Best Practices for Working Remotely

With the nov­el coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic unfold­ing, many employ­ees and con­sul­tants are sud­den­ly work­ing from home in an effort to embrace social dis­tanc­ing. I have worked remote­ly for years for dif­fer­ent clients on a part-time basis but this is the first time in my career that I have worked full time at home.

Some peo­ple love work­ing remote­ly. Oth­ers detest it. Over­all, I like it. It has some draw­backs (such as feel­ing iso­lat­ed) but for me the pos­i­tives out­weigh the neg­a­tives.  I love not endur­ing con­gest­ed and stress­ful com­mutes to a client site—especially dur­ing rush hour when it is dark and rainy. More often than not, com­mut­ing feels like a waste of time. Work­ing from home lets me spend more time with my fam­i­ly, play with our dog, or just get outside.

This week­end I skimmed Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried and David Heine­meier Hans­son to glean some addi­tion­al ideas on best prac­tices when work­ing at home. Here are some ideas I liked from the book.

• Be very avail­able: As my cur­rent client can­not see me in per­son, I make more of an effort to set expec­ta­tions of when I am avail­able. For exam­ple, when I go for a lunch, I change the sta­tus mes­sage of my instant mes­sag­ing soft­ware so that any­one who writes to me sees “Get­ting lunch right now.” If I grab a cof­fee in our kitchen, I change my sta­tus mes­sage to “Be right back.”
• Sched­ule your time: Sched­ule your time so that some of your hours over­lap with col­leagues so you can ask ques­tions about a giv­en task or help oth­ers with their work. As I work in the same loca­tion and time zone as most of my col­leagues, this is easy. If your team works in anoth­er coun­try, sched­ul­ing your time may require more thought.
• Con­nect with col­leagues: Get­ting work done is not just com­plet­ing tasks. There’s an ele­ment of encour­ag­ing “social cohe­sion” with­in a depart­ment by using chat rooms or instant mes­sag­ing groups to com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er informally.
• Pro­vide sta­tus updates: Depend­ing on your man­ager’s style, he or she may want dai­ly or week­ly sta­tus reports. My cur­rent client keeps track of my assigned tasks using a Con­flu­ence page that I update as I make progress on assigned work. This pro­vides vis­i­bil­i­ty to the assigned tasks I am per­form­ing and shows a his­to­ry of suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing work.
• Get the client involved: I like this idea from the book: “Make sure they (the client) feel that this is their project too…Set up a space online where you can use a shared sched­ule, show them work in progress, ask them about feed­back, and lis­ten to sug­ges­tions. When the client feels part of the project, the clien­t’s anx­i­eties and fears will be replaced by excite­ment and anticipation.”

In addi­tion to the ideas pro­vid­ed in the book, here are some approach­es I’ve used over the years:

• List your work: Before you sign off for the day, take five min­utes to list what you hope to accom­plish the next day. I find this tac­tic works well for me to keep focused and main­tains momentum.
• Stick to a rou­tine: Pick a sched­ule you plan to work and adhere to it. If you com­mu­ni­cate to a client or employ­er that you will be work­ing from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and stick to it, it is one way to build trust.
• Know when you’re most pro­duc­tive: I have always been an ear­ly ris­er and feel that I am the most pro­duc­tive rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly. That means I typ­i­cal­ly start at 7:45 to 8:00 a.m. each day after help­ing get­ting my daugh­ter’s break­fast ready.
• Make time to be phys­i­cal­ly active: One of the down­sides to being at home is that there is a risk of being seden­tary. Two years ago, I bought a stand­ing desk but I still have to be mind­ful of exer­cis­ing when my “com­mute” is just walk­ing from the bed­room to the office next door.

Contractors know the routine

As I have been a tech­ni­cal writ­ing con­sul­tant for more 10 years, I like this excerpt from the book, high­light­ing how con­trac­tors can make ide­al remote work­ers: “If there’s an ide­al train­ing reg­i­ment for remote work­ers, it’s being a con­trac­tor for a while. As a con­trac­tor, you have to be able to set a rea­son­able sched­ule, show progress at reg­u­lar inter­vals, and con­vert an often fuzzy def­i­n­i­tion of the work into a deliv­er­able. All of the skills are per­fect­ly suit­ed for con­tract work.”

I have includ­ed some ideas that have worked for me as well as ideas in Fried’s and Heine­meier Hansson’s book. When work­ing remote­ly, what best prac­tices do you find work well?