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.
Commit to Doing More
Since we have extra time because we skipped the commute and don’t have to do anything other than work and have meetings, we should commit to doing more.
This way, we’ll convince everyone that we’re good workers even if we aren’t inside the office.
With all the extra time, we can do more and take more breaks.
Therefore, for developers, this means that we can take on more tasks and work harder than if we’re in the office.
This is also important since nobody can see if we’re working or not, so we got to get more stuff done so that people will be happy with us working from home.
Work When We’re the Most Productive
One great benefit of remote work is that we can take advantage of working at different times as long as we get stuff done.
Therefore, we should take advantage of that so that we can maximize our work throughput.
If we do have a time where we solve things a lot faster, then we should take advantage of that.
Save Calls for the Afternoon
The afternoon is good for calls since our brains can use a break after working hard in the morning when our brains are freshest.
Taking calls and meetings let us take a break since we don’t have to think as hard as when we’re debugging and looking at all sorts of weird issues that come up all the time.
This is especially useful for getting through the afternoon lull where we had lunch and we’re more tired than in the morning.
Plan Out What We’ll Be Working On Ahead of Time
We should plan out what we’ll be working on ahead of time since we don’t have anyone to guide us on what we’re working on.
Therefore, we should be planning this out ahead of time so that we can do them soon.
However, we can change the priorities so that we can do different things at different times.
This way, we won’t forget this and we can do them as soon as we planned them.
Listen to Music
We can play music while we work so that our environment won’t be too silent.
While we work, we can get the playlist that we can want and then play it so that it won’t be too quiet.
Communicate Expectations With Any Stakeholder
Since we’re working remotely and can’t see each other, we got to communicate everything clearly with us.
This includes the tasks that we need to get done so that they’ll know the progress of it.
If we don’t communicate, then no one knows what we’re doing, which isn’t good since we’re probably invisible to them even if we’re actually doing the work.
We don’t want to be invisible if we’re working remotely so that people will actually appreciate our existence.
Therefore, we got to know that we’re giving results by communicating that we’re doing something.
Prepare Meals
If we want to save money, we got to cook ourselves. We can make time to cook at home since we’re already at home.
Therefore, it’s a great idea to save money if we prepare our meals at home.
This is another great thing that we can do if we’re working from home.
Pick a Definitive Finishing Time
At the end of the workday, we got to cut off any work things from our lives for the next few hours until we go to sleep and wake up again.
This way, we have actual times for breaks and then we can do something else like hobbies and anything else that we want to do.
Keep the TV On In the Background
TV shouldn’t come in the foreground until we’re getting off work. TVs are distracting and it’s especially bad if we’re doing hard things like debugging and running things in production.
Therefore, we should turn it off and just focus on work.
Conclusion
We should focus on doing work and remove all distractions. Also, we should save money by preparing meals and plan out what we have to do ahead of time so we don’t forget about that stuff.
Also, TV isn’t very useful for most people, so turn it off and, finish our work, and then turn it back on.
