How to increase your productivity while working remotely

There are many companies operating completely as remote first companies and many other companies are started giving remote as perks while hiring.

It's really good to see companies care about employees and their preferences. However there is lot of challenge to make remote working work for you and your company.

I will discuss some of the problems and how one can solve it. There is always multiple ways to solve any process related problems, this is some way I have solved while working remotely for Jobbatical

Over communicate

Update your working hours and communicate team wide and all the people who closely work with you in daily or weekly basis. This will avoid a lot of surprise while working remotely.

Start your day with Async standups

Start your day with what you accomplish yesterday and what do you focus on today. And communicate that to your team through slack or similar platform. This will serve as a todo for yourself and keep yourself focus to do, what you commit in the morning.

Companies do standups synchronously on office setup, this is nothing but a standup asynchronously. You can still do standup weekly synchronously for remote teams. This simple technique will create discipline and commitment while working remotely.

Good network connectivity

Ensure that you have good network connectivity. This is must, since you might need to sync through video, internet audio calls or screen sharing.

This will save you from embarrassment of not having quick calls when needed.

Optimum temperature

Its usually underrated. But you know what, optimum temperature is very much required for productive work. If you are sweating all day, you won't be productive. Spend time to find your optimum work temperature and fine tune your heating system or AC to act accordingly. Trust me, you will be surprised by the productivity it produce in long run.

Seating and Posture

This has been discussed in almost every productivity tips, this is not only useful for remote work but also on office environment.

Find your focus work timings

Often we make a mistake of working continuously while working remotely. But that is completely against the flexibility of working remotely. Find your most productive focus timings and work in patches but not too short and not too long. Find the right balance.

Most people work very well in the morning and late evenings. They might find it hard to be productive in the afternoon. Find those patterns and work accordingly.

Too many intervals will kill the benefits. So find focus time which is sufficient enough to do small tasks in your work and have a good feel about being productive.

Time overlap with your team

Make sure atleast 2 hours overlap with your team, this will help avoid communication issues with your team and also to get any quick answers while working.

Also this will help others to schedule any meeting with you without sacrificing their family time.

Split the time and plan it wisely

While working from home or from remote office, we often get carried away with working hours. We always have tasks to be done. And it will wait for tomorrow. Give your best and rest after that. Else you will be over working unknowingly and burnout very quickly without enough family time or time for yourself to cope up with everyday work.

Its better to draw a general time schedule for everyday. You don't need to strictly follow it, but it will give a good idea of where are you losing your time and prioritize time very well.

Be responsive

This is closely related to over communication. Try to be responsive and alway resolve other questions in the mornings without delay and when you end your work for the day, make sure all the questions asked and discussion going on which involves you are covered.

This is very important, since working on different timezone will already have time delays to get quick answers. Don't delay it further.

Delegate work and share knowledge

This is connected to being responsive. Remote work gives you the opportunity to share your knowledge on daily basis to your team so that there won't be any quick questions which requires you to answer but your team can provide overview based on your knowledge sharing.

Often people fall in the trap of keeping things to themselves and feel false pride about their role in the company. Unfortunately thats very bad in a team. A good team player share their knowledge, collaborate and delegate work without having ego.

Use short focus time techniques like Pomodoro

For effective focus on work, use time management techniques like pomodoro. Work for 25 mins highly focussed and take rest for 5 mins. And another 5 mins for slack and emails. Then repeat. This way you can easily work more productively and also it will enhance your health through 5 mins consistent break out of your sitting desk.

Share your win

Asynchronously share your win once in a while through internal blogging platform, slack or even through email based on how your company share things across team. This will help others to see what you are working on and also to avoid transparency issues on work.

This also helps to see what other teams are doing and how to collaborate well with other team through sharing small wins from you and your team.

Be a remote shadow with your colleagues across teams

Get to know about your colleagues day to day work is really important while working remotely. This will create a bond between remote team mates. It will develop a work friendship beyond just work.

This is very much needed in two aspects. One is to know how your company and different team mates function everyday and how can we help them through our work.
Another aspect is to develop a good work relationship without human bias and assumptions about individuals.

Have a local group or network

Try to involve in local like-minded groups even if you are working from your couch. Social interactions are always needed to avoid burnout.
If there is no local network, create one 😎

Hope these productivity tips help you while working remotely next time or prepare yourself for your next big remote jobs 😊