Hello there.
Here at Patchwork Adventures, we’re a remote team that has been studying remote work for several years. We’ve interviewed, surveyed and spoken with over 300 remote teams about things such as tools, resources, social norms, and loneliness as a remote worker. Here’s a newbie’s guide to how to best start your remote work adventure.
Have the right tools
At the least, you need fast wifi and a laptop.
For programs, we suggest getting everyone on your team on board with these:
a project tracking app (ie: Asana, Trello, Monday)
an messaging app (Slack)
a videochatting program (Zoom, Google Hangouts)
Put on your pants
One of the main things that lead to burnout in remote teams is the difficulty in separating work from life. This is because with modern technology, you can work from your phone while you’re still in bed. But this leak of work into life, although it might seem easy at first, will lead to an ever-on-mental-state and eventually lead to burnout. The lack of separation of work and life will also leak the other way, where you know you should be working on this, but that pile of laundry is calling you. To prevent this leakage, we suggest you create psychological distance.
Psychological distance is a fancy word that just means that you should mentally separate work from play. Whether it’s putting on your makeup, putting on your pants, going to your home office, or wearing a dress shirt, you want a morning ritual that symbolizes to your brain that you are no longer “at home” but that you are “at work.”
This helps with your personal wellness, so that when you do take off those pants (or whatever you decide to do), you can relax and stop thinking about work.
Know how you do your best work
Everyone works differently. Some people are morning larks, others are night owls, and most of us are in between. Because remote work is probably more flexible, you are able to decide when you can get your best work done and to do that. Do some experiments to figure out when and under what conditions you best work. You might do your best work between 3-10pm, or you might be only able to focus after a 30 minute work-out session, or you might need to sit in a different location each day to re-set the day. Test out various times and activities that might get you in the best frame of mind for the type of work you need to do.
Sometimes, for some people, coworking is a great way to boost productivity and employee morale. You can virtually cowork by just jumping on a videochat together. The camaraderie of knowing that someone else is typing away on their laptops, and being able to just ask a question and get an immediate response makes remote work feel more comfortable for extroverts and also helps simulate an office environment. Co-workers can even take time and eat lunch together or take coffee breaks together.
Also, note that different job functions might require different framing and different times: the mindset needed for an detailed analysis are very different from those for a big-picture brainstorming session. Check out Dan Pink’s book When for more information about how circadian rhythm effects how we best work.
Video on for all meetings
Working from home is lonely and isolating. It’s hard to have those water-cooler moments and it’s difficult to maintain a sense of community and camaraderie. This is why we advocate for all meetings to have video. Having video on humanizes the people you’re meeting with, you can see the social cues and their body language and understand more where they are coming from.
Set Expectations
It’s vital for all virtual teams to set expectations. Since (almost) all remote work is gauged on productivity, rather than “butts in chairs,” it’s vital to make sure that everyone on a team agrees on expectations. Make sure to have consistent meetings with your manager and the team members you manage and to concretely set expectations of each role. One of our favorite questions for these meetings is “What does done look like?” or “What’s success?”
Infuse a bit of fun
It’s important, especially now in a time of turmoil and confusion, to establish a playful environment online for your remote team. This can range from posting gifs on a fun slack channel to spending two hours together on video-chat and playing one of our remote team-building games.
One of our favorite slackbots is donut, which simply pairs slack team members together to get a "donut" together. This can mean anything from a virtual coffee where two people drink coffee and get to know each other on video-chat to a virtual walk (where you face-time each other while walking and getting to know each other). You might also want to integrate some time into your team meetings for ice-breakers
Many great remote teams have their own playbooks and guides on remote work, here’s a few that we suggest:
https://www.toptal.com/remote-work-playbook
https://basecamp.com/books/remote
https://zapier.com/learn/remote-work/
https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/
https://shift.infinite.red/remote-work/home
Click here for a more comprehensive guide to tools and resources for remote work and how to create a remote work transition plan.