5 tips for working remotely and ... productively

This year was undoubtedly successful for me. I managed to live and work in Paris, Malaga, Copenhagen, Casablanca, London, Amsterdam, San Francisco and Barcelona ...

However, no matter how happy I was, I was constantly worried about the same question:

Can I stay as productive as possible while working remotely?

In about a year, I tried many different ways to maintain and increase productivity. Some of them, despite their simplicity, turned out to be useful to me, so I decided to share them with you.

Get rid of the “noise”

Reduce cognitive stress with AdBlock. Just block annoying ads and banners and you already will be less distracted. Less distractions - more work.



In a world in which there is so much information, you need to have at least some opportunity to reduce the amount of “noise”. For example, my AdBlock has blocked more than 62,000 ads since April last year, for which I am very grateful to him.

Save, not read

Here's an example for you: at 11 a.m., I’m working on a project - and here Twitter sends a notification about another interesting article ... The hand reaches out to distract and read the article.



What should be done in such a situation? Save the article for later (for this I use Pocket ) - read it in your free time. This article is the same “noise” as advertising, but you need to focus on the task.

In general, learn to save the right material and handle your attention carefully. The more distracted you are, the harder it is to keep your focus on work, and productivity will inevitably decline.

Learn to work with information.

Now I'm trying to move away from reading the news and focus more on the information that I'm really interested in.

To organize the information, I use Feedly . The application has all the blogs I follow. They are sorted by category, so I can read without problems what is interesting to me, my colleagues and friends, as well as follow professional topics and much more.



Once a week I open Pocket or Feedly and parse all the saved articles: I read part, part share, part save to read later.

To better organize the information, I also use the Buffer application . With its help, you can not only save content, but also share it many times, switching between different accounts.

On average, I publish content 23 times a day, using all available accounts in all projects.

Keep learning

If Warren Buffett has enough time to read , I think I should do this too, given how much time I spend on the road.

My colleagues love to read and always advise me on something interesting.

When I come across something interesting, I go for evidence on YouTube. I just need to find out if I'm ready to spend 5-10 hours on a book.

On YouTube, I find a video on a topic and watch it at maximum speed to reduce time spent. If everything is in order, then you can read.



I love using the Kindle for reading. I especially like the opportunity to highlight the text you like in order to return to them later.



Also, lately I’ve literally become addicted to Audible.com. Here you will find many audio books lasting 6-9 hours. I am glad that you can listen to them at different speeds. Roughly speaking, you can turn on 3rd speed and deal with the book while you are flying on an airplane and even (if the book is short) for lunch.



I note that you need to listen to books at 3rd speed with the maximum concentration of attention.

Take time to concentrate and relax.

I really like to work, setting myself a certain framework for the task. For example, 20 minutes to send out e-mail messages or some other task. This approach allows you to spend on the project exactly as much time as necessary.



I alternate periods of work and rest and, thereby, achieve the maximum concentration of attention, and, consequently, productivity. All projects are divided into small periods of time, taking into account the time for rest.

In addition, during work, I like to listen to calm music. Often I sing along to my nose, or just sing out loud. It is not strange, but it allows me to concentrate better. For background music, I use the service focustatwill.com .

How has my life changed?

Although I didn’t make any revolution, starting to use the above tips, I began to work and relax more efficiently. I spend much less time lounging and now I spend “conquered” time every day to learn something new.



Translation prepared by: greebn9k (Sergey Gribnyak), silmarilion (Andrey Khakharev)