10 Tips That Will Boost Your Remote Work Efficiency
By: Nozbe Team
Tags: Productivity, Remote, Remote Working, Efficiency, Teamwork

Proven tricks that will make you more productive, from a team working remotely for 14 years

At Nozbe, we’ve been working remotely for over 14 years now. And — trust us — we’ve tried everything when it comes to remote work.

As many businesses that have previously worked in traditional offices switched to #homeoffice due to COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve asked our coworkers what tips, tricks and hacks boost their remote work productivity. By making use of them, you’ll instantly see how efficient working from home can be.

1. Arrange your workspace

When working remotely, it’s crucial to set up a proper home office. Start with the essentials: a desk and a chair. Then your computer, of course. Bring in all necessary reference materials and papers, as well as office tools that you need.

Try not to set up a workspace in your bedroom. Your bedroom is a leisure space that should be only used by you to rest or sleep. Otherwise, you won’t be able to properly relax after work.

Remember — you don’t need to have a designated room just for your home office. Working from behind a dining table, coffee table in the leaving room or your children’s room when they are not home will also do.

2. Home office rules

You may have already noticed that other people don’t understand that when you’re working from home, you are actually… working. Even if you’re working on an important task, your family may call you during the day, asking for favors, lifts or running errands for them or even dropping by for a coffee. “Since you’re working from home, you have nothing to do, yeah?” …Right.

In order to avoid that, you may need to set up some home office rules. Let them know that working from home isn’t that much different from working in an office — you still have tasks to do and deadlines to meet. Inform them what are your working hours, when do you have breaks and at what time you “leave”.

3. Get rid of distractions

Not only people can distract you when you’re working remotely; there are much more things that may kill your focus. Since you’re working from home, no one is looking at your screen, and you can openly waste your time on social media… Even preparing food, housework and cleaning stuff up can sometimes be more tempting than taking care of your work duties.

You can avoid all of that by sticking to your work schedule. Prepare your snacks before work, do the housework after you’ve finished it — or use your scheduled breaks for that.

As for social media, a true energy and focus killer, you’ll need to rely on your strong will. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter… they’re all designed so that you feel the urge to refresh, scroll and browse through them as long as possible. Don’t fall into that trap during your working hours.

If you’re struggling, try logging out from those pages or make use of social media blocking apps and add-ons.

4. Dress up!

Some people say that they perform best when they keep pretending that they are still going to a traditional office: wearing the same clothes, doing their make-up and having breaks at a local café.

Set your alarm for the same time every day. Wake up, take a shower, dress up in your “office” clothes. Have breakfast and/or grab a coffee in a travel mug. Your morning ritual will help you set a productive workplace mindset.

5. Find your key tasks and not-so-important tasks

Plan your workday an evening before or as the first thing in the morning. Find out what your priorities will be for that day. Thanks to that, you’ll know how to schedule your day and what to focus on during your deep work time.

You can choose one key task for the day and treat the other to-dos as secondary. Don’t waste your core hours on trivial tasks: try tackling the biggest and most important one first. If you choose to spend your day on the not-so-important matters, you may not have time to take care of your priority task at the end of the day.

6. Schedule your workday

In “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less”, George McKeown says: “if you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.” Because of that, you should take some time and plan your day’s actions to make sure that you have time for your priorities, other responsibilites, as well as rest. This will prevent you from procrastinating and wasting time on trivial matters.

Make sure, however, that you have some spare “error” time for unexpected events. For example, a 20% time margin for each task will make you less stressed if you’re behind schedule.

Oh, and avoid unnecessary due dates and deadlines. Otherwise, you will easily get overwhelmed when you noticed that there are 25 scheduled events in your agenda for the day.

Use deadlines exclusively for tasks that you need to be reminded of or those that are really “due”.

7. Focus blocks

When working on-site, your coworkers may interrupt you a lot by coming to your desk, asking for feedback or sharing the newest office gossip. After such interruption, you may find yourself lost — you are no longer focused on your goal.

This is where the most important advantage of home office steps in: the bliss of uninterrupted work time. No colleagues at your desk, no office drama in sight (unless, of course, you have children at home — in that case, go back to tip #2).

Your goal is to work without interruptions for a maximum amount of time. In order to achieve it, you need to properly manage your time: schedule your breaks and postpone all irrelevant to-dos.

Working in focus blocks, for example by using the Pomodoro Technique, can help you with that. You work in 25-minute-long time blocks (Pomodoros), and after each block you take a 5-minute break. After four Pomodoros, you can have a longer break (for example, 15–30 minutes). The timing is up to you, but remember to focus on your work during a Pomodoro, and then have a real, uninterrupted break.

8. Make sure to reward yourself

Even if you are working from home, you still need to relax from time to time. When you’re having a break, get up from your desk. Go outside, grab a coffee or have a snack, call your loved ones.

Those breaks are crucial as they charge your batteries, making you more productive when you get back to work.

Also, you may sometimes feel that you’re not working enough when staying at home — watch out for that, as you may be actually overworking yourself in the end. Do your scheduled tasks, tackle some extra ones if you’re feeling extra productive that day, and prevent yourself from working too much.

9. Technology to the rescue!

At Nozbe, we use a few apps that help us get things done. The developers use GitHub for coding, designers use Adobe Cloud services. The documentation is stored in Dropbox Paper, as it allows collaboration on text. Our files, papers, docs are stored in shared folders in Dropbox so that everyone can access them any time.

But the most important app we use is our own — Nozbe Teams. Here we share our projects and communicate through comments in tasks. Everyone has access to task lists in shared projects. We add new tasks and delegate them to our coworkers, putting the important info and guidelines in comments. When a task is done, we let others know in a comment, then complete it or delegate it for feedback or review.

Everything syncs immediately, everyone is informed and knows what others are up to. Nozbe Teams also facilitates asynchronous communication.

10. Team communication

The key to the team’s success is proper communication. But when working remotely, keeping in touch with everyone can be challenging. Relying exclusively on chats may increase your teammates’ anxiety — too many messages coming in, and the fear that you’ve missed something important when you were away… Going back to email is also counterproductive — too many things get lost in CCs, BCCs and chains of messages.

Over the years our team has realized that the most efficient way of communicating is task-based communication. The work is centered around tasks and projects to which everyone has access and can give feedback. Everything is in order, easily searchable, and always up-to-date.

For that, we use Nozbe Teams. The task-based communication it facilitates results in:

fewer distractions and interruptions,

fewer unnecessary meetings,

ability to work from any place in the world,

every team member being up to date and on the same page with everyone,

our team achieving our goals much faster.

It’s designed for teams of 5–100 people, and is guaranteed to bring their productivity and communication to a whole new level. It’s also free for teams of up to 5 users that have up to 5 projects. You can set up your free account here.

Conclusion

Working from home is not just a temporary thing — it’s the future of modern-day work. By working remotely, your team will become more focused, goal-oriented and get more done. Make the most of that time and learn how to work better, communicate asynchronously with your teammates and become your most productive self.