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Being a good remote worker takes a lot of discipline. We’ve to do everything ourselves without anyone watching.
In this article, we’ll look at some habits we can adopt to become a good remote developer.
Keeping Regular Office Hours
Keeping regular office hours important to control the amount of work that we’re doing regularly.
This lets us take breaks sometimes and work at other times.
Interruptions can be kept to a minimum by working when there’re no meetings scheduled.
All we have to do is to keep a block of time aside to work for a few hours as if we’re in the office.
Plan and Structure Our Workday
Since organizing our schedule is mostly on when we’re working remotely, we’ve to structure it so that we can get stuff done without forgetting to do things.
This means we got to keep our mind sharp and our memory is more important than ever since we’ve to remember when meetings take place since nobody will walk by us to tell us to go to meetings like if we’re working in an office.
If our memory isn’t the sharpest, then we have to write everything down and give us plenty of reminders.
Dress Up
We still got to dress up so that it feels like we’re doing work even if we’re working at home.
It makes us feel like work if we’re wearing work clothes.
Set Aside a Designated Work Area
A designated work area is definitely something that we need. We should at the same spot every day to have a routine.
It’s should be a quiet place where people can’t walk in and out. We don’t want to have people walking in and out in meetings.
Take Breaks
We should schedule a time for breaks throughout the day. This way, we’ll stay sane while working on tasks at home.
There’s just no way that we can work without breaks. We still need to walk off for lunch breaks and toilet breaks as if we’re working at the office.
Eating while working isn’t healthy. It also distracts us from working so we may make mistakes.
Avoid Distractions
This is another reason to have a quiet place to work at home. We got to remove those distractions.
There’s no excuse to have any distractions since we can completely control our environment.
Therefore, when we’re working, we should have a computer with work stuff like our text editors, IDEs, and terminal windows open.
Close all the things that distract us like social media, YouTube, and everything else and just get to work.
If we’re done with our work early, then we can take a break earlier. That’s one thing that we should take advantage of. The faster that we work, the more breaks we can take.
We won’t look lazy if we’re taking too many breaks at home since we got all our stuff done and no one can watch us taking breaks.
Get Started Early
The earlier we start, then the earlier that we can take a break. That’s one good reason to get started earlier.
Also, since we don’t have a commute, we can work a few hours before we have any meetings when our mind is freshest and we don’t have any meetings.
Early morning is a great time to work if we work from home since we can actually use that time to work instead of waiting for the bus or being stuck in traffic.
Don’t Stay at Home
In addition to working from home, we can also work from other places like coffee shops, libraries, and other places with wifi if they’re open.
The change of environment is less boring and it lets us go anywhere we want to work, which is nice.
Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash
Make it Harder for Ourselves to Mess Around on Social Media
Since no one is watching us work, it might be tempting to be messing around with social media during work hours.
However, that’s a bad idea since it slows down our work and removes the focus that we all need.
Developers already have so many windows and browser tabs open, we don’t need more of them to distract us.
Therefore, leave them for when they’re done.
Conclusion
We should keep our focus by removing distractions and don’t mess around with anything other than work.
Keeping office regular office hours and working early is good since our mind is fresh and we don’t have any meetings.
Top comments (1)
Regarding "Don’t Stay at Home" - I disagree, please stay home, stay safe. Jokes apart, nice write up.