How to Hold Yourself Accountable When Working Remotely
Every great worker is responsible for holding themselves accountable, and that sentiment can’t be truer for remote employees. When you work from home, you don’t have any sets of eyes watching over you, and subsequently, when it comes to accountability, you’re responsible for yourself.
No matter how great your work ethic may be, these tips and tricks for holding yourself accountable will be more than useful.
Make micro and macro goals.
Everybody needs goals. Establishing both short-term and long-term goals for yourself in regards to your career can help keep you feeling motivated and on-track during the regular work week. Start off by setting both year-long goals as well as quarterly goals for yourself and evaluating your progress at each checkpoint.
Goals can include things such as progressing in your skills, taking on more responsibilities, and producing new and more inventive work. In making goals for yourself, you’re not only holding yourself more accountable for your work, but also prompting yourself to produce better work.
Create daily lists.
On an even smaller scale, creating daily lists of work-related tasks you’d like to complete during the week can go a long way in strengthening your productivity. Writing down everything you want to accomplish from cleaning out your inbox to finishing up the final steps on a recent assignment can help your brain feel organized. You’ll also get a sense of gratification when you get to cross items off of this list throughout the day.
Furthermore, lists are useful in learning how much work you can realistically get done during a workday. The more lists you make and evaluate, the better you’ll know what you can expect to regularly accomplish in a day’s time. Knowing your limits is important as a remote worker, and along with keeping you accountable for your work, it will also keep you from burning out.
Set timers.
Sometimes you might sit down to check your email and find yourself doing the same thing two hours later. Setting timers for each task you do can be a useful way to keep you on track and focused on what priorities you need to accomplish each day.
Timers are also useful for reminding you to get up and stretch and to take breaks. Nobody should be working eight-hours straight without a few built-in breaks for standing up and getting some food in their system.
Reward yourself.
One of the quickest ways to up your work productivity is to reward yourself everytime you accomplish something big. In doing this, you’ll tend to work more quickly and more efficiently to get to your reward. You’ll also feel more motivated to keep working.
Rewards can be something as simple as walking to the local coffee shop for a coffee or taking a five minute Facebook break. Determine what you enjoy doing and allow yourself to indulge in small rewards everytime you complete a larger task.
Send regular updates to your employer.
A great way to remain accountable to yourself is to remain accountable to your boss. While many remote employers are quite hands-off when it comes to micro-managing, it can be effective to send in daily or weekly lists of accomplishments and updates to your employer.
Doing this will both keep your employer up-to-date and inspire you to be an efficient worker so that you can impress your employer through these update lists. Just because you’re not in the office doesn’t mean you can’t use the usual office pressures to motivate yourself.
Review your work.
Finally, taking the time to review your work allows you to realistically and clearly see both the quality of it and the speed at which you’re able to get it done. If anything is going to be a motivating factor in holding yourself accountable when working remotely, it is going to be your own desire to produce quality work.
In spending time to review what you’ve accomplished each week, you’ll feel empowered by your accomplishments. You’ll also see where you can improve. Make use of these two feelings to keep your work on-track and your work ethic going strong.
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This article was originally published on Remote.com
