happenings.


3. Keep a Running To Do List and Make it Public
Everyone has their own preferred way of keeping a to do list, and they’re all valid. What matters most is that you keep a to do list that you’ll actually stick to.

Personally, I like to log five things each day that I want to see accomplished, with the most important tasks kept at the top of the list. Gary Keller’s book ‘The One Thing’ does a great job of articulating that not all tasks are created equal. So give importance to the things on your list that matter the most.

To add further accountability to your to do list, try sharing your daily list with your team. We use Trello for task management within our office, and keep our daily to do lists within that platform.

It’s a great way to see what everyone is working on, and what they’ve accomplished at the end of the day. Give it a try – it’s sure to motivate you to cross items off before everyone leaves for the evening.


4. Have a Work Station

Too many times, remote workers think that it’s okay to work from bed, the couch, or somewhere else comfortable. If you want to get great, meaningful work done, you’ll need to set up a workstation for yourself.

It gets you in the zone, and tells your brain that while you’re in that specific station, it’s work time. This can be a hard strategy for remote workers, but I promise you’ll see an increase in productivity if you only work from one place.

It also means that you won’t be tempted to turn on the TV, play video games, or do anything else that you wouldn’t do while at the office.

If you’re serious about increasing your productivity while working outside of the office, don’t think twice about this strategy.

5. Limit Your Distractions

This folds into both points one and four, and it’s crucial if you’re going to be working out of the office.

If you’re working from home, it can be easy to start doing laundry or the dishes during your work hours – don’t fall victim to the trap. When you’re working, you need to make your work your number one priority.

Household chores can be done when you’re off the clock. Keep the TV off, and the YouTube browser window closed. Work as though you’re at the office when you’re working from home and don’t let your surroundings get in the way.


Summary

While these strategies might sound difficult to implement, they guarantee you an increase in productivity while working remotely. Bite the bullet and give them a try today.
How do you stay productive while working remotely? Leave a comment below.

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6 Quick Questions to Help You Simplify and Free Up Time for What Truly Matters

“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.”
Charles Richards

There are many important things in life.

Your family and friends. A hobby perhaps. Working out and staying healthy. Reading, learning and growing as a person.

But finding the time for what is most important in life is not always easy. It sometimes feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day.

But even if it may not feel like it, there are often ways to improve how you use your time. This week I’d like to share 6 of the best questions I have found for doing just that and for shaking yourself out of a rut.



1. What are the top 3 most important priorities in my life right now?

With a lack of focus on what is most important in your life it becomes easy to spend too much time and energy on aimless actions or work. On things that aren’t really that important but you do out of old habit or because of other unhelpful reasons.

To keep your attention in the right place it is essential to remind yourself every day of what is truly most important to you.

So ask yourself: what are the top 3 most important priorities in my life right now?

Write those three things down on two notes and put one in your work space and the other one on your bedside table.

2. What are the 1-3 most common distractions that keep me from doing my work in a focused way?
Figure out how you can prevent those things from distracting you. It could be by:
Shutting the door to your office.
Putting your phone on silent mode.
Having notifications for your email or instant messaging program/app shut off.

3. What are the 1-3 most common distractions that keep me from having quality time with the people closest to me?

The answer could for instance be your smart phone, TV-shows you just watch out of routine and not because you like them very much or bringing your work back home.

Then figure out how you can reduce or eliminate those distractions.

4. What is one healthy limit I can start setting in my life this week?

One of the smarter ways to simplify your life and to free up time is to set limits.

Here are a few key areas that you can set powerful and healthy limits for:
Your daily input. Reduce the number of blogs, newsletters, magazines, book clubs, podcasts, TV-shows etc. you follow. Just keep the ones you are really getting something out of.
Email. Just check and process your email during one chunk of time once per day. Instead of checking it 10 times or more each day.
Social activities. Write down a list of the social activities you are involved in after school or work. Maybe you are involved in a club or an activity that it is not as fun or rewarding as it used to be. Maybe you want to rearrange your priorities a bit to focus on something else this winter and in 2017.

5. How can I minimise or eliminate one thing I may have missed?

What else can you eliminate or minimise besides the things listed above? Some meetings at work or in school? Redditing or some online forum you hang out on a lot?

Really question and reconsider your own daily and weekly habits regularly instead of moving along in the same old tracks just because it is what you usually do.

6. What is one piece of unnoticed or misused piece of free time during my regular day?

There is often quite a bit of open travel- or waiting-time during a year.

What will you use such time for as we approach the end of this year and go into 2017?

Perhaps you would like to read more while riding the train or while waiting for a meeting to start. I, for example, often listen to podcasts while I’m out and about or while waiting for a meeting.

Even if you only have 10-20 minutes of commuting time each day you still have a many, many hours in a year that you may want to, at least partly, use in a new way.

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