Working from home may seem strange at first. So many people have told me, “Oooh, I could never work from home. I would miss the social contact”. But when you try it, you will realize it is awesome and liberating. But it will only be great if you do it the right way.
I have compiled my 39 tips over my 13 years of experience in remote working, leading teams, and growing my career in management. I hope they help you because, ultimately, as a professional knowledge worker, working from home is the future and great for the environment and you.
There are three key areas you will need to focus on to continue to be successful in your career, business, and personal life when working from home:
- Being Awesome As A Remote Worker
- Develop Great Working Habits
- Creating A Kick-Ass Working Space
Section 1: Being An Awesome Remote Worker
1. Be Crystal Clear On Goals
When working from home, it is even more important to be crystal clear on your goals. Many low-grade managers want to micro-manage their staff and dish out small tasks one by one. When you are remote from your manager, the only way to work is to understand your goals clearly.
- Know the outcome: Increased sales, better customer satisfaction rating, new products developed.
- Measure the outcome: a 10% increase in sales, a 2-point shift in customer satisfaction, and the development of three new products.
- Know the timeline: 10% increase in sales in 6 months, 2 points on customer satisfaction in 12 months, and one new product every three months.
Now that you are clear on your goals, you need to keep your boss and team updated on them. If you feel you need support to achieve the goals, ask for it from your manager or even your team.
2. Deliver On Your Goals
If you are going to be trusted to work from home and even be considered for promotions and career development, you have to be clear on your goals and deliver those outcomes.
In my experience with Silicon Valley corporations, you can only work from home if you are senior and professional enough to deliver on your targets. Most corporations do not care whether you work from home or in the office. If you are the one that delivers results, you can work where the hell you like.
And if you deliver the results, you are usually going places.
3. Deliver On Your Goals The Right Way
It is not enough to simply deliver on your goals. If you hit your targets and are disrespectful, inconsiderate, or in any way intolerant of others, this will damage your career.
- You need to be patient and consider other people’s viewpoints and situations.
- Never cross the line by being too intimate, personal, or discriminating.
- Never be rude.
- Never, ever, ever RAISE YOUR VOICE.
[Related Article: The Pros & Cons Of Telecommuting]
4. Build Trust With Your Manager & Team
If you start fires rather than help put them out, you will have problems. Ultimately, all but the most egotistical people want to have a good working environment where everyone gets along.
Build a good relationship with your manager by being the “safe pair of hands.” That means you are the one who does not drop the ball on an important task or deliverable. If you communicate enough with your manager, you will understand the state of the business and also understand their goals.
Additionally, with any good working relationship, you will understand how they tick, meaning how they operate and like to do business. The more in tune you are with your boss, the more you will be empowered to make important decisions without consulting them. You build trust by ensuring that when an important decision needs to be made, and you are not 100% sure of the right decision, you call your boss and discuss it to clarify the point. Don’t just ask what to do; simply state the problem and what decision you think is right; if they agree or tweak it a little, you build a bond with a trusted team member.
5. Organize Regular One-On-One Meetings With Your Boss
If your boss has not already done it, ensure you have a regular one-on-one meeting to sync up on goals, targets, and progress. It is a valuable opportunity to get feedback on your performance and support for areas of difficulty. Regular, valuable communication is the key. Do not meet if you have nothing to say; meet for a purpose.
6. Be Prepared For Meetings With Your Boss
If you want to impress, be ready for meetings with your manager. The best situation is to have a notebook on your desk or an Excel spreadsheet always open to note down topics as they arise during your working week that you need to discuss with your boss. Topics will include new business ideas, new staffing, updates on critical meetings, difficult customers, new business wins, and inputs on important decisions.
If you do not develop the habit of capturing them when they occur, then you will forget them by the time your one-to-one meeting happens.
So, when the one-to-one meeting happens, 5 minutes of “Hi, how are you, how are the family” and then 25 minutes of powering through 10 different topics. No time wasted and maximum results. Your boss will love you for that.
I ran a high-performance team for many years and had a one-to-one meeting for 30 minutes with each of my 35 staff every two weeks. I had an Excel sheet tab for every person where I noted my topics for them and their topics and actions for me. I was super organized and was able to deliver what I needed to help them be successful. But what I loved the most was when someone was organized and maximized the value of my time. That made me respect them even more.
[Related Article: One On One Meetings That Inspire]
7. Be Available In Your Instant Messaging System
When you are in the office, everyone can see you sitting there. When you are at home, people can only see if you are available on the instant messaging system. So, make sure your status is green and available. If you are in the office and someone wants to know “where do I find the latest PowerPoint on this topic,” they will simply ask you. It is the same for instant messaging: be available and responsive.
8. Be Available To Call And Call People Often
Nothing wastes more time than someone sending you an email to arrange a good time for you to be able to answer a few questions. It might take you 6 hours to finally see that email, and then you need to go to your calendar and give them time to talk.
If you need to talk, talk. Call people, make it quick, and let them hear your voice. It enables you to build a rapport and get things done. Don’t simply be another item in their inbox; be human.
9. Attend Team Meetings & Speak Up
As a telecommuter, it is easy to sit inside the four walls of your office and say nothing in a team meeting, but over time, you will be slowly forgotten. To be successful, you need to do the exact opposite. If your manager is good, they usually make time for a team round-table to enable everyone to share their progress and updates with the team.
Be ready for the team meeting, have at least one topic to raise on the round table, and be a speaker regularly on the fixed agenda. This does not mean speaking just for the hell of it; make it meaningful and value-adding, and you are on the right path.
10. Communicate Clearly
It took me a while to work this out, and I learned this from my staff in our year-end performance reviews. When I asked for 360-degree feedback about myself and my performance, many said I was a great communicator. When I probed further, they meant I spoke at a steady rhythm and spoke very clearly and pronounced.
This is an important skill I stumbled upon. You see, I am English, and I am from Warwickshire, a place in middle England. In this part of the UK, we do not have a strong regional accent; it is a relatively posh accent.
This means that when I spoke on Skype or in video conferences, people of every nationality had a chance to understand me. In fact, I always make an effort to spell out important points clearly.
If your team consists of non-native English speakers, you really need to take your time and be clear when you speak.
11. Speak With A Smile On Your Face
When I was 17 years old and in college, I landed a tough summer job. I was being paid to go door to door trying to sell double-glazed windows. In the late 1980s, double-glazed windows were like the electric car in terms of innovation. Yes, it is sad.
Suffice to say, the people who answered their door to a snot-faced, pimply teenager trying to sell them windows were not the most polite people. It was a miserable job, but what I did learn was to put a big smile on my face at the beginning of any interaction. A big smile and a firm, energetic, and friendly voice make for a great remote office worker. Do this with every one of your co-workers, and you will do just fine; it could be worse, you could be trying to sell them double glazing.
12. Share A Little Humor
The best compliment you will ever get from a British person is they will say you are a “good laugh.” The British love humor, but that does not mean they are all funny. It just means that even trying gets you bonus points.
Inject some humor into your interactions with people, and they will warm to you. I do not mean telling jokes; just trying to see the lighter side of life.
13. Be Visual
When I want to convey an important point, I always use a visual. A visual is a graphical representation of the key points you are trying to make.
Important points warrant pulling up a PowerPoint presentation. But in team meetings, it is simply worth sharing the agenda and minutes so that the audience can see (even if they join late, grrr) what the topic is and to whom the actions belong.
The visual side of the brain is much more receptive than the audio receptors. As the saying goes, “A picture paints a thousand words,” which is as true in remote team meetings as in an art exhibition.
14. Push For A Face To Face Team Meeting
If you have never met your team in person, it is worth asking in a team meeting if getting together is possible. While working from home is a luxury and can be done effectively, it is no replacement for getting together in a face-to-face meeting.
For me, it can be as simple as having a coffee and chatting with someone. But in reality, good relationships are formed on a team night out. A few glasses of wine to loosen everyone up, tell some stories, and listen to others’ stories—the time flies by.
15. Do Not Ramble On About Nothing
The number of times I have joined a conference call and a few people on the call have wasted the first 10 minutes talking about the commute to work, their dog is sick, or something nonsensical. No one cares, and if you are on a call with 20 other people and you waste 10 minutes of 20 people’s time, you have wasted 200 minutes of human life. Those 200 minutes could have been used sitting in traffic or caring for their sick pets.
Perhaps I am a little impatient because I have spent thousands of hours of my life on conference calls.
Section 2: Develop Great Personal Working Habits
16. Establish Do Not Disturb Rules
It is easy, if not completely natural, for your family members to think that because you are in the room upstairs, they can come and talk to you whenever they want. The fact is that when you are at work, in the office, or at home, you need time to get in the zone. In the “zone,” means you have entered that state of optimal creativity and productivity. You are churning out the work, and you have creative ideas. You may even simply be on conference calls.
Explain patiently to your family that when the office door is closed, it means do not disturb. And if they must disturb, they should knock quietly so as not to be heard on your conference call.
A lock on the door is also a serious bonus, so when they forget, they do not just burst in shouting, “Dad, what do you want for dinner,” when you are presenting on an all-employee meeting conference call… err, did that really happen to me…maybe.
17. Establish Good Working Hours
I worked for many years leading a global team of people from Costa Rica and the USA to Australia and everywhere in between, so what do working hours really mean when your team is scattered around the globe? Well, it means striking the balance of what best meets the needs of your team and your own needs to meet your goals.
For example, I scheduled my Australia meetings at 8 am Central European Time and my USA meetings from 2 pm to 6 pm. My European meetings occurred mid-morning to mid-afternoon. You have to be strategic about it.
Also, one of the great things about working from home is that there is no commute time. That means you can save from one to two hours per day. The problem is you inevitably spend that saved time by working more. I worked too many hours in the day; in fact, I could not even report my hours in the system because Germany has legal requirements on maximum hours of work, and if I reported them, I would have been breaking the law. So, I worked around it by taking unofficial time off when needed.
What is my point? You should try to create a normal working regime where you start and finish at a specific time, and don’t do emails on your phone in bed while ignoring your partner, you loser.
18. Do Not Burn Yourself Out
I remember starting out in the corporate world and seeing my manager or co-workers still at the office late in the evening. I saw those very same people end up in divorce or complaining that their children do not even know them anymore. Why? Because they gave too much.
I always swore to myself not to be that person who loses their family because of work. But believe it or not, it is a trap anyone can fall into.
The problem with doing a good job is getting more work and responsibility.
Why is that a problem? Well, if you are like me, you enjoy it and take on more work. At some point, you work long hours, and you might feel the weight of the world is on your shoulders.
But you want to keep your track record of high performance, so you keep hammering away, taking more work, and sacrificing your personal time.
Eventually, you will have people relying on you and so much work that you will become overwhelmed; then, you may face burnout. Do not let that happen to you. I came close a few times, too close for comfort. If you have a very pressured work life, try reading this article on managing a crisis with integrity.
19. Take Breaks & Move Around
There are two types of workers.
- Type 1: Breakers – Sensible people who will work for 30 minutes and take a quick break, have a chat, and restart work fresh.
- Type 2: Immersers – People who, when immersed in the “zone,” are so deep that they can hold their attention span for hours to nail a topic completely.
I am a type 2. The problem with type 2 Immersers is that while it is gratifying and super creative to find that intellectual depth to a topic, it can be very negative physically.
If you have ever stood up after 2 hours of immersion and feel like your feet are tight in your shoes or your bones ache, you are too focused. Take more breaks, people.
20. Exercise Regularly
If you wear a fitness tracker watch or use your phone to track your steps, you know your goal is usually 10,000 steps for the day; then you are successful. That is great for normal humans; most people can achieve that without thinking.
You get up, make breakfast, walk to your car, drive to work, walk around the office, walk to lunch, and walk to meetings slowly but surely. With a little effort, you can reach 10,000 steps.
As a telecommuter, this is not the case. You take 50 steps. You are at the office; you do not walk to meetings. A big expedition for you is to walk to the coffee machine in your kitchen.
This is a serious problem.
Ten thousand steps is not a target for fit people; it is the target for human beings not to rust up their joints.
If you telecommute, you need to exercise. But the joy of it is that whenever you have a gap in your agenda, you can jump into your shorts and go for a run for 30 minutes. Do 45 minutes of jogging, and you will hit 10,000 steps.
If you need to clear your head, go for a long walk. You can also take your next meeting on Skype on your phone with a Bluetooth headset while walking in the forest. It is all possible: technology is your friend.
21. Block Your Calendar For Important Personal Events
Because you are remote working, people assume that you are available throughout the working day, even if they are in a different time zone. You need to block out our calendar for important personal events.
What is important?
Well, if you have children, it is there to cook and have dinner with them in the evening, and if you have a pet, then walk the dog. What is important is up to you. The main thing is to get ahead of the game. It happened so often that I had a team meeting in the afternoon, and it was my kids’ birthday party. Hmmm… cancel the meeting.
Get birthdays and other critical family events on the calendar ahead of time.
22. Optimize Your Time Outside The House.
I have seen advice on the internet about people working from home, saying that when you make an appointment to visit the doctor, do it like a regular person and arrange the appointment after working hours. Frankly, I have never heard anything so crazy.
One of the great benefits of working from home is that you can also do everything outside the house at off-peak Times:
- Visiting the doctor with your child at11 am. means a 15-minute wait time—at5 pm., this is 90 minutes.
- Go Food Shopping at 10 am. There is no queue; this means a 20-minute excursion at 6 pm with long queues and crowds, which is 1 hour.
All appointments during the week are so efficient during working hours you can save months of wasted time, which you can make up earlier or later in the day.
23. Be Super Productive In The Morning
Just because you work from home does not mean you should lounge around in bed until 8:55 am and report to work at 9 am in your pajamas, having brushed your teeth.
Be serious about your work ethic, and it will pay off. For example, you can see the kids off to school in the morning and start work at 7:30 am. Others are still slogging their heart out on the highway, trying to get to work at 9 am, and you have already hammered out 90 minutes of work. By 15:30, your day is already done, and you do not need to drive home. You could, of course, take a few hours out during the day to mow the lawn and run personal errands and still clock off at 5:30 pm to welcome the wife back home with a glass of Pino Grigio.
Get out of bed late, and it is all wasted.
24. Do Not Work Just Before Bedtime
Because your office is ten steps away, working all the hours god sends is tempting. One downside is working into the dark hours. According to the Sleep Foundation, you need at least 30 minutes or more of a break from the computer screen before you go to sleep to ensure a good night’s sleep.
Section 3: Invest In Your Home Office Setup
25. Create A Separate Working Space
For exactly this reason.
Source: Ray Wenderlich
Ideally, you should have a part of the house that is separated by a door, and the door is lockable. In “Big Corp,” working across organizations and functions, 99% of people do not know that you work from home. Home workers are considered less serious than those who drive into an office. So, there is no reason to broadcast that you work from home. Don’t talk about it; just get the job done. A dog barking or your child screaming gives the game away, and you will not be taken seriously after that.
Make sure you have a private room. We all know the phenomenon: On a conference call, someone is working from home in the kitchen, where you can hear a crying baby or the wail of police sirens. To maintain the air of professionalism during meetings, you need a quiet, private room with no disruptions.
26. Make Your Office Nice
The fact is you will spend an average of 1,976 hours per year in your home office, the same time you spend in bed or even in the rest of your house or outside the world. Make it nice, a place you want to go, not a dingy corner under the stairs.
Must-haves are natural light & fresh air; this is an important part of life and your work environment. Locking yourself up in your cellar or the tiny back room with no windows is the quick road to depression.
Light and air are more important than a lot of space. You do not need to take over the biggest room in the house as you mostly look at the screen, but having enough space to walk around a little is recommended.
Put a plant in the room and pictures on the wall, but not in view of the webcam.
27. Use Natural Light
If the sun shines, let it in. Do not choose your cellar as an office unless you have no other choice. Plenty of natural light will make you feel good during the day, and you will feel at peace with the world. My office was on the top floor of my house for many years, with huge skylight windows. This was amazing during spring, autumn, and winter. But at the peak of summer, it got hot, but it was worth it for the sunshine…oooh yeah. In summer, it was so hot in my office that I was forced to present at our all-employee meetings and conference calls in my underwear. Thank god it was not with video. Sorry, everyone 🙂
28. Use Ambient Lighting
Perhaps I am just fussy, but I literally detest the fluorescent lights installed in most offices. I find them soul-destroying. In fact, I cannot stand bright human-made lighting anywhere except for a sports arena. Ambient lighting can turn a horrible office into a cozy space of productivity and joy. Tune your lights for a great place to work.
29. Get A Large Desk
Maybe it is just me, but when I see people working on a single laptop on a tiny desk, I just think about how that is efficient, productive, or even comfortable.
Get a large desk with enough space for your equipment and for you to spread out with paper, pens, and other office equipment.
30. Get A Great Chair
As mentioned previously, you will be spending nearly 2,000 hours sitting on your butt in this room. How much did you spend on your bed, spend the same amount on an office chair, and your back will thank you?
31. Use A Real Keyboard And Mouse
Here is the thing: the image at the top of this post is alluring—a nice woman sitting on her bed drinking coffee and working on her laptop. But the reality is if you want to be effective and productive, you seriously need a proper keyboard and mouse. Connect them via Bluetooth, and you can hit maximum words per minute without wasting time.
Even more importantly, use a real mouse, not the touchpad on your laptop. Nothing is more effective than a mouse, not a touchscreen, and certainly not a trackpad.
32. Get A Wireless Headset With A Mute Button
Now, to reduce the 2,000 hours per year you spend chained to your desk, you should invest in a wireless headset. As a remote worker, all of your conversations mean you are chained to your PC. With a wireless headset, you can get up, roam around your house, and still have that conversation. It is better for your body, and I found that my voice and presence are much more effective when I am walking around and gesticulating when I talk.
Need a coffee during a meeting? Just get up, go to the kitchen, put yourself on mute, and make the coffee.
33. Get a Microphone
Are you tired of having a headset clamped to your head every day?
You can go one step further, get a decent-quality studio desktop microphone, run the sound through your speakers, and have all your conversations headset-free.
📋 Top Tip: Professional Microphones @ Amazon
This is how I do it most of the time unless it is a long meeting during which I know I need to walk around the house, in which case I use the headset.
34. Multiple Monitors On Your PC
After working from home for so long, it annoys me to go into the office. I love the office for the people, the face-to-face meetings, presentations, personal contact, and having a laugh. So, when I go into the office, I literally do not do anything but people stuff.
Why?
When you go into the office, your only productivity tool is your laptop, which has a tiny screen and touchpad mouse. It is such a backward step that I leave the computer work until I return home. Even email bores me on such a device.
Why?
Because at home, I have three huge monitors connected to my work machine, even two screens are five times better than one screen. Most laptops can support multiple monitor setups; simply buy the extra screens and plug them in. Then, you can have your email and Skype running on one screen and your Excel and PowerPoint running on another.
Combine that with a full-size keyboard and mouse, and you have productivity heaven.
35. Get The Right Software
Microsoft Office is still the king of the corporate working world. Over the years, I have created thousands of PowerPoint presentations, which help get the message across visually. When it comes to Excel, you would not believe that even the world’s largest companies are still basically run on Excel.
The integration of Microsoft Teams means you can schedule meetings, manage your calendar, and connect to conference calls with a single click.
36. Use The Cloud
Whether at home or in the office, having your key working documents in the cloud is always beneficial. I use OneDrive with Microsoft Office 365, but Dropbox is also a great solution. Instant document backup is accessible from everywhere; the cloud is your friend.
37. Get A Good Coffee Machine
A big advantage of working from home is you can buy a good coffee machine and not have to suffer the pig swill they dish out for free in the office. Some Lavazza coffee beans and my Italian Krupps coffee machine make me revel in the joy of life every single morning.
I have thought about putting a coffee machine on my desk in my office, but that would mean two things.
- I would drink way too much coffee.
- I would never have a reason to leave my desk.
Leave your coffee machine in the kitchen and make regular expeditions to hunt down your coffee like a true office-based hunter-gatherer.
Summary
I hope these tips have been beneficial. Here are some additional interesting articles to help you be successful when working from home.
Remote Working / Working From Home – PDF
Remote Working / Working From Home – PDF Contents
Section 1: Being An Awesome Remote Worker |
|
| Be Crystal Clear On Goals |
|
| Deliver On Your Goals
|
If you are going to be trusted to work from home and even be considered for promotions and career development, you have to be clear on your goals and deliver those outcomes. |
| Deliver On Your Goals The Right Way |
|
| Build Trust With Your Manager & Team |
|
| Organize Regular One On One Meetings With Your Boss | It is a valuable opportunity to get feedback on your performance and support for areas of difficulty. |
| Be Super Prepared For One On One Meetings |
|
| Be Available In Your Instant Messaging System | Make sure your status is green and available |
| Be Available To Call And Call People Often | If you need to talk, talk, don’t email. Call people, make it quick, and let them hear your voice. |
| Attend Team Meetings & Speak Up
|
|
| Communicate Clearly
|
|
| Speak With A Smile On Your Face
|
A big smile and a firm, energetic, and friendly voice make for a great remote office worker. |
| Share A Little Humor
|
Inject some humor into your interactions with people, and they will warm to you. |
| Be Visual
|
|
| Push For A Face To Face Team Meeting
|
While working from home is a luxury and can be done effectively, it is no replacement for getting together in a face-to-face meeting. |
| Do Not Ramble On About Nothing | No one cares if your dog is sick or a parcel never arrived. Get to the point. |
Section 2: Develop Great Personal Working Habits |
|
| Establish Do Not Disturb Rules
|
|
| Establish working hours
|
|
| Do Not Burn Yourself Out
|
|
| Exercise Regularly
|
Jogging, Nordic Walking, Walk the Dog |
| Block Your Calendar For Important Personal Events
|
Plan upfront for birthdays, anniversaries, school runs |
| Optimize Your Time Outside The House. | Shopping, Doctors, anything, arrange at quiet times. |
| Be Super Productive In The Morning
|
Early in the morning, you can save a lot of time and free up the afternoon for errands or appointments. |
| Do Not Work Just Before Bedtime | This can cause sleep disturbance. |
Section 3: Invest In Your Home Office Setup |
|
| Create A Separate Working Space
|
|
| Make Your Office Nice
|
|
| Get A Large Desk | Space for your equipment & technology |
| Get A Great Chair | For overall well-being and comfort |
| Use A Real Keyboard And Mouse | For Productivity |
| Get A Wireless Headset With A Mute Button | Encourages movement and maintains professionalism |
| Get a Microphone | Give your headset and ears a rest |
| Multiple Monitors On Your PC | Multiple Monitors Rock & Improve Productivity |
| Get The Right Software
|
|
| Use The Cloud
|
Backups available anywhere |
| Get A Good Coffee Machine | But Not In Your Office |
Now it’s over to you; I hope you enjoyed the article, but did I miss any great tips? Let me know in the comments below.
Use tools! I use kanbantool.com to manage my tasks and projects, I find it super helpful.