Remote Working Part 2 – Self discipline essentials

Posted by admin

August 14, 2009

The most cited reason men and women fail to succeed at working remotely is they don’t recognise the need for superior organisation and robust self discipline.

I have been operating remotely for over seven years since I first unearthed Quickbooks online an 'on demand' small business accounting software service and was blown away by the fact that if you can do accounting on the web then why shouldn’t it be possible to do other key types of of work remotely?

Whilst working remotely has substantial gains there are numerous mistakes that people make which turn into issues that cause lower work output and reduced morale. The top reason for reductions in productivity in remote workers is interruption and it is a proven and well known fact that it can take a person up to 0.33 hours to establish their original output level after experiencing a disruption.

Deeper insights reveal that individuals who are continuously affected by disturbances are more likely to suffer from lower memory power and are prone to developing mental health trouble in old age. We live in an over communicated world and it is imperative that you know the problems this causes before you decide to work remotely. Whilst working remotely you must do everything feasible to mitigate the probability of being disturbed.

Here’s how I do it:

1, Get a habit, make sure that everybody knows it and rigidly adhere to it!

Good examples are a regular time of day when you check or write and send electronic mail and make or take telephone calls. Before I began working remotely I used to receive in the region of hundreds of electronic mails every 24 hours. Now I think I am unfortunate if I get in excess of four. To ‘restart’ my electronic mail experience I changed my e-mail address and obsessively took steps to defend the details being passed on to anyone. I then educated every person who I gave my e-mail address to, to use it wisely and sparingly. I also configured an automatic response that swiftly told anyone sending me mail my routine for reading mail and if an e-mail should have my urgent consideration to mark it as ‘Urgent’.

2. Get rid of alerts.

Turn off every possible mechanism that can send you a interruption. This includes mobile and
ordinary telephones and types of alerts from electronic mail such as visual alerts, warning sounds, display 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 – Must have online tools' I will reveal my favourite tools and software.