Working remotely from Bangkok for a month
Tips and tricks on how to prepare for a remote adventure
Last winter, after a couple of months without much daylight and a lot of rain, my boyfriend and I decided we’d really love to skip winter the following year. It’s been our dream to work remotely for more than a couple of days at a time so we decided to ask the founders of Homerun (the startup we both work for) if we could work remotely for one month in January before leaving for a one month vacation in February. In this post, I’d like to lay out some tips and tricks on how to work remotely in a company that’s typically working together in the same office.
How to start
You might wonder how to ask for something like this. Preparation is key. Have a rough plan on how you would make this experiment work ready before you pose the big question. Luckily, Homerun is already very flexible and forward-thinking which made this a bit easier for us to begin with. We talked to the founders, explained what we’d like to do and made sure to emphasize this would have no negative impact on the rest of the team. Soon after that, we got the green light and happily started planning our trip.
Planning and Organising
First question: Where should we go? Side-note: As Homerun’s people operations manager I am responsible for coming up with sensible policies for our team. I had written our Remote Work Policy recently, so I knew that some places would be off-limits because of their timezone. Because collaboration and teamwork are important pillars of our company culture we needed to find a place that allowed for significant overlap in office hours. This helped us narrow down our choice to Southeast Asia.
Fun fact: Choosing Southeast Asia as our work location also gave us the last push to pick New Zealand for our monthlong vacation in February since we would already be halfway there. 🙌
Why Bangkok?
Most people we talked to about this did not understand our choice right away. So let’s take a step back. Initially, our first choice was Bali. Bali is known for being a paradise for digital nomads and it seemed to us that it ticked all our boxes. However, this was before we had given these boxes some deeper thought.
It turned out that the month we had chosen for our remote adventure is the absolute wettest month Bali has to offer. Of course, we could have taken our chances and gone anyway (these days you never know what the weather might bring) but there were other things to take into consideration like internet speed, co-working spaces, accommodation, food, etc.
It was really important for us to not take any risks when it comes to a stable internet connection so after spending a lot of time on Nomadlist we decided to make Bangkok our home for one month. We found a nice apartment right next to a Muay Thai boxing school (we even managed to take classes three times per week 🥊 ) and booked two desks at a nearby co-working space called The Hive.
Daily routine
After getting over our initial jetlag we managed to find a really nice routine. Since Amsterdam was 6 hours behind we simply reserved our afternoons and early evenings for meetings with the team and used the mornings for some early workouts and some deep work without any distractions.
Time flies when you’re having fun
A month turned out to go by pretty quickly and while I thought that working remotely when the rest of the company wasn’t would be really hard I found that for me it was not. I realized that I don’t need to be physically present to stay close and connected to my colleagues (though that could change after an extended period of time). All in all this month increased my productivity levels quite a bit because I had time to really focus without any distractions. It’s not that I don’t get things done in the office but being remote for one month made me realize how frequently I get distracted when surrounded by colleagues in our open office.
Interesting insights
The biggest eye-opener of this adventure was how much focus I was able to get during this month. Initially, the position of People Operations manager doesn't necessarily sound like the easiest job to do remotely (since it revolves around people) but after having tried it I know I will do it again.
Another thing that really surprised me was how much I enjoyed not having a social life for a month. It made me much calmer and more mindful. It also made me more productive with regard to non-work related activities (reading books, working out, etc.). Being in a different timezone and having no engagements in the evenings and weekends gave me a lot of time to reflect and I realized I just don’t do that enough at home. It also made me feel energized and gave me a boost to try out new things, which is why I would recommend a remote adventure to anyone who’s been wanting to try it out.
If you want to know more about my experience working remotely or my work as People Operations manager at Homerun just send me a message or drop by our Amsterdam office for a cup of ☕️.
