How to Stay Productive in Remote Work When No One Is Watching

When you work at an office, you have a built-in system for your day including scheduled start times, check-ins and visible results. In a remote job also, if you don’t follow the system & your own work discipline, you will lose productivity and have little to show for your time. Because no one is there to see what you are doing, it is easy to put things off or add extra breaks, or change focus from one thing to another without actually completing anything. You may feel that you have been busy all day long, but will likely be unsure as to whether or not you actually accomplished anything useful.

So how can you be more productive while working remotely?

To get on a path to productivity, you first want to create your own structure, which may not be rigid, but rather intentional. Define what ‘done’ will look like before beginning work. Without a clear understanding of this, your tasks will grow beyond their actual requirements, consuming more time than they should.

Focus on your priorities rather than simply completing your tasks. A long to-do list does not necessarily equate to a productive day. Instead, identify 2-3 of the most important things you can accomplish in a day and complete them. A person can make progress by completing only the most significant value-added tasks, rather than trying to complete everything on their to-do list.

Another way to stay productive is to be disciplined instead of motivated. Many times, a person’s motivation to work diminishes, and this is a normal phenomenon. Therefore, the key to creating productivity patterns that will not depend on your mood is to develop discipline.

The last thing to consider is boundaries. When your work area and personal space begin to overlap with each other, a person can find work will be spilling into everything and interacting with everything else when creating their productivity patterns.

When you reflect on your day, do so based on the results produced rather than hours worked. Be sure to measure your accomplishments, not time worked.

Remote work is as challenging as office work. However, it is primarily moving from an external authority to self-control.

In remote work, it’s not about doing more. It’s about creating your own system and actually sticking to it.