10 Tips on How to Manage Your Time When Working Remotely

With the start of the worldwide quarantine, many of us have shifted to telecommuting. Shortly after, it became apparent that, when working from home, it’s not very easy to stay as efficient as in the office environment. We realized that it’s often incredibly difficult to make yourself commit to working in the very same place where you’re used to relax during your well-deserved time off.

Now, how to deal with this problem?

Here is our list of the best recommendations from ten successful professionals and seasoned remote workers on how to manage your time efficiently and stay productive wherever you are.

10 Tips on How to Manage Your Time When Working Remotely

1. Use a Scheduling Tool

Planning is the foundation of effective time management. Hence, it’s highly important to implement some planning and scheduling apps when you work from home. With a smart tool like Google Calendar that includes automatic reminders, you will also never forget about an important assignment or meeting. Therefore, Brett Prentiss, a Co-founder of Instinct Marketing, considers it the best time management solution out there:

Google Calendar keeps my team and myself accountable for daily tasks and meetings. I schedule out everything that needs to be completed at certain times of the day. I also make sure to include reminders at least 30 minutes before each task. In this way, I’m never caught off guard on what has to be done.

2. Get Organized

While digital calendars work perfectly well for some, others will find it more convenient to create long lists of tasks and write down new ideas in a more old-fashioned format, using a pen and paper. But regardless of which method you choose, the main thing is to plan ahead, get organized, track progress and see what’s left to be done.

Here’s a tip from Hope Katz Gibbs, the author and journalist at Inkandescent Health & Wellness Magazine, on how to take full advantage of your planning routine:

Have one legal pad where you write your to-do list for the day and a notebook where you track projects and big ideas. Cross off your DONE projects as you complete them, then tear out the page, and trash it when the project is done. It feels so good! Each day, rewrite the list to stay on top of your workload and have a quick review of the most important tasks. This routine helps manage time by making you more efficient.

3. Don’t Let Workloads Expand

After a proper plan is created, the next step is to follow it, which means you need to adjust your behaviors in a way that allows completing your daily tasks successfully. Besides, it means that you have to find how to control your work scope and prevent it from bloating.

As stated by Caroline and Jai, the Founders of Box42, the best way to do so is by having a strict work schedule and adhere to it infallibly:

Parkinson’s law suggests that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. We’ve found this to be 100% true, and we manage this problem by setting firm boundaries for when to start and stop work.
For both of us, our job begins at 8 a.m. and lasts until 5:30 p.m. We focus on everything Box42-related during these hours, and we make sure our day-job work is completed within that timeframe. At 5:30 p.m., anything that’s not completed is pushed to the next weekday’s 8 a.m. and our Box42 hats come off. Such rigid boundaries have helped us balance work and personal life in a healthy and productive manner.

4. Establish Physical Boundaries

Just like a schedule, physical space and boundaries foster effective time management. Though not related to time as such, the physical environment where we work can either distract or help us focus. Hence, by devoting a separate place at home for everything job-related, we can save many hours and boost productivity.

Let’s see why Sunny Ashley, the Founder and CEO of Auto Shop Invoice, considers the creation of a good workspace an essential element of time management for remote employees:

Create as many physical boundaries between your work and home life as possible. For example, dedicate one chair, table or room in your house purely for working. Your mind will begin to build a habit of associating the furniture or space with work. When you get up to do something else, it’ll be easier to adjust back into home life. Overall, we are wired to create physical associations with ideas and concepts. So, help your brain associate work with a specific part of your home.

5. Develop a Productive WFH Routine

You’ve probably already heard that in order to be productive, one needs to develop the right habits. The same applies to time management – to use your working and personal hours more efficiently, you should adopt appropriate routines.

A Podcast Creator at StoryBonding.com with almost a decade of remote work experience, Abdulaziz M. Alhamdan M. Sc., dedicates the first two hours of his day to the most significant tasks. Here’s why:

We have our own routines. At home, you’re used to relax. And if you begin your day in the way you did in the past, those habits will trigger, and you’ll find yourself more distracted and slacking off.
However, when you don’t even let that chain of events start, when the first thing you do when you wake up is to prepare some coffee with milk, sit on your desk and work on the pre-planned tasks, you are committed to being productive.
Then, after two hours of work, you can do your usual morning routine, whether it is to prepare breakfast or do some workout. The difference is that you started the morning productively, which makes it easy to stay productive for an entire day.

6. Respect Your Peak Productivity Hours

Each of us has that period during the day when we are most energetic, attentive and efficient. Knowing when you’re most productive and using this time to your advantage is the key to successful time management, and Jay Scott from Pugsquest agrees with this idea:

While working remotely, I have found two beneficial solutions to effective time management. They include finding your optimal period, when you are most active and productive, and dedicating a few hours during this timeframe exclusively to work.
Identify this optimal hour(s) and make the best of them. You will find that working during your optimal time allows you to produce just as much or even more than you would while working in your low-productivity hours. The trick is to remove all distractions during this time and dedicate it solely to working.

7. Block Off Your Working Time

The strategy of using uninterrupted periods of focus matches well with time blocking. This highly popular and effective time management technique can help you achieve more during the week and allocate the right amount of hours to things you both must and like to do.

Dean Calhoun, the CEO of Affygility Solutions, told us how and why he implements time blocking every day:

Since historically Friday afternoons are slow, I block out the entire afternoon for administrative only tasks or reading that needs to be caught up on. Monday morning is always blocked out for one-on-ones with my direct reports. Weekdays, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., are blocked out for gym time and lunch. And then I block out two-hour chunks of time during the week for extreme focus work.
During these time blocks, I give my team a notice that I will be focused for the next several hours and turn off all notifications, light a nice smelling candle in my office, play some calming music and get super focused. When you eliminate all distractions and create a proper environment, it’s incredible how much work you can accomplish.

8. Use the Pomodoro Technique

Francesco Cirillo invented the Pomodoro method in the 1980’s. Since then, it has gained significant popularity among countless goal-oriented professionals worldwide. And Adam Sanders, the Director at Successful Release, has also found it to be a perfect time management solution for remote workers:

When using the Pomodoro technique, you break up your working sessions into 25-minute intervals, followed by short breaks. Then, after four intervals, you take a more extended break. Such a schedule is perfect for work from home, where long stretches of uninterrupted time can be hard to come by. It feels very natural to take a quick break and chat with my wife or pet my cat for a couple of minutes between tasks. Plus, the length of the working session can be changed according to your task characteristics and personal preferences.

Social media is good for quick stress relief and entertainment. But using it mindlessly leads to forgetfulness and procrastination. In other words, social media abuse impedes progress and makes one waste time that could be spent productively. For this reason, Willie Greer, the Founder of the Product Analyst, states that every telecommuting professional who wants to learn how to use time smartly must block social media during the working hours:

Social media is a potent tool, especially in distracting people from doing more important things. Frequently, you won’t even notice how much time you have been spending on it unless you’ve already missed a lot in your work. Thus, limit yourself and stay disciplined because no matter how tempting it is to look at your messenger and be updated with the latest happenings, you should still respect your job responsibilities and know what to prioritize.

10. Track Your Time

You can start to manage time effectively only when you understand your mistakes and undertake appropriate actions to correct your behaviors and become more productive. Hence, it’s pivotal to track hours spent on tasks, and Rorie Devine, the CEO at Gro.Team, told us why:

I believe that time tracking is key to productivity, insight and a healthy workflow. When you realize which tasks take the most of your time and effort, you can start to reflect on whether that time is well spent – are there hours of “dead time” or time that’s spent on unprofitable activities? This way, you will eliminate unnecessary time-wasters and commence using working hours on more valuable activities.

How to Manage Your Time When Working Remotely

Applying a smart time tracker to analyze your productivity will become an excellent foothold for your time management undertakings. actiTIME includes all the features you need to record working hours, monitor progress and overtime, analyze performance statistics, and more. Besides, all of these features are available to single users and small teams of three at absolutely no charge.