5 Productivity Lessons I Learned During My 8-Year Remote Career

I was never a fan of working at offices. Too many distractions, too much commuting and on top of that too little time for productive work.

So, I started working remotely 8 years ago and never looked back. During this time I worked as a freelancer, consultant or just held remote positions at companies. And with that learned how to give the most value back by being productive and efficient.

Here are the 5 most basic and important things you can do to be good at working remotely.

Control your environment

Ever heard the phrase that you are the average of the 5 people you surround yourself with. Well, you also can only be as productive as your surrounding allows you to be. Your environment has a big impact on your life, your work, your habits and even your thoughts. It's not always possible to fully control it, your kids might be running with 300mph around the house because they are locked inside or neighbors might want to let you listen to their music. With all of that, try to focus on what is within your control.

Start by making it pleasant to work.

Be proud of your working space. Design it in a way that will make you want to spend more time in it. Make it comfortable enough so you can work for hours, but not to comfortable to get sleepy. And with that said, please don't work from bed. Yes, you can. But you shouldn't. Especially if you want to be productive.

Dress the part

Staying in your pajamas all day long is all cozy and nice, but as far as work goes it's a killer. When not dressed properly you feel like doing everything else but work. The connection between a day off and staying in pajamas and chilling is too strong in your brain. Try to not give it any reasons to be lazy. Also no need to go overboard and work in costume. Just put something comfortable that in your mind screams working.

Avoid distractions

It takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task after being distracted.

What?! That's crazy. With so many notifications from your phone, imagine what is that doing to your productivity. Every notifications means lost focus and context and getting your head out of the zone. Try to minimize distractions in any way possible. Use applications that block all notifications for a period of time. Leave your phone in another room. Tell your family that you want to focus and don't want to get disturbed for the next 1 or 2 hours.

Design your routine

The human brain is amazing. Don't you find it fascinating how you might walk on the street and smell something and that brings you back to a day 10 years ago and puts you in a certain mood. The same can happen every morning with the right triggers and the mood can be "mood for working".

My routine is just making coffee. The bad is that I don't feel like working until the first sip of coffee, the good is that it takes me exactly 1 minute to do it. For you it might be different:

• Light exercise to get the blood flowing
• Meditation
• Running
• Breakfast with family
• Gratefulness practice
• Cold shower

For you putting you into working mode might be a combination of 2-3 steps. But what is important is to make it a habit, finish the steps and start working. With time your mind will associate both things and will automatically be ready.

Also if you have the freedom, try to work when your biological clock is most inclined to work. For some people like me that's 6am in the morning, for some it's later in the day or even in the night. Don't listen to articles saying that you should be an early riser. Try to find out what works best for you.

Prioritize

This seems to be one of the most misunderstood concepts. When it first came into the English language, the word "priority" was singular. This meant that you have only one priority and everything else comes after that. Nowadays with our busy lives we often talk about multiple priorities. And unfortunately, this is taking a toll on our productivity. If you try to do or even think about multiple tasks at once you will do subpar work. And also if you start with the least important task, you probably won't have enough focus and power when you get to your most important one.

Strive for flow

Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skill to the utmost.

- Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

Everybody felt that way. And that's the perfect state for work. To achieve it you want to prioritize your tasks in a way that will allow you to. The most important factor to experience flow is to have a clear and slightly challenging task just outside your comfort zone.

Not to get too deep into the idea of flow, prioritization can help you achieve it:

• specific goals and plan of action
• start your day with the most important and challenging tasks
• have a clear indicator of completion that is in your control

Plan from yesterday

One way to start your day on the right foot is to have everything prioritized and prepared from the day before. You don't want to waste 30 minutes of your prime time to planning. Use yesterday for that. Your mind was in the right state, had the right context and knew exactly what the next steps are. Use that knowledge to write a plan.

Another reason to do it is that you have 2 selves. Your future self and your current self. Your current self will know exactly what your future self should do to make the most impact, but your current self wouldn't really want to do it. So if rely on your current self to plan the day, when that's also who will have to do the work, it will always try to avoid the most challenging and rewarding tasks. Get that power back and plan today from yesterday.

Ownership

There are rarely ideas that resonate on such a deep level with me more than the idea of Extreme Ownership. The main idea is that you should own your mistakes, be proactive instead of waiting for directions and have the discipline to always come through.

You might wonder how is this going to help you to be more productive. And the answer is that it will put you in control. When you feel in control you are much more likely to put the work, be more assertive and confident with what you are doing. That automatically increases your productivity as well. As a remote worker that's extremely important because at time you feel alone and you need the discipline to put yourself in the right mindset for work.

We are going to have a separate article about this one, because it's really important, but in general these are some things you can do to own your work better:

• Treat everything happening on the project you work on as your work. Don't go into a silo, thinking that you only have responsibility to finish your task. Look around, be aware what others are working on, give ideas and make everything your business.
• Help others. You finished your tasks for the week? That's great! Now check if everyone on your team is in the same boat. What can you help with? Who is struggling? If no one needs help, what can you do to improve the project in general?
• Don't let your Ego get in the way of learning or admitting your mistakes.

Improve and adjust

It's highly unlikely to create your perfect schedule where productivity will thrive from the first try. What you need for that to happen is to constantly adjust and try new things. If they work incorporate them into your daily routine, if not throw them away (or try them again in the future).

Automate

Try to automate all tasks that are taking you long time and you don't really pay much attention when doing them. Ideas for automation include:

• block distractions with Pomodoro method (25 minute of work, 5 minute break)
• set do not disturb icon when doing focused work
• block distracting sites when working
• have reminders when needed and don't rely on remembering stuff, write down ideas, etc.

Learn from others

Being productive is a never ending quest. What worked yesterday might not work tomorrow. Life changes, priorities change, work changes. Don't stick to a routine just because it worked before. Don't stick to a routine just because if works for someone else.

How can you by yourself change your routine?

• Find out what works for other people (articles)
• Treat improving your productivity as an important task and work on it diligently
• Spend time every month (or every weekend) revising what works and what doesn't work anymore
• Read books on the topic

Conclusion

Being a good remote worker involves wearing many hats. And as with any other skill if you don't improve and work on your productivity it will get rusty.

If you have a team and want to improve its productivity check our email course.