Old English proverb “Time and tide wait for none” implies the enormous importance of time in our day-to-day life. If it comes down to our work activities, we all know and have experienced the significance of time.
Remote working is the next future of the business working field. If you are a remote employee or working from home as a freelancer or in a BPO vendor, then you are doing absolutely a great job. However, as a remote worker, you are going through tough challenges regarding time management while working from home.
Challenges Faced by Remote Employees While Working from Home
While working from home saves additional traveling costs and provides sufficient time for your family members. But remote employees face a number of challenges during work time. Examples are distractions, loneliness and isolation, communication issues, mental and physical exhaustion, preserving trust, and many more. If you don’t address these issues, they might ruin your personal and professional life.
Let’s get straight to the work from home strategies to manage time effectively for remote employees.
Top 13 Ways to Manage Time While Working Remotely
1. Determine when You are the Most Productive
Everyone is unique in their own way. Nobody can operate like a machine and be available 24 hours a day to the company. Also, no one is entirely productive throughout the working hour. For some employees, they work enthusiastically in the morning, but by the afternoon, their excitement has dwindled to 50% of what it was in the morning. Identifying your most productive hour will undoubtedly assist you in completing any task in the least time possible.
2. Use Asynchronous Communication
If you frequently find yourself caught up in meetings and discussions, it’s high time you should start prioritising stuff and attending the most important ones only. What about the rest? Well, turn to asynchronous communication. Use videos to streamline stand-ups, share feedback and discuss anything that doesn’t need everyone to be present at the same time. Not just that, even if you must attend meetings, you can set the context ahead of time so that you can stick to the point and have a productive conversation.
3. Reduce Distractions
Not only is it simple to get distracted by the television in the background while working from home, but it’s also easy to be sidetracked by household work such as laundry and cleaning dishes. At times, your children will want your attention to do their homework. Browsing Social media is one of the major distractions for any remote employee. Set a complete barrier not to use any social media unless it is uber important during working hours.
4. Stop Multitasking
While some individuals are capable of performing many tasks at once, most of us are unable to. Multitasking really reduces productivity since it requires time to switch your brain frequently. Avoiding multitasking allows you to concentrate entirely on a single job. And believe me, paying total concentration to any task is the best way to complete it.
5. Use a Time Tracking Tool
Time management is much easier with the time tracking software. It records how much time you spend on each task and see your whole workday in-real time. You will be able to pinpoint precisely where you are getting diverted from your job. Some tools offer GPS facilities, locating URLs you are visiting and how much time you spend on those websites.
6. Prioritize your Task
Based on the requirements of others or the proximity of the deadline, you can sort out your activities. By implementing prioritizing tactics, you can radically modify the arc of working hours while being a remote employee. Making a complete list of tasks and then highlighting the important works and completing it one by one is a great way to start the prioritization process.
7. Pomodoro Break
The goal behind the Pomodoro method is to increase productivity by splitting up your workday into highly focused periods separated by short breaks. The Pomodoro break allows you to assess the value of your time. This temporary break allows you to reclaim control of your life. When used effectively, the Pomodoro method significantly improves attention. The Pomodoro approach encourages us to concentrate while also reducing distractions.
8. Interact with Others and Socialize
From Harvard Business Review, it is found that among remote employees, 52% of them responded that they feel their colleagues don’t treat them equally. That is primarily because of a lack of in-person contact. Like any other kind of peer networking, Remote socialization helps employees be more productive. Humankind is a social being, and socialization plays a vital role in building a great working environment inside any remote team.
9. Distinguish your Work time and Home Time
Working from home allows remote employees to stay at home and finish their tasks. But very often, being an employee, you may amalgamate work time with free time. That causes a definite breakdown in my productivity level. So it is much more important to distinguish your free time from work time.
10. Be Transparent with Your Manager.
Transparency is a talent that requires being an honest and forthright worker. Speak openly with your managers, provide facts, and get feedback. Transparency allows you to speak with coworkers about your job and duties. If you are a remote employee, you need to build trust and good communication with your manager. Transparency enables you to formulate a good relationship with your manager.
11. Get Mental Satisfaction
Maintaining good mental health, regardless of where you work, is considerably more essential, in my opinion. Getting healthy food, taking a brief break, getting enough sleep, and engaging in social activities can help you achieve mental satisfaction.
12. Make a Balance of Work and Personal Life.
Balancing work life and personal life means managing your time to spend outside of your work. One remote worker must not spend all his daylight and night hours working on getting more incentives from the company. This can damage personal life relationships, health, and overall happiness. You need to find out your source of happiness and spend time on that particular activity. One of my favorite quotes from American singer and songwriter
“Don’t Get So Busy Making A Living
That You Forget To Make A Living”
– Dolly Parton
13. Exercise
While working from home, you may forget about your exercise. We all know that exercise helps to alleviate depression, anxiety, stress, and many other mental health challenges. While working remotely, you have some drawbacks when you work from home. It has many advantages. Remote employment causes you to move less, which can cause gaining weight, exhaustion, sleep disorders, social anxiety, loneliness, and other long-term health concerns. As a result, Remote workers need an exercise program to reduce mental and physical problems.
Conclusion
Management of time becomes more challenging when you are surrounded by lots of distractions from your surroundings, home, and family members. Certainly, these distractions take away your concentration from work. Maintaining proper strategies will prevent your time-wasting while you work from home. Set a boundary around you, maintain a good balance of work and personal life, and all other necessary steps you want to take for managing time will surely benefit you in your work-life.
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