The last two years have changed the attitude of each person in the world to remote working. Somebody has understood that their job can exist only in tight contact with other people. Someone else has found out that they are quite comfortable working from home and there’s no need to waste time on traveling to the office, lobby talks, unlimited coffee breaks. But all of us understand that it’s a massive trend now, as 55% of businesses globally offer some possibilities for remote according to Review24 report.
If you’re a newbie to remote working, we give you this shortlist of good and bad practices that happen to you while doing your job from home, and a few tips on how to improve your self-management, comfort, and overall professional results. Let’s start with dos.
1 Do: Estimate your daily tasks and plan your day/week/month goals
That’s something you’ve definitely done before! But now you can take a beautiful bullet journal and try a thousand ways of self-management from home. While estimating and planning, don’t forget to include the time you need to eat, each hour’s breaks and stretches. That’s OK to see that only 5 hours are left for working tasks. Recall how many hours you’ve spent on endless meaningless meetings or stood talking at the cooler in the office. With proper planning, you’ll be able to become even more productive at home, more concentrated on daily tasks. Don’t forget to check your progress every week, get feedback from your manager, and talk about your current tasks with your colleagues to keep everybody on track.
Set additional small goals to show yourself that you can go even further. Like learning a few options of a new tool, or try new technic in something you were doing in the same manner for a long time. It helps to bring changes in routine and bright up monotone days with a spice of unknown.
2 Do: Treat yourself properly—eat, drink, sleep, rest, train
Health is your main fuel to live a full life. And to do the job, you have to stay healthy. It’s not only about various food and lots of water, you have heard of it a thousand times. But it’s about an orthopedic chair for working place at home and the high-quality mattress for sleeping with the natural bed linen. It’s about regular doctor visiting and sincere self-care. Remember what a stewardess tells you each time you board a plane? First, put an oxygen mask on yourself, then care about others. Without a full charge of the inner battery, you won’t be successful, both remotely or in the office.
Regular rest during the day will turn you into someone more productive than people who don’t know how to stop. They do stop their working activities by only switching to procrastination that drains their time and concentration resources. So, if you’re reaching your phone to check your email for the tenth time, put it aside, get up and stretch yourself like in a kindergarten warm-up. Or dance, or drink a cup of water while doing squats.
3 Do: Zone your home space
Even if you live in the tiniest place, tell everybody the forbidden zone where you’re working. Mark it in red. Set the time limits. Use your headphones. Find a zone where you can call your parents during a break. If you’re easily distracted, move everything that distracts you from the view, except for working objects.
Maybe your clothes aren’t so important if they’re comfy and don’t mess your working mood, but if a shirt makes you feel fancier, put it on daily!
4 Do: Pay attention to your family, even if you think they distract you too much
If your kids come in the middle of the important meeting to your room asking you for something, you can pay them a few minutes and return without cries and hysteria and no need to apologize. Different situations may happen, but in most cases, you’ll be able to choose between arguing with your family or trying to deal with them. Even if you think that it’s impossible, remember that your work is something you’re doing for your family’s sake, and your family loves you and must understand how important is your work for you and for all of them. So if your kid is asking for a play, you just look at your schedule and fill another break you planned with a 15-minutes basketball tournament.
5 Do: Keep the contact with your colleagues and care about them
If you miss them, just say so. Or if you see that somebody is suffering from loneliness or has a disease and needs support, ask if they need any help. If you can, call them for a walk or bring some homemade food. Simple human-like things can be heart-warming for those who get into trouble or are so stressed that they can barely deal with their routine. Doing the right things and supporting others outside your workspace can become another source of inspiration for the challenges of a remote job.
And here are a few dont’s. Try these tips, and discover how you become even more productive.
1 Don’t substitute your life with work
Even if you think that some tasks are taking more time while doing at home, it’s not a reason to overtime. Don’t try to fit your previous schedule, find your new tempo, and follow it until it starts improving. Remember that your hobbies are waiting, your sports miss you too. As you’ll dig into work deeper and deeper, there will be fewer reasons to return to your own life. But remember that your life is limited, while the number of tasks is endless. And you have to choose consciously what’s important for you.
2 Don’t wait for the better times
“It’s only now, then I’ll return to the office, and everything will be like before…”—did you hear this tale before? Nothing can return. You have to adapt to new circumstances and succeed here and now. There’ll be no better time to start changing yourself to feel better and work more efficiently. Do it now.
3 Don’t force yourself or others to love remote working
This “holy war” is relatively new, but you can see that the discussion is pretty intense. Whenever you like remote working or not, you shouldn’t risk your relationship to proving your position. Stay neutral in those discussions to win the most. If you don’t feel like loving remote, additional emotions will only start a bigger fire inside and won’t help you to adapt if you have to. If you like remote working, share with your colleagues some tips on how you come to it and how you organize your life.
4 Don’t multitask
Forget about it. Just don’t do it. If you’re currently snowed under the avalanche of simultaneous tasks, cancel all of them, and prioritize them. Do everything in order, and then you’ll get less messy results and won’t burn out too fast. If multitasking is an ordinary thing for you, just set your limits and do not overwork yourself.
5 Don’t forget to party!
Each week, treat yourself with new food, new views over your window, meeting new people, doing new things, singing new songs in the shower. The feeling of being a rainbow unicorn of luck and success is not something that comes naturally, but a result of positive circumstances that you create on your own. So think about parties, plan and live partying, and become a beam of smiles and inspiration, even if you sit all day in your old favorite chair shredded by your cats.
