The key reason individuals fail to adjust to working remotely is they don’t recognise the essential requirement of good organisation and rigid self discipline.

I have been toiling remotely for almost a decade since I first discovered Quickbooks online an ‘on demand’ small business accounting software web application and was struck by the fact that if you can perform accounting on the Internet then why shouldn’t it be viable to perform other important types of work at a distance?

Whilst working remotely has its obvious perks there are numerous traps that people easily fall into which lead to issues that result in decreased productivity and lower motivation. The most significant reason for reductions in work output from remote professionals is disruption and it is a proven and well known fact that it can take a employee up to twenty minutes to return to their original efficiency level after experiencing a disturbance.

Deeper insights reveal that people who are regularly experience disturbances are more likely to be susceptible to decreased memory power and are prone to developing mental health problems in old age. We exist in an over communicated environment and it is imperative that you recognise the problems this causes before you start working remotely. When operating remotely you must do everything possible to mitigate the risk of being disturbed.

Here are things that really do work:

1, Get a habit, communicate it to absolutely everyone and rigidly adhere to it!

Good examples are a fixed time of day when you read or write and send electronic mail and make or be available for phone calls. Before I began working remotely I used to get well over two hundred e-mails over a period of twenty four hours. Now I think I am unfortunate if I receive more than four. To ‘restart’ my e-mail experience I altered my e-mail address and tenaciously took precautions to protect the details being made available to anyone. I then educated every individual who I gave my e-mail address to, to use it prudently. I also created an auto-responder that swiftly told anyone sending me mail at what time of day I would be reading mail and if an item needed my urgent consideration to mark it as ‘Urgent’.

2. Get rid of alerts.

Turn off every possible mechanism that can send you a perceptible alert. This includes portable and
conventional phones and forms of alerts from e-mail such as on screen pop ups, warning sounds, screen changes to your inbox folder 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 – ‘Tools of the trade’’ I will reveal my favourite tools and software.