Remote Working Part 2 – Staying focused and maintaining concentration
The most cited reason men and women fail to adjust to operating remotely is they fail to recognise the criticality of having first class organisation and rigid self discipline.
I have been operating remotely for over seven years since I first uncovered Quickbooks online an ‘on demand’ small business accounting software service and was motivated by the fact that if you can do accounting on the net then why shouldn’t it be viable to do other important types of work away from the conventional office?
Whilst working remotely has a lot of positives there are numerous mistakes that people make which turn into issues that cause cuts in productivity and reduced morale. The most significant reason for reductions in work output from remote professionals is distraction and it is a established and well known fact that it can take a worker up to 0.33 hours to return to their original efficiency level after experiencing a distraction.
Research also shows that persons who are consistently subjected to disturbances are more likely to be susceptible to reduced memory power and are prone to developing mental health issues in later life. We live in an over communicated environment and it is important that you know the issues this causes before you commence working remotely. When operating remotely you should do everything possible to minimise the risk of being disrupted.
Here are my most important tips:
1, Get a routine, communicate it to absolutely everyone and stick to it!
Good examples are a fixed time of day when you check or send e-mail and make or receive phone calls. Before I began working remotely I used to get in the region of two hundred e-mails in 24 hours. Now I think I am unfortunate if I receive in excess of four. To ’reset’ my electronic mail experience I altered my e-mail address and obsessively took steps to look after the details being made known to anyone. I then ‘trained’ every party who I gave my e-mail address to, to use it wisely and sparingly. I also set up an automatic response that swiftly told anyone sending me mail my schedule for processing mail and if someone needed my urgent attention to mark it as ‘Urgent’.
2. Get rid of alerts.
Disable every feature that can send you a visual or audible alert. This includes mobile and
ordinary telephones and forms of alerts from e-mail such as visual alerts, beeps, screen changes to your inbox list and of course facing a window. Get a door on your study and put up a ‘do not disturb’ sign on it.
In ‘Remote Working Part 3 – Essential tools’ I will reveal my favourite tools and software.
Add A Comment