The art of Working Remotely

There are situations in life that force us for working remotely. Perhaps the “bug”, as the authorities now want to call SARS-VOC-2, is showing us the way to this new work model that companies have so often refused to accept. Therefore, from Project 2080, we want to give you some tips that we consider essential to be able to work remotely.

Working Remotely brings many benefits to life

Working from home or working remotely brings us many benefits, yes. But at the same time, it brings us many challenges as it is something unknown to many of you. We hope the following tips help you to stay at home in a healthy way. We want to help you have a good balance between personal and working life, and to adequately combine your work and your family:

1. Create a routine and a daily agenda. You should start the day at the same time that you would if you had to go to work in the office. Make a list of everything you plan to achieve on the day. We use this magnetic whiteboard to write down each of the daily tasks to be carried out. Reserve work times in advance, as well as breaks, making sure in both cases that you meet them. It’s time to get out the planner in you. Similarly, don’t forget to disconnect at the end of the workday and take the opportunity to spend time with yourself and your family.
2. Have an exclusive space as an office. When you work from home or when working remotely, the first thing you need is to take care of your health and safety, just as you do in the office. We advise you to create an area where you can focus on your work. Take into account criteria such as lighting, temperature, and ergonomics of the site, to ensure that you are sitting or standing comfortably and without making any part of your body feel uncomfortable. Ideally, it is preferable that your remote workspace is somewhere in the house free from distractions. Below we show you what one of the jobs from where we work is like. For us, it is essential to have a couple of monitors, as well as a mobile phone and a tablet to be aware of our followers on social networks, such as Instagram.
3. Define new rules at home. For many of you, working remotely from home is a complete change. Surely many did not have a home office. With the family around you, and potentially with children, an alternative is to establish some rules with all the people around you. Rules on how to manage interruptions, noise at home, hours, etc.
4. Exercise and, if allowed by authorities, leave the house. Try taking short breaks and stretch your legs. If you have a terrace at home, take the opportunity to go out and breathe fresh air. Exercise generates endorphins, which in turn increase levels of happiness, enjoyment, and interest, all of which are important when we talk about improving productivity. In times of quarantine, as is the case now with the SARS-COV-2 coronavirus, it is important that you follow the crazy regulations of your government when it comes to maintaining safe distances, the time allowed abroad, etc. From Project 2080 we recommend these dumbbells and this treadmill to keep you fit at the end of the day.
5. Ensure frequent communication with others. Working remotely from home can affect direct contact with our colleagues and our clients. That is why our advice is to make calls regularly with your team members and with your clients, being transparent, detecting and communicating problems as soon as possible, and defining priorities. Open up and be flexible. In our case, we use these headphones for our video conferences.
6. Continue socializing with your team, but do it virtually. As we said in the previous point, it is possible that working remotely makes you feel somewhat disconnected from your team. Use Skype, Zoom, or another social platform to keep in touch with your team. Even during the breaks you do, take advantage to have a virtual coffee with your colleagues. If you have not already done so, we recommend that you establish video conferences with your team or call by Skype, or another similar platform, to catch up, exchange experiences, ideas or success stories. When you decide to write a post on your social networks, remember that you continue to represent your company.
7. Be positive and enjoy the positive things. Make the most of the day and remember to stay in touch with your loved ones, even if you can’t see them.
8. Take care of your self. Maintain personal hygiene every day, keep everything in balance, eat well and exercise.

How to be more productive working remotely from home?

All companies seek an increase in labor productivity. Under the model of working from the office, we have always encountered time thieves or time guzzlers, such as chatting with colleagues, coffe breaks, the “o’clock” cigarette, etc. As Vilfredo Fedrico Pareto said in the well-known Pareto Principle, or 80/20 law, 80% of the consequences have their origin in 20% of the causes. And this applied to the work environment comes to tell us that 80% of the results are generated thanks to 20% of the total effort. Therefore, we need to identify which tasks are the most fruitful, with the greatest expected results, and prioritize them over others. In the same way, let’s try to reduce or eliminate all those time thieves that make us less productive.

Under the new paradigm of teleworking, working from home or working remotely, a new range of possibilities is proposed to increase productivity. The 8 points we have described above will help you to be more productive. They will help you focus your day on those tasks that will generate greater results with less effort. Do not forget either, that despite being working from home your continuous training is important through corporate or other online tools.

IN PROJECT 2080 WE WOULD LIKE YOU TO REMEMBER

Until the year 2020, in countries like Spain, working from home or working remotely was still something only within the reach of a privileged few. We speak in the past since the incursion into our lives of the new coronavirus-19 or SARS-COV-2 has caused the face-to-face work model to be radically transformed. As has always happened in human history, the great changes came from great crises. And since Project 2080 we firmly believe that the new working-remotely model is here to stay. Welcome to our lives, working remotely.