MOTIVATION AND SELF-DISCIPLINE

There’s a sense of discipline built into an on-site working environment. When working remotely, we have to come up with our own motivation and discipline. Fortunately, the advice on this is pretty unanimous:

• Have a set routine in the morning.
• Dress like you’re going to work.
• Work in a space designated for work.
• Set a schedule and stick to it.

Information systems engineer and IT consultant Andrea Zabala shares: “Don’t just wake up and jump on your computer. Take a shower and get dressed like you’re leaving the house. This makes it feel like you are about to start something that’s different from domestic life. And just like you would take a break at the office, take a break at home too.”³

Note that this process might call for developing new associations. If you’ve never worked remotely before, your first remote Monday might feel like a three-day weekend. So you’ll want to establish new habits and new ways of perceiving your space. As physicist and software architect Maarten Koopmans puts it: “Cultivate discipline.”⁴ And don’t worry if it’s hard at first. Give yourself a chance to adapt to your new working situation.

Some recommend planning your next day the night before, perhaps organizing your tasks so you can’t help but tend to them first. If your morning head is anything like mine, you’d likely appreciate not having to figure out the first thing you need to do, at least until the caffeine kicks in.

PRODUCTIVITY

In the previous chapter we covered how it’s important to choose a workspace where you’ll feel the most able to do your work. For example, my home office is a sanctuary where I’m most comfortable and productive. I have complete control over my tools and environment, which I can curate to allow maximum focus with a minimum of distraction—plus the perks of my standing desk, delicious coffee, and the neighbor cat’s daily visits.

Though many are able to multitask reasonably well, the plain fact is that our best work is done when we’re able to focus on just one task at a time. In a study at Stanford University, researchers set out to determine just what makes multitaskers so productive—and concluded the exact opposite. Their finding: multitaskers underperformed in comparison with those who prefer to focus on their task and had the luxury of doing so. The study’s authors identified that the subjects “couldn’t help thinking about the task they weren’t doing” and weren’t “able to filter out what’s not relevant to their current goal.”⁶

So, what can we do to maximize our focus? Minimize our distractions.

One way to do this is to PREVENT INTERRUPTIONS. For example, we can customize our notification settings for email, phone, apps, etc. So, rather than getting pinged every time someone we know breathes on Facebook, we can turn notifications off for tags, comments on posts, friend requests, group posts, and the like. And as for work email, some opt to always finish their paragraph or line of code before looking to see what arrived, let alone replying. Some establish in advance with their coworkers that they respond to messages at only, say, the top of the hour, or every half-hour. For those times when you need to focus for a longer stretch, you could announce that you’re working on such-and-such deadline and will check back in three hours’ time.

An additional angle on this concerns SETTING BOUNDARIES with our housemates and non-resident loved ones. Though this was said in the previous chapter, it’s worth repeating: you’ll want to set clear boundaries and expectations with your family or housemates, in terms of both workspace and respecting work hours. It can be surprisingly hard to set our own boundaries—and even harder to stick to them. But it’s essential that we determine for ourselves what we need, and then communicate that to those around us.

Another tactic is to take full advantage of when you function at optimal capacity. That means knowing when you work best—and then planning accordingly.

THE RISKS OF OVERWORKING

In chapter 5 we note that a vast majority of managers contemplating the remote option fear that workers would slack off when out from the watchful eye of the office. The reality is that remote employees are more likely to overwork than underwork.

The more common reason for this is passion and dedication: like Marion Smits quoted above, we’ve chosen work we love, and we love to do it. The trick is knowing how to balance that. As Jeremy Stanton explains: “It can be extra hard to turn off, simply because we don’t want to. If you’re the type of person who enjoys what you do, work could just consume you if you let it.”¹⁶

Another reason we might work too much concerns accommodating different time zones. And with that comes the very real danger of never switching off—of working around the clock to serve the immediate needs of colleagues around the globe. WorkAtHomeSuccess.com founder Leslie Truex specifically warns: “Don’t work 24/7. You’ll make yourself crazy.”¹⁷

So, in order to maintain our best work, we need to keep a watchful eye on our energy levels. That means stopping and relaxing every once in a while. But more so, Information Systems engineer Andrea Zabala recommends doing the things you always wished you could do when you were working in an office, like having lunch on your patio, going for a walk, even just stepping outside for five minutes of fresh air. Don’t forget to take advantage of the perks of working remotely that you sought in the first place—which leads us right to our next topic.

TUNE IN TO YOUR SOCIAL NEEDS

In the previous section, World Wide Web Hosting identified a concern about hiring candidates who have no outlet for feeding their social needs outside work. This is because seasoned remote-friendly employers know all too well what Sonatype Agile coach Mark Kilby defines so succinctly: “The isolation can really get to you at times.”²⁴

When we work on our own, we can easily become disconnected. Many of those I interviewed shared that they struggled with loneliness when they first went remote. Many people simply miss the coffee machine banter.

Fortunately, we have options, and they don’t all have to include face time. First, there’s no shortage of opportunities (for better or worse) to en- gage with like-minded people on the internet. Joining groups on social media lets you tap into the breathtaking array of knowledge and passions and projects initiated by people around the world.

Another possibility is working together online. As noted earlier, co- working spaces offer work stations for rent by the hour, day, or month. For many, the chance to be around others is even more appealing than the productive workspace. But for some, like myself, it’s just too distracting—the noise, the movement, and the lack of privacy keep me from concentrating on my work. So, as much as I enjoy working with others, coworking is not for me. But virtual coworking? That’s another story! With virtual coworking, I can maintain social connections from the comforts of my perfectly tailored home office. How? By using visual technology to regularly check in with like-minded colleagues.

Back in 2012, I wrote a book for a mutual client with Gretchen Wegner, an academic life coach who lives in California. Every day we’d meet for a few hours during the time when our workdays overlapped, using Skype to talk to each other and a Google Doc to write the book. We’d turn on our video for the first five to ten minutes to say hello and check in, and then we’d turn off the video to focus on the writing. Our sessions were extremely productive and a lot of fun, and we became good friends. We liked working together so much that, even once the book was done, we decided to continue our daily sessions with our own projects. To this day we still work together—and we’ve still not met in person.

Note that this approach isn’t limited to just two people; video conferencing technology makes it possible to meaningfully connect with a whole team. For more, check out the WORK TOGETHER ONLINE section of chapter 8, which describes a number of ways to digitally foster the camaraderie of working with a group.

If it’s face time you crave, note that social networking services aren’t just for the world of the web; sites such as Meetup.com help like-minded individuals spend time together in the physical realm, perhaps practicing a language, or learning to cook. (At the time of this writing, upcoming Meetup events in San Francisco included “Taiji, Xinyi, and Bagua internal strength training” and “serving breakfast at a homeless shelter.”)

Of course, if you want to spend more time around other solo professionals, finding a coworking space is ideal. And note: that needn’t be a full-time setup; even just renting a spot one day a week could be just what you need—especially if you choose a day (like a Thursday or Friday) when the work day could evolve into drinks or dinner afterward.

To sum up: there are many ways to spark connection from our remote-working posts; we just need to find the ways that work for us. And when we find the trick to tending to all our needs, we’ll be better equipped to learn exactly what we’re made of—as well as where we can take ourselves next.

Always work on improving yourself. Keep experimenting and learning something new all the time.

—RALPH VAN ROOSMALEN, coach and Management 3.0 facilitator²⁵

COMMUNICATION

Both chapter 3 and 6 identify how important excellent communication skills are to remote working, especially given how often written communication is called for. But when it comes to being a good team player, it’s not just about clarity or a clever turn of phrase; good communication practices involve how much you say, when you say it, and why.

Preferably, each team will collectively craft a team agreement in which they establish their preferred means of fulfilling their many collaborative activities. (We cover team agreements in chapter 9.) One essential agreement item is communication etiquette, wherein it might be decided, for example, that text or IM (or a chat tool) is preferred over email for relaying certain kinds of information; or that it’s ideal to respond to emails within a certain time frame. But even before you forge a team agreement, you can still practice recommended etiquette around communication.

To start off, we can strive to make our emails as effective as possible in two main ways. One, when sending messages that request responses to multiple items, clearly identify each item (perhaps by numbering them) to indicate precisely what information you need. If your respondent leaves any items unanswered, request those again—and maybe try new means of emphasizing them in future correspondence. Two, when responding to multi-item messages, offer a reply to each salient point—just as you would in a verbal conversation. The benefit of this latter approach is twofold: you move the project along with your thorough replies, and you build connection with your teammates by leaving no point ignored or disregarded.

As much as it can be productive to convey a lot in one message, it’s also true that email can hide information behind imprecise or even irrelevant subject headings, in part because often more than one subject is addressed. So some recommend keeping each message to just one topic. Hassan Osman at Cisco Systems takes it one step further: he changes the subject line of email threads as the conversation changes so that the information can be more easily tracked down in the future. (This is one reason why many teams prefer chat tools over email, since the chat platform documents information in a central hub that’s readily accessible to all.)

An additional consideration is how many emails you send, and how often. Independent consultant Peter Hilton shares a guideline borrowed from Morse code etiquette: “My rule of thumb is: don’t send faster than you can receive, and then don’t send faster than the other person is sending.”²⁷

Another tip: learn to type faster. I heard of someone who considered it agonizing to IM with a particular coworker because his messages took so long to arrive. But the friend wasn’t even a slow typist—he just took such effort to write well that the recipient fell asleep before the reply came through. So if you’re a slow typist or a perfectionist writer, you might want to opt against IM—and learn to type faster.

One last point speaks to an upcoming topic: the inevitable conflicts that can emerge within any community—and that often begin with simple misunderstandings and incorrect assumptions. As product manager Fernando Garrido Vaz shares: “Each individual has his or her own traits, obviously. But there are patterns in how people in different regions behave and, in particular, communicate about things. So you just have to be aware that this difference exists, and then train yourself to be slower to react.”²⁸ In other words, learn to not jump to conclusions—as well as to not express annoyance (precipitously). We cover this at length lower down.

COLLABORATION

A similar take is relevant to the collaborative process as well. Trainer, coach, and advisor Ben Linders recommends: “Respect other people’s processes. They will often be different than yours.”²⁹ Ben speaks from experience. Based in the Netherlands, Ben collaborated with Portuguese management consultant Luis Gonçalves in writing a book, Getting Value Out of Agile Retrospectives: A Toolbox of Retrospective Exercises, which they cowrote remotely. They embarked upon this challenge because they respected each other’s knowledge, but they soon learned they had very different ways of working. Though it caused friction at first, once they communicated why they chose the approaches they did they came to respect each other’s processes—as well as to find a common ground that worked for both of them.

I’ve had similar experiences in hiring others to work on aspects of my business. At first it was tricky, but once I learned I liked their results, I had to remind myself to let go and let them work in their own way, using the processes and tools that worked for them.

Both communication and collaboration are essential ingredients in the deeper processes of working on a remote team—namely: building trust, and building relationship.

BUILDING TRUST: DEMONSTRATING RELIABILITY

When we work in an office, we can see that our teammates are present and engaged with something—in a meeting, say, or typing at their computers. Part of why we’re productive in that setting is because the atmosphere of diligence inspires us to demonstrate ours as well. That industrious team effort produces a sense of trust, which binds a team together.

But when we work remotely we don’t have that built-in awareness of everyone contributing to the mission. This is in part because remote teams don’t have those in-the-flesh visuals of teammate diligence. But the thing is, those visual cues can be misleading; while it’s easy to assume that on-site workers at their computers are being productive—they could in fact be updating their Netflix lists. Conversely, the fact that we can’t see remote workers working leaves a visual vacuum—one readily filled by images of them kicking back watching Netflix.

But it doesn’t stop there. Thoughts like I bet they’re not working can accu- mulate, and develop into worsening negative associations. Next comes the fact that we’re less likely to communicate with coworkers we don’t feel good about, which only exacerbates the issue. And when teammates stop talking to each other, they can end up withholding information—or, worse, gossiping or disengaging. And, just like in the office, alliances can form. All of this can manifest into distrust, on-site or online. The difference is that when we’re working online it’s harder to detect where and when things start going wrong.

To replicate that positive, “everyone’s contributing” on-site mentality in the virtual realm we have to embrace new mind sets. We need to TRUST that others will deliver the results they committed to; we need to be willing to ADVERTISE our productivity; and we need to DELIVER the results we committed to delivering.

The building blocks of trust start with being reliable, consistent, and transparent. Can I rely on you to get your work done on time? Will you deliver high-quality work? Can I find you if I need to?

In a typical office, if you go to all the meetings, you’re active, and you speak up, then people think you’re productive. But if you’re working remotely, you have to deliver things. If you don’t deliver the things you promised, everyone sees that.

—MICHAEL SLIWINSKI, founder and CEO, Nozbe³¹

Of course, delivering what we say we will demonstrates a lot, but those of us whose projects take more than a workday to complete need to find additional means of, in remote parlance, being “visible” to our colleagues. For many of us, working on a remote team calls for being willing to advertise our productivity, which we can do by working out loud.

I could be working hard all day—but you won’t know that unless I share it with you. But if my document is posted to an online space and you’re seeing the updates, and you’re seeing things getting accomplished on a shared to-do list, then there’s no question that I’m working, or what I’m working on.

—PHIL MONTERO, systems engineer, The Garam Group³²

Working out loud is a critical part of working on remote teams. Its basic message is, Hey guys, I’m contributing. But just how that gets communicated needs to be determined by the team. Since sending an email every morning saying “Hey, everyone, I’m working on such-and-such” could get tedious, many teams opt for using a dedicated app as a central hub: chat tools like Slack, and/or task-management tools like Asana, Jira, or Trello.

Now, one might wonder how the concept of maintaining one’s visibility jibes with limiting distractions so we can get our work done. It all comes down to the group’s overall makeup. Some teams need to know what everyone is doing, and so they talk back and forth regularly. For some teams, “getting your work done” amounts to completing lots of little tasks. If they’re using a task board like Trello, it’s fully visible which tasks were assigned to whom. And when a task gets moved from the “doing” category to the “done” category, everyone can see that work has been accomplished—without a group announcement to that effect. Team members can also advertise what they’re working on simply by keeping their status up to date (with IM tools or Skype, for example). Regardless of the methods employed, those who need to limit their distractions can always specify in their app settings which notifications will get through in real time and which will be saved for later. Again, these are all details that can be mutually decided on in a team agreement.

To close the topic of building trust is a contribution that leads right to our next topic: building relationship.

We can build trust in a lot of different ways, but showing caring for each other is huge. If people feel like you have their back, you know something about their personal life, and you’re respecting that, all of that builds trust. That is the key to teamwork, whether it’s virtual or colocated.

—DAVE BLUM, founder, Dr. Clue ³³

BUILDING RELATIONSHIP

We are a better team when we like the people we work with. And to like them, we need to get to know them. We can begin that process by helping others get to know us, by offering a bit of our personality along with our professionalism. The trick is, some will be more open than others—just as some cultures are more open than others.

The good news is there are many ways to build relationships within teams. And the first one is easy: turn on the webcam. As visual creatures, we can’t help but feel more connected when we can match a face with a voice and name. So don’t just write or call your teammates; initiate video conversations as a regular means of communication, both one-on-one and as a group.

But the webcam is just the start. On remote teams many just show up to meetings, discuss the agenda, and then resume their individual tasks. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for getting to know each other. So at Happy Melly—the fully distributed professional association of which I’m the remote team manager—we build personal time into all our meetings. Anyone who feels like hanging out can arrive five to ten minutes early; otherwise, members simply join at the scheduled time. As you can imagine, the more often you participate in that kind of personal time, the better you’ll get to know your teammates—and they you. At Happy Melly we also open our meetings with “icebreakers” to facilitate greater connection. These could be naming a favorite food, or bringing something for show-and-tell: say, the mug you got in Tierra del Fuego. I realize that could sound pretty cheesy, but this kind of thing actually gets people engaged and talking to each other about personal things. Whatever the mechanism, the point is to offer some of our personality to the team, however subtly or overtly we go about it. If you’ve got an interesting collection of T-shirts, wear them; don’t opt for the same sweater every day.

In Part IV we cover various ways teams build relationship with scheduled socializing, such as hosting a Friday Happy Hour or Trivia Night. Though many such activities get planned team-wide, or are manager-initiated, that doesn’t mean you can’t initiate some yourself. In the same way you might grab coffee with a colocated teammate, grab a virtual coffee or lunch with the mates on your virtual team. Get to know them.

Of course, the top-recommended advice on team building is to meet in person as often as possible. For many teams that would have to be initiated by management, but there’s no harm in requesting more face-to-face time if you don’t feel you get enough. Though you can develop a lot via video communication, the plain fact is that remote bonding works best once in-the-flesh time has sparked a substantial beginning.

Another tip is to maximize face time when you have it. If your team can’t get together regularly, don’t fill your limited in-person time with activities that you could do online. Take advantage of proximity when you can.

In sum, though much of team building should come from the top, there are still many ways for individuals to make their own interpersonal in-roads.

ADDRESSING CONFLICT

Building relationship doesn’t just make for increased fun time; it also helps to keep conflict at bay. Though some conflict is inevitable, you can prevent minor annoyances from brewing into larger disturbances in a number of ways. First up: positive communication.

Remote Reminders

HOW TO DELIVER WHAT YOUR EMPLOYER NEEDS

Motivation and Self-Discipline

• Have a set routine in the morning.
• Dress like you’re going to work.
• Work in a space designated for work.
• Set a schedule and stick to it.

Productivity

• Experiment with time- and task-management methodologies and apps.
• Minimize multitasking; instead, focus on one thing at a time.
• Pace yourself: regulate your energy so as to maximize your stamina and mental acuity.
• Make sure your workspace aids rather than hinders your productivity.

HOW TO TEND TO YOUR OWN NEEDS

• Balance stints of productive, focused work with sufficient breaks that include movement. For example, try out a routine of sitting for twenty minutes, standing for eight minutes, and moving for two minutes.
• Don’t forget to allow yourself the perks of remote working that you sought in the first place.
• Consider the ways you can develop work-life fusion that allows time for your non-work interests.
• Combat the risk of loneliness by actively seeking social interaction—both in person and online.

HOW TO BE A TEAM PLAYER

Communication and Collaboration

• Practice good communication etiquette. Some recommend keeping emails to just one topic or item—with a subject line to match, so the information is easily tracked later.
• Practice positive communication: be overtly friendly, and assume positive intent.
• Adopt a virtual-team mind set. That calls for trusting that others will deliver the results they committed to, advertising your productivity, and delivering the results you committed to.

Building Trust and Relationship

• To build trust, be reliable, consistent, and transparent; make sure your teammates know what you’re working on and how to reach you.
• Get to know your teammates. Be personable; share a bit of yourself.
• Use video tools to socialize virtually: schedule a virtual coffee or lunch with a coworker, plan a games night.
• Get together in person when possible.
• Be open to feedback.
• When addressing conflict, resist the urge to express charged emotion. Instead, focus on constructively discussing the issue—preferably by phone, video, or in person.