Top 3 Skills to Thrive at Remote Work

When I started working remotely, I got it all wrong.

But once I got it right, the results were out of proportions.

Wanna know how to thrive at remote work?

Read my Day 4 #Ship30for30 essay 👇🏾

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When I started working remotely, I thought it's just working from home.

I was recovering from successive surgeries and got kind of forced into remote work. Since I was working from home, the lines got blurry and I could not tell my work hours from my personal ones. This meant more work and less and less productivity. I was on the verge of quitting my job altogether.

Then I stumbled upon an article titled What Most Remote Companies Don’t Tell You About Remote Work by Amir Salihefendić.

That changed my life so much that I ended up working for Amir at Doist 2 years later.

Here's what helped me turn things around and what can help you get your remote game right.

# 1. Have clear work hour boundaries and shut down rituals

If you don't get it right, you can not survive remote work, period.

Define your work hours. Have a separate environment for work. And once you're done with the day, note down left over work plus the most important tasks that you want to pick up the next day. This sounds trivial but it is the game changer. Your brain will thank you for it.

# 2. Learn to manage yourself. Become a Manager of One.

Managing yourself is the key to a successful remote career.

Have a workflow in place to track and prioritize work. Have at least 1 task each day on your list to complete that would make it a successful day. If you're working on something big, break it down in chunks.

Manage yourself as you would want your ideal manager to manage you.

# 3. Learn how to communicate clearly in the written form

How well you communicate in the written form is the ultimate leverage in remote work. You don't need to become the next Shakespeare, just learn to get the message across in a warm tone and make sure your assumptions are always explicit.