Remote working and work from home jobs have become popular much before the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, remote working is no longer a privilege now and the pandemic has made it the need of the hour for businesses as well as employees.
One thing that has become clear after knowing that the battle with the COVID-19 can continue for a couple of years is that remote working is the new reality of the world.
As a novice remote worker, you will feel good knowing that even the people who started working in remote teams years before you did have struggled to be more productive and work faster.
It’s a common misconception that you accomplish more if you sit for more hours at your work desk.
Well, efficiency matters a lot when it comes to generating results out of your work efforts. It is completely possible that a person with greater work efficiency generates more output than others and that too in a lesser amount of time.
As I have years of experience working from home and managing remote teams, I will share some of the best ways to work from home that you and your remote teams can follow to get work done faster.
Also, notice that the ways that I will discuss here do not trade-off productivity with speed and put equal weightage to both the factors.
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Is There Any Need to Switch to New Productivity Tactics While Working Remotely?
Absolutely! Because the techniques that you’ve used to improve your productivity at your typical office environment will prove ineffective after you switch to remote working.
While working remotely, you will come across completely new working conditions such as the absence of supervision of your manager, etc. So, instead of sticking to your old productivity tactics, you have to adopt newer ones that we will discuss up ahead in this article.
Let’s Start With the 7 Most Effective Ways to Work from Home
When you work remotely from the workplace of your choice, you may get a bit relaxed with your job responsibilities. However, you should address that when you are a part of a distributed team, your manager and employer will be eyeing on your performance more than anything.
So, what you need to do is to follow these tried and tested work from home tips that will help you deliver more quality work in lesser time:
Also Read:
- 7 Best Practices for Working Remotely to Follow
- 11 Most Effective Work From Home Tips To Follow Right Now
- How to Work Remotely and Still Be Productive
- Working From Home with Kids? Follow These 9 Tips to Avoid Getting Distracted
1. Develop a routine, don’t just go with the flow
The most important thing that we forget to do while working from home is to develop a daily routine. While the routine thing is not that much applicable during the work hours, you can create separate morning and evening routines.
What these routines will help you with is to prepare you mentally to start and end your work hours.
A typical morning routine would be like – getting up early at the same time, do some exercise or meditation, take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, and then get to work.
Routines help you to stay happy, productive, and aware of what you need to do at different times of the day.
2. Choose an exclusive space to work
Picking a random place every day as your workplace in your home affects your performance because you need to adapt to the surroundings each time.
The best thing is to have a dedicated home office. However, if it’s not possible to set up a home office on short notice or if your work from the home arrangement is temporary, you can just pick a suitable space in your home as your devoted workplace.
While choosing the space to work, make sure that it’s quiet, separated from your leisure area, and proof against interference from other people at your home.
An exclusive workspace allows you to concentrate on your tasks in a better way.
3. Don’t take your WFH job for granted! Be responsible
Often many of us, while starting work from a remote place, tend to procrastinate and don’t take our job tasks seriously.
However, you should know that lack of responsibility is the biggest productivity killer that you may notice while you work from home without any active supervision.
So, all you need is to become more accountable for your actions and give your best in each task. It’s also important to keep yourself motivated to meet deadlines for all your tasks.
4. Dedicate your productive hours to the most important tasks
Another major thing that you need to focus on as a remote worker is managing your time and tasks effectively.
You may be well aware that there are specific time slots of the day when you are at your optimal productivity level.
It’s always great to work on the most important and the most difficult tasks during your most productive hours.
You can plan your everyday tasks on a to-do list, prioritize them, and use timers to identify tasks that are more time-consuming than others. Moreover, try to finish unimportant tasks as soon as possible, so that you can commit more time to tasks that are of higher value.
5. Lean on the best work from home productivity tools
In today’s modern world that is dominated by technology, you need to make use of various work from home tools and software to enhance your productivity.
At present, there is a wide variety of productivity tools like Google Drive, Zoom, project management software – ProofHub, Gantt charts, time tracking software, calendar, etc. that you can use at your convenience.
However, make sure that you only choose productivity tools that you actually need to avoid putting pressure on your pocket.
For instance, if you are working on multiple projects and need to manage several teams simultaneously, then you should go for a project management software.
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6. Interact with your team outside the work boundaries
One thing that becomes clearly noticeable while working from home is the lack of social interaction.
No doubt, communication with remote teammates is the most important thing to stay productive and up-to-date regarding work. But having a chit-chat session with your remote colleagues every now and then will help you overcome the feeling of being isolated.
Moreover, by socializing with the people on your team, you also strengthen your bond with them. As a result, it will be easier for you to coordinate with them and put collective efforts as a team.
It’s better if you connect with your teammates using different channels like instant messaging, voice calls, and video conferences. Also, if possible, organize and participate in various remote team building activities.
7. Take short breaks and involve yourself in some physical activities
Taking short breaks during work is of paramount importance because they help you to feel refreshed and become more creative.
Unlike a traditional office environment where coffee breaks and water cooler chats seem completely normal, most remote workers feel dishonest towards their work after taking short breaks.
However, as a remote worker, consider it your right to take short breaks that can range from 5 to 15 minutes.
While on a short break, you can take a brisk walk outside your house, do a couple of stretching exercises, or relax your mind with a brief meditation session.
How ProofHub can help you to be at your best as a remote worker?
ProofHub is a leading all-in-one project management software that is equally suitable for all kinds of teams including remote ones. It combines several productivity tools that you can use to manage your projects, tasks, and teams effectively even when you are working remotely for your organization.
Being a cloud-based application software, you can access ProofHub from anywhere using the internet and a device of your choice.
Currently, ProofHub is among the top-rated productivity tools that you can use to your advantage while working remotely.
Following are the key features of ProofHub that you will find useful to become more productive and complete your tasks faster:
- Online proofing and markup tools to review and give feedback on designs and documents
- Kanban boards to see how each task of a project is moving through different project stages
- Gantt charts to manage tasks, set dependencies, and meet deadlines
- Custom reporting allows the creation of project and resource reports in no time
- Timers and timesheets to track and record all the time data regarding tasks
- Cloud storage to upload, share, and organize all your files and documents from a centralized place
- Built-in chat module for real-time communication with colleagues and teammates
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Conclusion
Working from home can be fun and at the same time productive if you know how to do things in the right way as a remote worker. The ways to work from home mentioned in this article can help you realize your full work potential and finish your tasks faster. Moreover, all the steps are simple and you can start following them from today.
Before you go, don’t forget to share the ways to work from home mentioned in this article with the people in your circle who are also working remotely.
