Remote skeptics are dwindling in number, but that doesn’t mean we have remote work figured out yet.
A recurring challenge is collaboration. An in-person office has some real advantages when it comes to teamwork. Leaning across a desk or poking your head above a cubicle is easy. Managers can call a meeting and file all relevant team members into a conference room in minutes.
Distance doesn’t make teamwork impossible. It just means you might need to be a little more creative with your resources and a little more deliberate with your principles. At iDoneThis, we’ve written numerous times about how core psychological and motivational principles can improve your approach to remote work.
Here, we’re sharing 7 lectures about work and collaboration from the venerable folks at TED. Along the way, we’ll pull out some of the best insights these TED talks on teamwork can provide remote managers and workers.
This is a guest post from Lisa Banks, an expert in workplace communication and writer at content marketing agency Animalz.
Choosing the right tools for your remote team is second only to hiring the right people.
There are a number ted talks for teamwork available to inspire your remote team but choosing the right kind of tools is more important than that.
Remote tools offer structure, streamline operations, and hold your company together as it grows. And you need a lot of them. You need remote tools for team communication, tools for talking to people outside your organization like customers and vendors, tools for managing the business, tools for hiring and development, and so on.
But picking the right tools for a distributed company is not easy with so many to choose from. I’ve whittled through every remote tool in the most common categories to pull together a list. All the following tools are ones my team uses or have come highly recommended by other remote teams.
If you’re setting up a distributed team this year, these are the remote work tools you need.
Remote work is increasing across the globe, in every industry that can manage it—and it isn’t just the pandemic that’s making it happen.
Sure, the pandemic forced an increase in speed and breadth of adoption, but this snowball has been rolling down the hill for years. Employees expect more flexibility; employers need to prepare for a massive change in the average worker’s schedule, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Industrial Revolution.
Whether you’re a team leader, an investor, or a business owner, you have to understand this: Remote work is here to stay. And it can be very effective, too—especially with the use of tools to help you and your workers maximize their morale and production, no matter where they’re logging on from.
Whether you fear its impersonal nature or thinks its the best thing since streaming television, asynchronous communication is here to stay
Remote work is rising and online education is becoming more accepted and commonplace, both due to changing attitudes and the pandemic. These factors are only going to increase the use of asynchronous communication to keep business, schools, and other organizations running smoothly when they no longer share the same space 100% of the time
But what is asynchronous communication, and is it really better than synchronous communication?
Work remotely and people might ask you if you report for duty in your pajamas every day.
People who don’t work remotely think that those of us who do sleep in and then enjoy a few hours of gleeful twirling in an office chair while wearing boxer shorts.
At iDoneThis, we’ve got our team spread all across the world. Germany, Italy, New York, Wisconsin. The company has been remote from Day 1 and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Working from a home office or coworking space gives us the freedom to work how we want and — for the most part — when we want.
As of writing this, I’ve had four weeks on the remote team. Here are 10 things I’ve learned in the first month.
Working on a remote team — with colleagues spread all over the world — is a craft. It needs to be practiced and worked on. And every good craftsman needs a good set of tools.
Here are the remote work tools that have worked great for us here at I Done This.
This article on landing a remote job is a guest post from Tim Metz. Tim is the co-founder of Saent, a hardware and software device that blocks digital distractions and helps you be more productive. Saent is crowdfunding its initial production run on Indiegogo now. Before Saent, Tim worked in mobile gaming and electronic music, amongst other things. Tim lives and works from Beijing (China) and starts each day writing, usually about productivity on the Saent blog. You can follow him on Twitter & LinkedIn.
When I lost my job at a mobile gaming company in August of last year, I soul-searched hard to figure out what I really wanted to do. I realized my ideal position would involve my passion and knowledge of productivity. I set my sights on landing a job Evernote, which is one of the few companies truly trying to build a great brand and community around productivity. To my amazement, they also had a vacancy at that time that I thought would perfectly suit me: Marketing Producer. I sent off a cover letter and CV.
And that was it. I never heard back from them.
Tim Metz
At first I was puzzled, and a bit crushed. Then I started reviewing myself more critically. I’d done a lot of things wrong: I didn’t really highlight my passion for productivity, I didn’t talk about what I could do for Evernote, and I didn’t even showcase my relevant productivity experience. In retrospect, everything sounded a bit generic.
Fast forward 12 months and I’ve launched my own company to manufacture a productivity device and hired a globally distributed team operating under Teal organizational principles. Most recently, I’ve been going through the over 400 applications we received for our remote librarian position, and unfortunately, many applicants made a lot of the same mistakes I did. Though the Evernote job wasn’t a remote role, many of the concept translate — and at times are amplified by the nature of remote work.
So, based on my own failed attempt to land a job at Evernote and the experience hiring a remote team at Saent, here are nine tips about how to apply for a remote job.
Remote working can be amazing. Freedom, flexibility, travel, family. It can be an excellent way to live and work. But it doesn’t come easy. You have to work for it. That’s why we teamed up with Sqwiggle to create this free eBook on remote working. Because we love remote working — at iDoneThis, we’ve been remote from … Read more
