Most of what you read about remote work is wrong
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“The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.” - Georg C. Lichtenberg
“The future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed.” ~ William Gibson
Remote is the future of work, period. Yet, many people still see it as a pipe dream or, at best, a passing fad. The truth is, the number of remote opportunities in the marketplace today is higher today than ever before. And the trend is only growing.
For this reason, we’re often surprised by the amount of misinformation (and misunderstanding) we encounter, in general, about remote work. Misinformation we hope to dispel for you here.
The cadence and orientation of remote work is quite different than in a traditional office. An office provides plenty of opportunity throughout the day to talk with coworkers. If you need a key piece of information, you can simply walk to your teammate’s desk to get it.
For remote workers, however, it’s not that simple. One of the biggest challenges remote workers face is learning to communicate effectively within an . Asynchronous communications are not in real-time, so they require just the right amount of detail, and not much else.
In other words, your communication should contain all the information needed by the recipient, but formatted - and at a level of detail - that makes it as clear and easy as possible to understand.
A common piece of (incorrect) advice we hear is that you should over-communicate to make sure your recipient has plenty of information and won’t become blocked.
The truth is, over-communication often creates more problems than it solves. The best approach is to communicate optimally. Be clear about what’s important. Present key ideas clearly and don’t lose them in the details.
Keep in mind that not every business scenario is the same. Therefore, your approach to communication should be professional, responsive, and above all, flexible.
It wasn’t long ago that nearly every blog post or online article covering remote work included an obligatory laptop-on-the-beach photo. Seriously, nearly every post.
Such articles insisted that, to embrace the future of work is to live the Good Life, laptop in lap, sipping pina coladas on the beach. However, that’s obviously not reality.
The future of work is far more practical - and professional. High-performing remote workers take their roles seriously enough to consistently perform them with quality.
Like any endeavor, success in the remote field requires focused effort, professional development, and no small amount of hard work.
And let’s be honest. Can you really imagine working on the beach, like the person above?
We mentioned earlier how remote workers don’t have the luxury of simply walking down the hall to meet with a colleague.
Keep in mind that five people meeting for one hour is not a one-hour meeting, but a five-hour one! Meetings that are too large, or too long, fail to be effective and don’t justify the expense of time.
Instead of holding lots of meetings, hold fewer of them. Make them well-run and focus on quality. Large or long meetings should be avoided unless absolutely necessary.
With time and practice, your meetings will become highly-effective (usually short) touch points that add real value to the day. And don’t forget to document your meetings.
A repository of clear and concise, readily accessible self-support documentation adds immense value to the enterprise, and is exponentially more scalable than synchronous meetings.
In the digital age, business and life happen faster than ever, and they’re only becoming faster.
We’ve actually found the opposite to be true. Rather than multitasking, you should focus on a single activity in order to achieve deep work.
Deep work is akin to a flow state where quality output occurs with minimum resistance. Such a state is simply unreachable when we busy ourselves multitasking.
Accounting for rework (our own, or downstream), it actually takes less time, in total, to deliver world-class products and services than it does to deliver mediocre ones.
Any efficiency we lose by refusing to multitask, we make up for by routinely delivering high-quality output.
As you progress in your remote career, you’ll continue to encounter opinions about success which may, or may not, be worth following.
Some ideas will contain more than a grain of truth. But it’s always necessary to examine every idea using common sense, and your own experience, as points of reference.
Make sure you use your company account for taking the quiz.
As a result, there is a tendency to schedule too many meetings in an effort to ensure quality output. However, this rarely works and, in fact, is usually true.
To keep pace, humans are evolving into advanced multi-taskers. Juggling tasks has become a way of life, and everyone’s doing it. But.
And multitasking is, too. However, you’ll more often hear that multitasking is a sought-after skill that you should develop in order to advance your career.