It Is The Work And Deliverable That Matters, Not The clock.

Remote: Office not required

That’s the book summary I was reading yesterday while having breakfast –

This is an amazing book written by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. So this is highly recommended for those of you who are considering remote work this year as corporate professionals, freelancers or first time entrepreneurs in SOHO or COHO.

This book will makes sense even to large corporations who want to give remote work an honest, serious and mighty effort to save costs and enhance productivity. Corporate can test this option with senior resources who have been with the company for years, whose efficiency they are sure of, who they believe can be location independent and remain equally productive or may be even more.

This can be a great retention strategy as well.

Productivity

I seriously used to have this sinking feeling in office. In fact I had this feeling the whole of last year – What did I do the whole day?

Being aware of what you are capable of doing and assessing by the end of the day - what you actually got done triggers that feeling.

Too many interruptions

Too many distractions

Too many breaks

v  Meetings

v  Managers

v  Emails

v  Forwards

v  Social media

v  Phone calls

v  Watsapp messages

With each and every interruption and distraction, a knowledge worker is compelled to move out of his or her thinking zone and it takes considerable time to be back and take it forward from there.

Trying to get meaningful, creative, critical, thoughtful work done requires deep focus, attention, thinking and most important - long stretches of time, which is a huge challenge today, in the 9 to 5 scenario.

Time in office and transit literally gets wasted. It is about time  business leaders realize it is the work that gets reviewed and judged, not the location or duration. 

Pre Hiring

When I took over social media management for an international client (US being in different time zone) we, as a virtual team offered to do a short assignment for two weeks to test frequency, bandwidth and quality needs for long term engagement.

  

This saves our precious time to write lengthy proposals and also client’s time in scanning portfolio, reviewing profile and conducting SKYPE interviews

Training

BECKON Aspirants go through a standard drill. Their training is mostly on live project – either they own the project or become active contributors of a large project.

They have to set a reasonable schedule, micro learn a lot of things and no activity is quite considered as learning till they can quantify outcomes or highlight impact or change of habit.

Project Leader

The BECKON coach does not manage people. He/ She manages their learning curve, the client and the end results based on the work carried out by the team

Virtual Team

This hot group comprising of BECKON Aspirants is self- driven with the understanding if the quality of work suffers based on their contribution, they will obviously not be trusted with any more projects in the near future.

Building A Routine

While working from home full time provides freedom and flexibility, without a structured morning and evening routine or defined boundaries you are likely to have serious productivity issues – That familiar “What did I do the whole day?” feeling is bound to be back to bother you.

Floating lifestyle does not mean floating goals. It is to have the goals constant with some variable factors around those –work time, location, duration etc.

Go back and read the list of distractions above. Many beginners think responding to those as “Work”. There is a difference between catch up, follow up and “real work”

Working Anywhere

Once you have a routine and basic work principles, you can work in solitude or anywhere that has a WIFI. Just in case you miss human interaction, try any of these:

Library

Terrace

Balcony

Park

Co working Facility

Local Café

5 to 9 PM

There is nothing wrong in clinging to the safe path - The office. Your passion may not lead to your first million – Just that when you love what you do and it is aligned to what you always wanted to do, your progress is faster. You can begin with a few hours every week.

Face time

One of the reasons, I have been away from corporate for the past years is the mandatory need for face time. There are plenty of mentally stimulating assignments there that can be carried out as a virtual team - Bid Management, Training, research, product development, content strategy, coaching leaders, Business planning, Go to Market Strategy, Content marketing. 

The enthusiasm to execute is smothered with face time mandates. I personally cannot take one more meeting with zero value add. None of my international clients insist for calls or meetings. I do not encourage either. The good old mails and messages serves our purpose well.

There can be absolutely no second opinion about this –

Remote work is here to stay for a very long time, or forever

It is your call if want to be part of the early adopters or late followers.

Are you getting ready to work from home during weekends to establish a secondary income?

Do you want to let go of the golden handcuff and have the freedom to create your own market?

Are you ready to settle into this new rhythm?

Image Credit: Canva Design

***Click here to open your Payza account to receive your online income***