5 Tips on working remotely efficiently
By: Tung Fam
Tags: Remote Working, Efficiency, Home Office, WFH, Remote Work

TL;DR

Be empathetic. Communicate in a way that makes it feels like you’re right next to the person.

Motivation

I decided to write this article to share the tips I learned from my experience of working remotely. These tips can be useful for freelancers, remote workers, startup teams without an office and even for those working in an office since you may also use chats or do Home Office (Work from home).

I have some experience of working remotely (e.g, as a freelancer or for startups). But most of the time, it was a combination of working with a team in the same office and collaborating with teams across the globe. For example, when I was a PM, we were working with teams from Kyiv, Hanoi, Manila, and SF.

Tips

The general rule that is applied in most cases is: Be empathetic and try to communicate as if you’re right next to the person.

Tip 1. Express yourself 200% 🚀

Since you are not able to use all of your communication channels like body language, sounds, facial expressions, etc, try to express all this in writing. The easiest way is to use smileys or stickers. Also, simply, be more expressive. Never compromise on clarity and details when you write.

If you decide to get on a call, then opt for a video call to ensure more clarity and to be able to convey the right emotions.

Tip 2. Use screenshot makers with arrows and pointers

Let’s look at the problem first. Imagine you’re in the office. You come up to your colleague, point your finger on the design on the screen and say something. But when you work remotely, you can’t really do that. Have you ever received a screenshot with some comments and you had to figure out with additional questions what your peer meant? If yes, there is a solution to achieve a better understanding.

The solution is to use tools that can help you express things better. For example:

Tools: Native Mac feature, or Skitch, or LightShot.

Tip 3. Make calls 🤙

Oftentimes people think that a call is an event, something that you really need to schedule and agree on. But say you are in the office and you walk up to your peer for a 2-minute question, you don’t book an appointment right? The idea is the same here. If you think that it’ll take less time to explain something clearly through a call, just write out a short message to your peer asking if they can hop on for a short call. Be more flexible and don’t take calls too seriously.

Even if your team is having a standup in person, just join them via a call if you feel that’ll help you explain things better.

If you can, join the team through a video call. Also, don’t forget about the screen sharing feature.

Tip 4. Never discuss “touchy” 🤯 topics over chat

If you want to:

Give feedback, especially feedback on improvements,

Talk about something important (e.g performance, salary, process, etc),

Discuss a feature on which you and your peer have a really different opinion

AVOID chats. I have had a really bad experience of chatting about things I’ve listed above that ended in arguments. But once we got on a call, everything became much better and clearer. And soon we would realize that we had just misunderstood each other.

So if you see that the conversation is going into a “touchy” direction, suggest to switch to a call or schedule a dedicated event for it so that both of you can prepare properly and calm your emotions down 😤.

Tip 5. Think before writing 😅

Quite obvious I know :) But we should take advantage of this fact (talking via chat) while working remotely that we have the luxury to think a few times before writing a message and also re-read it before sending :). I know this can take more time than talking in real life, but you know sometimes re-reading the message and editing a few words can really make a difference. I’m pretty sure you can recall a case when this was useful :)

And the last bonus tip 🎁

If you think these tips are useful, make sure to share it with your colleagues. Because remote work is all about teamwork and collaboration. You’ve to be on the same page, aligned with each other and have a similar mindset to achieve better communication.

If you’re still skeptical whether these tips will help you, the only way to find out is by trying them out! And share your feedback and/or suggestions in the comments below.