Best practices for remote workers:
I’ve been working as a remote freelancer for some great agencies for a couple of years now, and for me this truly is the best way of working.
I love the flexibility of deciding my own hours, being able to work from home or from a coffee place (and that I can decide that last minute), kind of being my own boss while still having the fun of coworkers and the ‘agency-feeling’ all while making the time for my daughter, healthy eating habits and physical activities.
But remote work is not always easy and fun. Here are some best practices for remote workers to make it work:
Get dressed
At first it might be fun to stay in pj’s all day long — but soon enough you’ll notice you’ll be much more productive if you actually get dressed and take a shower before ‘going to work’. I am dropping of my daughter to preschool every morning, and it feels great to take a shower, get dressed and brush my teeth and when I come home I feel ready to dive into work.
Design your own working schedule
At the beginning you might fall into the temptation of working whenever you want, but soon enough you’ll figure out you need set hours to be more focused. You don’t need to work 9–5, decide when you are most productive! But make it kind of predictable and make sure you communicate those hours with your teammates, so they know when to reach you.
It also helps for yourself to set up a working routine. Decide how you’ll start your day (I start with reviewing a to-do list I made the day before, and try to dive into design work straight away), set some dedicated time for emails and meetings. Try to do one task at the time, and avoid distractions.
Track your time
I track my time with Toggl to keep note of how long a task takes me (it integrates smoothly with Asana), and to keep a great weekly and monthly overview of my productive hours (and it makes it sooo easy to bill my hourly-rate projects!)
Set a working environment
You don’t need a fancy home office or co-working space, but having some dedicated space(s) to work will help you get in the right mindset. As soon as I enter my studio, I know it’s working time. I try to leave Social Media out of this room as much as possible. I might go downstairs for a coffee and hang on my couch while scrolling through Instagram, and will be ready to go back to work as soon as I enter my studio.
I actually like to switch spaces, but keep it consistent: during the day I work from my studio, then I take a big afternoon break to be with my daughter, and then work in the evenings from my terrace or dinner table. Once a week I usually go to a co-working space or coffeeshop, to stay in touch with the outside world.
Decide on overlapping hours when working in different time zones
You can’t expect an email will be answered when it’s 4am in the morning — but also can’t sit around a whole day just to wait for your teammate to come back to you with an important issue.
Decide on overlapping hours where your project teammate is available, and make sure everything is clear for your work for the coming 24hrs.
You can use http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ to decide on meetings in different timezones.
Decide on communication tools
There are so many great communication tools out there (think Google Hangouts, Skype, Slack, Asana, …). But you can’t keep up with all of them! Decide on what tools you’ll use and make sure you are available when needed.
You can log out when you need focus time but make sure your teammates know you’re logged out and for how long. For example, when I start the design of a new project, after the initial brief I need a day of uninterrupted focus time to design. My teammates know this and respect it, as I clearly stated it to them at the beginning of our collaboration. Communicate with them, let them know you need this ‘alone-time’ and don’t just disappear and become unreachable.
Give spontaneous updates
Don’t wait until your teammate comes and ask you how you are doing in a certain task, be the one to tell them! Just drop a quick note: “I’m working on this, it’s going great, I expect to deliver it tomorrow”. So they know you are doing well and don’t have to come and ask about it.
Set up a sharing workflow
Don’t start going back and forward with emails and jpg’s, but use the amazing tools the internet has to offer to help you with a sharing workflow.
There are some cool options out there, but in my case Invision is what works best.
Connect
It’s not because you don’t share an office you should not share a relationship with your co-workers. You work together, so try and connect and don’t isolate yourself.
- Ask your teammate how he’s doing, be interested in his life and don’t always and only talk about work — no matter how busy you are. Take those 5 extra minutes you would be spending at the coffee machine in a regular working environment.
- Create a slack channel for fun stuff, where you can share hilarious gif’s and inspiring web links
- Try and meet up. See if there is a way you can meet up even if it’s only once a year. I do this at WordCamp Europe, and no matter how happy I am with working from home — it’s really great to meet up in person and have a beer once in a while.
Speak your mind
If something is bothering you, don’t hold it up or let it explode. Talk about it, as quickly as possible. And try to avoid emails to do so, it’s better to plan in a Skype call and chat about what is bothering you, than throwing everything in an email. Some things are better said than written.
What about you?
Any tips on how to work better from home? Any particular tools you use?
