Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash

How to Work Remotely: A Step by Step Guide

by Emily Latorraca, Senior Manager of Strategic Partnerships and Business Development

Like many other companies, the Propeller team recently transitioned to remote work to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and protect our team and communities. To help your team manage this transition, we’ve put together a list of tips and tricks to stay productive and connected from your home office.

Setting up your workspace

• Set up a designated space to work. Whether you set up your equipment in a separate room or a section of an existing room, it’s important to have a true “workspace” just like you would in an office. You may not always use it, but it’s a good place to start the day.
• Work near a window if possible. In offices, you’re used to having long distance views to rest your eyes and use different muscles. It can be nice to glance outside to stretch and rest your eyeballs.
• Have you been working remotely for a while now? Change up your workspace! Move your workspace to another room or corner.

Planning your day, getting dressed, etc.

• Determine your hours. It’s easy to start early and end late when you don’t have a commute, but try to treat your home workspace like you would your office, and set a time to “enter” and “leave.”
• Wear the same clothes you would wear to work, potentially including shoes. If you don’t typically wear shoes inside, find a pair just for this purpose. It sounds strange but it helps you feel more productive.
• Think about what you want your “meal plan” to look like for the day. For some people, it helps to treat meals like they would in the office, and block 12–1 for lunch.

Productivity and collaboration

• If something isn’t making sense over chat or email, pick up the phone or jump on video chat. It’s often easier to talk it over in “person” when text is being misconstrued.
• If you don’t have back-to-back meetings, block your calendar into 1–2 hour chunks to set structure and create personal deadlines.
• Be intentional and explicit with how you communicate project updates with teammates. Give visual aids where possible.

Dealing with pets, kids, spouses and more

• Working from home still means work! Have a relatively direct conversation with family members about what it means to “work from home.” It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re available for housework, projects, conversation, etc.
• If you have a roommate/spouse also working from home and are in a small-ish space, coordinate call times ahead of time so that there are no surprises. Maybe even spend a few minutes the evening before to coordinate schedules and “block” areas of the house if needed.

Staying connected and mentally healthy

• Use video whenever possible, and turn on your video when you join a video call. It creates more connection than staring at a blank screen with a stationary picture on it.
• Schedule check-in meetings with colleagues that you’d usually catch up with casually in-person. Whether it’s chat, video or a phone call, don’t wait for a “work reason” to reach out to someone. Especially when others are working from home, the connection will be appreciated.
• If you see a meeting on someone’s calendar and you’re curious about the topic and want to join in to listen and learn, just ask. It’ll probably be fine, and again, it creates a sense of connection and awareness.
• Take a few minutes during the day to get outside, even for 10–15 minutes. Mid-day exercise is energizing, especially if you need to work later into the evening.

It’s okay to have fun, too

• Take time in your work day to have fun or do something that makes you happy. It can get boring for some people to be isolated for long periods of time, so do what you need to do to stay positive while working alone.

Helpful links

LinkedIn: New to working remotely? These resources can help

Tomayko: Your team should work like an open source project

Slack: Managing remote work in Slack

Slack: Why Slack works when you work from home

Entrepreneur: Coronavirus: Best practices for working from home