Remote working is becoming more popular and accepted than ever before. According to a Gallup poll, 56% of U.S. workers are working remotely all or part of the time. As time has passed, a lot of workplaces have found that there’s no one-size-fits-all formula for remote work. Every person has different ways of working.
So, what’s the key to getting remote work right?
Remote work has always been a priority for us at Glass of Learning. We want to understand everything we can about working remotely. Including its challenges, how we feel about it, and the best ways to work remotely. Here are some of the tips that we found that make remote workers successful, as well as the tools that boost productivity and make working from home much easier.
Here are some of the top habits that make remote workers successful, as well as tools that boost productivity and make working from home much easier:
- Create Daily Habits: In order to become a successful remote worker, it’s useful to have daily habits that can help establish a schedule (with scheduled work breaks included). Keeping your routines helps to keep a sense of normalcy and structure in your day-to-day work.
- Define Boundaries: If this is your first time working from home and you still haven’t found a routine that works for you, then you might find you’re just as distracted as you were at the office. It’s important that you learn how to overcome distractions when working from home. Make sure that your family and friends know when it’s okay to disturb you — and when it isn’t. Having a fixed schedule you rarely deviate from, will help you remove distractions.
- Have a Healthy Work/Life Balance: Achieving a level of work-life balance is important and working from home can blur the lines between personal life and work life. Studies show that remote workers already work longer hours than office workers, putting them at risk for extra stress and even burnout. When creating a healthy work/life balance, be sure to keep your happiness and wellbeing in mind when setting healthy boundaries around work. Also, don’t forget to log-off. As a remote worker, you will need to create boundaries that help separate work from regular life. Or else, potentially pay the price of burnout, social isolation or even depression.
- Communicate Effectively: When it comes to remote working, having clear communication is key. With remote teams, it’s nearly impossible to over-communicate. Since remote working removes us from being physically in the same office with those we work together with, the only way to stay on the same page is through effective communication.
- Create a To-Do List: If you’re feeling overwhelmed and distracted by all the work-related tasks you have to do, try writing them down. Making a plan to get these tasks done will not only reduce anxiety, but it will also make your workload seem more manageable.
- Making Use of the Right Tools: Without the right tools, it’ll be nearly impossible to work remotely. Remote work tools allow us to connect, communicate and work with people right from our home workspaces.
Here are some remote working tools that help streamline communication, enable collaboration, and improve organization for your team members:
- Zoom helps teams build connections in real time. With face-to-face video interaction and features like breakout rooms and screen sharing make it easy for teams to collaborate.
- Slack is a good option for keeping team communication clear and fun— it offers real-time messaging between teams and works perfectly for remote teams that need to have an open line of communication at all times.
- SmartSheet is a powerful project management software that we use at Glass of Learning to help us visually plan, control, and schedule projects and tasks. There are many ways to use SmartSheet including individual tracking – keeping track of your own tasks, and team tracking – delegating different tasks to team members. This software shows dependencies, so it is clear what needs to be completed and in what sequence.
By adopting some healthy remote working habits and finding the right tools for the job, working remotely can be just as productive and satisfying as working from the office — if not more so.
