Remote working is quite popular nowadays.
The concept gained momentum during the days of Covid-19 and, considering how easy it was, it’s something that’s opted even now by many professionals.
However, since working remotely often means working from the comfort of one’s home, there are times when things can get a little lax.
Due to the lack of an uptight office environment, there can be times when professionals can let themselves go a little, which can subsequently harm their productivity.
Plus, even if it is assumed that there is no laxity and consequent harm to the productivity of the professionals, there is a need to keep the quality of the work constantly improving.
In a physical office setting, a lot of things can play in your favor, i.e., in the eyes of your seniors, such as your work etiquette, dressing, manners, and the like.
But, if you are working remotely, your seniors can only see the quality of your work and the way you complete it.
Considering that, it can be a little difficult to score points for getting a promotion or a raise/bonus.
In this post, we are going to be looking at some tips and advice that you can act on to make sure your work remains top-notch when you’re on a remote arrangement.
1. Create and Maintain a Work-Conducive Space
If you are working remotely, you won’t be able to perform well if you decide to do your work while lying in bed or lounging on the drawing room sofas.
You have to create a work-conducive environment that can simulate an office and stimulate your productivity.
For one, you can try:
1. Setting up a study in a separate room in your house
2. In the absence of a room, setting up a desk in an existing bedroom or living room
3. Arranging your work-related paraphernalia on and around the desk to look like a usual workstation
4. Keeping the area around your workstation spick and span
5. Arranging proper lighting around your workstation
6. Soundproofing the place to maximize focus
And so on.
2. Manage Your Time – and Never Surpass Deadlines
The worst thing that you can do, especially in a remote setting, is surpass the deadline on a certain task.
In a real-time setting, this situation is somewhat ameliorated since you’ll be present to explain yourself and give some valid excuses.
While you can do this in a remote setting as well, it is not as effective.
To avoid getting into this situation in the first place, you should make sure that you always stay on top of your schedule and that you always complete all your tasks on time.
Saying it like this won’t actually help you in any way, so here are some tips that you can follow to manage your time:
1. Create a schedule or a timetable for your entire workweek.
2. For each day, break down your daily plan by hours and determine what you have to do in each one. For example, since we are talking about writing professionals, this sort of breakdown could include:
9 AM to 11 AM | Research, Fact Gathering, Outline Creation and Approval |
11 AM to 4 PM | Writing |
4 PM to 5 PM | Checking and Optimizing |
3. Categorize your tasks by priority to ensure that the important work is done before everything else. Should you have to do some time improvisations for the less important tasks, it won’t be as big of an issue.
4. Never procrastinate, even if the consequences may look minimal at the time. When the time comes for a particular task, do it instantly.
5. Take breaks – generous ones – to save your productivity from taking a…monotonous hit. Of course, you have to be wise with the breaks and take them only after you do some serious work. Following a break with a break, or taking one without any reason can severely damage your productivity.
Expounding on that last point a little, it’s worth noting that for writers, as compared to other professionals, breaks are very necessary since their work relies on creativity (in the majority of cases). While other types of manual work can be carried out with a cloudy or tired mind, the same is not the case with writing.
3. Improve and Maintain Your Work Quality
This is an obvious piece of advice that can be applied to literally every professional in every industry ever. But, in the context of remote working, it’s a little more important.
As we mentioned earlier, when you’re working remotely, there aren’t a lot of things weighing in your favor other than the actual quality of your work. And for writers, quality can be quick to drop should the effort/attention get slightly eased. That is why it is particularly important for remote writers to constantly make efforts to improve the quality of their work.
Another thing to note about professional writers is that they can often be tasked with writing content on similar topics over and over again. This can also damage the quality of their work.
To sum it up, here are some tips that you can follow to improve your work quality:
1. Always be sure to check for errors in your written content before turning it in. Errors are easy to miss by the writer themselves but are quick to be spotted by the readers. Consistently making such errors can tarnish your reputation and make you look amateurish. For most errors, you can try taking the help of online tools. You can use a grammar checker to find out grammar and punctuation errors in the content, for example.
2. Pay attention to the readability and fluency of your content. Professional writers are professionals for a reason. Their content has to be top-notch in all aspects. You should find and fix any clunky pieces of text in your content. And if you can’t figure out how to do it yourself, you can always take the help of a paraphrasing tool Paraphrasing tools basically work to change your content in such a way that it reads differently but it has the same meaning. If you choose the right tool for the job, you can utilize this for improving your content’s quality rather than just changing the way it looks.
3. Make sure that your work fully conforms to the guidelines provided to you by your client/office. Even if there happens to be something that goes against your usual writing protocols, but is required by your clients/office, you should make sure to do it as per the provided guidelines.
4. Collaborate With Your Team Members and Get Feedback
Even if you happen to be working remotely, there’s nothing stopping you from collaborating with other members in the team. You should try and collaborate with the other folks in the company wherever possible. This will help you in creating a positive image/reputation. Plus, if you collaborate with the concerned people before, after and during your tasks/projects, you will be less likely to make mistakes and get stuff wrong.
That being said, other than actively collaboration with team members for completing specific tasks, etc., you should also seek out the feedback of your senior(s) on the quality of your work. If you regularly ask for feedback (and then address the issues highlighted therein), you will be able to constantly improve the quality of your content and increase your value in the eyes of the company.
Final Thoughts
There is a lot of other advice that we could have mentioned here i.e., in the content of remote working. But, since we need to stick to brevity, we’re putting the brakes here.
In short, when you’re working from home, you need to be aware of the fact that since you are not physically present on the premises, you have to make an extra effort to make yourself look like a worthy and valuable employee. It’s another thing altogether if the company you are working at is a wholly virtual one, in which case all the people will be remote workers like yourself.
