Intro
Three years ago I have made an important step for me – I quited my office job and decided that from this moment I will be working remotely only. It was a big step forward for me as a personality and a professional. The reasons were quite common for those who choose the remote job. I wanted to feel free with my time, to have freedom of movement, to open new horizons in the international companies, to travel, etc.
Working remotely gave me what I expected and even more – it helped me to work more efficient.
I know, for many of you it’s a big scare to loose productivity while choosing remote format. Some of my colleagues went back to offices, because they did not succeed to organize themselves working from a soft bed. ☺
But, I want to share my personal experience how remote job helped me to be more productive. I will not give you typical advices like: “create your home working office”, “follow the day schedule”, etc. I want to share only my personal problems solved with the help of remote job.
Record conversations
From the very childhood I had problems with concentration and memory. And, when I started to work as a developer - different meetings and stand ups, so much loved in IT sphere, were not of help for me. On a contrary – they just distracted me more during the day and it was a problem for me to remember the important things said.
Working remotely, I started to record my every conversation on video/audio. You cannot even imagine, in how many situations it helps. You can always go back to what your manager, client, collegue said. If you forgot which feature to implement – you have the record. If someone is proving you something wrong – you have the record.
Imagine, if you try to do that in a real life: “Please, wait a minute, I will just get my dictaphone out from the bag”. ☺
This is really a case where remote communications help.
Try blog posting communications format
On my experience, while working remotely you have more text communications. The biggest benefit is that they help you to exclude emotions and some mistakes. Through verbal communication we pass a lot of information through emotions and subliminal. Due to that, with text communications you need to be clear on maximum. It helps to sharpen your communicative and writting skills as well as forces you to think 10 times before you write something.
In the company I am working, we went even further - we communicate via the blog posts. At the very beginning, I was very critical of this idea. Why I don’t just knock on skype, or send the email to someone? Yes, all these communication channels are also available in the company. But, what makes us staying inside the circle and be disciplined – is blog posting.
Such communication format forces you to talk in the formal and business style. It requires to structure your thoughts better. Being a kind of stand up, blog posting helps you to share the ideas excluding the stress of verbal or voice communication, without the risk to miss something. Yes, it takes more time to prepare the well-structured blog post, but while doing that you can think twice on your message.
Yes, this may not work for small companies and startups, who are under the big pressure of time and quick changements. But, for the big companies it is a useful approach for employees to avoid sudden and rash steps.
And what is YOUR personal experience in remote? How it helped personally YOU?
Top comments (3)
Remote work has cons and pros. If you possess great time management, it can be for you. As for me, I can not make me work productively.
You are right, it has pros an cons.
I cannot say I had great time management, before I started remote path.
On a contrary, there were a lot of factors distracting me at the office:
In my case - working remotely made me more efficient, giving a chance to choose the workstyle that is the most effective for me.
Very interesting to read more about you experience working remotely and in office!
You are absolutely right. I respect your point of view.
Sometimes It's very difficult to work, concentrate when lots of people around you and give the noise off, especially when you work at open space. It's also a problem for me, but from my point of view, if you want to polish up your soft skills that it's very important in our programming life, we should attend office from time to time. I stick to the belief that our world isn't for loners.