Remote Working Part 2 – Tips on self management

The number one reason men and women fail to succeed at working remotely is they don’t see the need for high-quality organisation and sustainable self discipline.

I have been operating remotely for almost a decade since I first unearthed Quickbooks online an ‘on demand’ small business accounting software service and was spellbound by the fact that if you can perform accounting online then why shouldn’t it be workable to do other key types of of work at a distance?

Whilst working remotely has its obvious perks there are numerous things that workers don’t realise which evolve into problems that result in lower productivity and reduced morale. The top reason for decreases in work output from remote employees is interruption and it is a verified and well known fact that it can take a worker up to 0.33 hours to return to their original efficiency level after experiencing a disruption.

Research also shows that members of both sexes who are regularly experience disruptions are more likely to suffer from decreased memory capability and are prone to developing mental health problems in later life. We live in an over communicated world and it is critical that you are acquainted with the problems this causes before you start working remotely. When operating remotely you should do everything feasible to eradicate the threat of being disrupted.

Here’s how I do it:

1, Get a routine, make sure that everybody knows it and obsessively maintain it!

Good examples are a regular time of day when you look at or send mail and make or take phone conversatiions. Before I began working remotely I used to receive in the region of 200 e-mails every 24 hours. Now I think I am unfortunate if I get more than 4. To ‘restart’ my e-mail experience I changed my e-mail address and obsessively took precautions to protect the details being passed on to anyone. I then made sure everyone who I gave my e-mail address to, to use it wisely and sparingly. I also set up an automatic response that swiftly informed anyone sending me mail my schedule for attending to mail and if someone required my urgent awareness to mark it as ‘Urgent’.

2. Get rid of alerts.

Turn off every feature that can send you a visual or audible alert. This includes portable and
ordinary handsets and types of alerts from electronic mail such as display events, warning sounds, screen changes to your inbox folder and of course facing a window. Get a door on your study and put up a ‘do not disturb’ sign on it.

In ‘Remote Working Part 3 – ‘Tools of the trade’’ I will reveal my favourite tools and software.