You don’t need to be a digital nomad to enjoy remote work and how I do it

8 min readJan 9, 2017

For over 2 years I have been working full time remotely as a front-end developer. Switching from the standard office to the remote mode has been the best decision in my career so far. Working that way let me achieve the completely new scale of possibilities.

Such freedom, however, comes at its price. Remote developers must deliver and constantly prove they are trustworthy. Employers have no possibility to control the actual hours spent on development, therefore the whole work culture is built on trust and partnership.

Lack of the actual guidance means that it’s rather hard to get a job at a junior position and even more experienced folks are responsible for their self-discipline and productivity. On the other hand, people who manage their time efficiently, work less and do more. I would like to share my experience from the past 2 years and tell about the productivity struggles I had and how I dealt with them.

Remote-first approach

If you want to become a remote developer, this term should be your main requirement for any potential employer. You might be surprised, but companies with physical offices hiring people on-site can still be perfectly suitable for remote workers. Remote-first means anyone can leave or even don’t come to the office anytime and be able to work normally for a long time using their own laptop and Internet connection only.

How to tell the difference between company working remote-first and the old fashioned onsite company?

Here are some examples which I consider as red flags:

Your work depends on the infrastructure not accessible outside the office (access to the repositories, build servers etc.)
There are mandatory meetings you can’t join remotely and fully participate in the discussion same as the others present on that meeting
There are channels of communication excluding people who work remotely (eg. project-related discussions taking place out of the official channel like email or Slack)

Companies taking seriously remote-first usually take benefits even if there are no remote workers among the teams. That approach usually provides a clear workflow, effective communication and automates everything that is worth being automated.

I’ve been working for two companies with remote-first dev teams, both have implemented it differently and both have done it well judging from my experience:

Assertis has two on-site offices in London and Gdańsk. Effectively, the two locations are remote to each other, so the people actually working remotely full time (there are several of them) are equal to everyone else.
X-Team on the other hand has no office at all. Each team is distributed around the world having developers in most timezones, so remote-first for us became the remote-only at the highest possible level. Some of us, including the CEO even live as digital nomads working and traveling at the same time.

Getting hired is just the beginning of the remote journey. The most difficult part is to get motivated every day and effectively plan your work keeping the balance between coding and personal time.

Asynchronous workflow

One of the biggest benefits in the remote work is a flexible time. I can schedule a doctor appointment in the middle of the day, do some errands in the city hall in the morning, or just finish earlier to pick up my daughter from the nursery school at 4pm and compensate the missing time in the evening or the next day. On the other hand, I can switch off all distractions anytime I want and focus on writing the code. All of those can be achieved thanks to the asynchronous workflow.

Working asynchronously involves eliminating everything that forces you to do things in the fixed timeframes: regular stand-ups, meetings, working in company’s core hours or using tools that takes away the control of your time. It’s the actual possibility of doing your work whenever it’s comfortable and suitable for you, delivering all you’ve committed to at the end of the day.

For me, a great example are daily updates. Back in the days I would stop my work at the certain time, go several meters away for a meeting, give my update and hear the others. Totally synchronous. Unproductive most of the time. Now I give my update using the Slack channel. I compose a list of resolved issues with extra information which have or have not been completed during the day. Other members of the team can read it whenever it’s comfortable for them, same with giving their updates. It works just perfectly.

Slack

Most of my communication flow goes through the Slack. We keep all the discussions on appropriate channels to let everyone in the team see what’s going on. But even there nobody expects getting an immediate response each time. Unless something is on fire (or someone blocked) I can snooze notifications and focus on the code, checking Slack from time to time.

Email

Email is amazing for catching up with notifications from Github, Google docs and Dropbox. I start every day by reviewing updates about new issues, comments, pull requests, merged branches, new files etc. For the last 2 or 3 months I’ve had only one meeting on Hangouts related to a very important milestone in the project.

Given that our team is distributed across Poland, Philippines, Greece and Australia, syncing all these timezones would make someone working at night. Instead, we all work whenever it is comfortable for us.

Habits and daily routines

Self-discipline is a remote worker’s second name — it’s rather obvious. But each person is different and methods that work for one developer, might be ridiculous for someone else. For me, the core of my discipline is routine and stability. I need to follow my daily and weekly rhythm.

Sleep

I try to wake up every day at the same time and sleep at least 8 hours. When I’m tired, my productivity falls dramatically making me absolutely useless at work. Sometimes, when my daughter wakes up in the middle of the night and doesn’t let me sleep normally, I give myself extra time in the morning to compensate the missing sleep.

Staying fit and healthy

In order to work effectively I also need to maintain my body and my mind in a reasonably good shape. Over a year ago I decided to drastically change all my habits related to sport and eating. In several months I proudly lost 15kg!

I’m absolutely sure it wouldn’t be possible without a rule I set to myself at that time:

Plan your workouts for the week first
Make them the highest priority and uncancelable
Plan everything else keeping in mind that workouts are the most important

Thanks to that I lost most of the excuses and gained new habits. I started to do indoor cycling, weight lifting, running and even crossfit for a while. I ran a half-marathon first time in my life.

Sport became my addiction and a solid source of energy. Pain in my back simply disappeared and I could work more efficiently than ever before. Regular workouts also automatically motivated me to eat much healthier.

The right workspace and socialising

First 2 years I worked from home. I had a special room for my home office and it was usually just fine. Eventually my daughter became more noisy over the time, and it was rather difficult to maintain the focus when she was around. I had to find a different option.

I tried working from cafes but I always feel that I shouldn’t sit there when my cup is empty, therefore due to my fear of not buying much enough, cafes were rather an expensive option. Another solution was a coworking office.

I’ve found a great place near my apartment. From the current perspective I wish I did it much earlier. I’ve met very nice people, most of them are working in completely different areas than me (architects, graphic designer, SEO specialists, SAP consultant, supervisor of clinical trials, all of them remote, like me). There are several benefits from the coworking:

it’s possible to manage the separation between work and personal time simply by changing location
there are other people working around you, which is motivating
good coffee included in the price
it’s cheaper and more comfortable than cafes
you still don’t need to come if don’t want to

It’s nice to get a coffee or lunch together and talk a bit about something not work-related.

Additional productivity tools

There are several apps that helps me keep working comfortably on my Mac:

Nozbe: an extended todo app following the GTD methodology.
Tomato One: simple timer to track pomodoros.
Noizo: app generating an ambient noise, you can play eg. sound of the storm and cafe, one of my favourite.
SelfControl: app that blocks your own access to distracting hosts, impossible to be turned off unless the timer expires, very resistant to hacking. Killer app for procrastinators like me.
f.lux: app that makes the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day — very good for the eyes.
hide.me VPN— because I don’t trust public hotspots and my government, got yearly subscription, no problems with speed and reliability so far.

Traveling

There is something odd with me regarding work and traveling. I just can’t do both at the same time. I need my routines, my constants.

I say odd, because I see a lot of my friends combining both very frequently with no issue. They can spend half of the year traveling around the globe, we see each other at some conference and they can just switch to the coding for half an hour between two presentations. And they still deliver the high quality code. Don’t get me wrong, it’s amazing — the ability to switch contexts so easily is a dream skill for me. Maybe I should travel more in order to learn it?

Luckily, I don’t need to have that ability. I just take 3–5 days off and go to the conference doing networking, watching presentations, catching up with all my friends and getting motivation from all of that. Rest of the year I like to spend with the family at home — it might seem boring but I love it.

Summary

Assembling a new team based only on people you can find nearby is difficult. When working remotely, you have much bigger chances for work with great specialists.

Remote work is not for everyone, it requires some self-discipline and experience. On the other hand, it also brings a lot of benefits. You don’t need to be a digital nomad if you don’t want to, or the very opposite — the key is the flexibility and your own decisions. That’s why I love my job.