Working with a remote team can be challenging or a ton of fun.  You need to be able to manage your time effectively and figure out how to collaborate with your team without being able to see them in person. There are a ton of tools out there you can use to make things easier. Here are some tips to help you out, with useful tools listed at the end.

Hours

When you’re working from home you need to have a set schedule for yourself, and you need to stick to it. This helps you get into and stay in a consistent routine, creating structure in your life and keeping a good work ethic. Sometimes a simple timer will help you stay on track and make sure you stay focused on a certain task for a period of time, sometimes you need a more complex app to help you out.

Distractions

Distractions can be a huge problem when you’re working from home, especially if you have children or pets. If your children are older, you can sit down with them and have a talk about how you need to stay focused while you’re working. If you have the room, you should create your own little office space, in a room where no other people will be, so you can work in peace.

For some people, their phones can be a huge distraction while working from home, especially with the temptation to check social media. The first thing you should do is turn off notifications for your phone, only let text and call alerts come through. Then set your phone to silent or vibrate, if you don’t have to worry about coworkers or your boss calling or texting you, just turn your phone completely off.

Meetings

Remote meetings can be a little intimidating. You’ve got a new software to figure out, will your coworkers be able to hear you? So many things can go wrong. But, they aren’t too difficult after you’ve had a couple.

The first thing you need to do is make sure you have the right tools for the meeting. You’ll need a program, like Zoom or Microsoft Teams. You’ll also need a camera and a microphone, so people can actually see and hear you. A camera isn’t always necessary, but it is highly recommended, being able to see each other makes the meeting feel more personal.

Before the meeting starts, have notes of what you want to talk about, it may be helpful to have some slides put together to share with your team. If someone is unable to make it to the meeting, reach out to them beforehand to see if they have any questions or comments they would like to share with everyone else, and send them a brief of the meeting after it is over. During the meeting, have everyone test their audio so you know everyone can speak and hear each other.

After the meeting, send out notes on what was discussed, or even a recording of the meeting, and notes on what need to be done next.

Tools

Rescue Time: Provides you with analytics on your daily habits and productivity, as well as allowing you to block sites that are distracting, for certain parts of the day.

Time: An AI app for productivity that helps you boost your accountability. It also gives you recommendations for how you can be more productive the more you use this app.

Zoom: A conference tool. Included video conferences, calls, and messaging.

Microsoft Teams: A conference tool like Zoom. Chat. call, and collaborate all in one place.

Flowlu: A task management system, free for basic features, paid for more in depth features.

Monday: Collaborate with your teams, track your work progress, turn video calls into actions.

Nifty: Create tasks, timelines, and assign projects.

Asana: Build road maps for projects, collaborate with teams, create calendars, track projects progress.