Productive Remote Work:
12 Essential Strategies
to Balance Focus and Freedom

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #597: Productive Remote Work: 12 Essential Strategies to Balance Focus and Freedom

Jeff Sanders
Good morning and welcome to The 5 AM Miracle, episode #597: Productive Remote Work: 12 Essential Strategies to Balance Focus and Freedom.

I am Jeff Sanders, and you have reached the podcast that is dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer, and to learn more about that, head over to jeffsanders.com slash speaking.

Now, an episode this week, I'll break down 12 fun strategies to boost your own remote working lifestyle.

Let's dig right in.

So I have been working remotely or working from home since 2014, and I'm now entering my 12th year of working full-time in my business from my home office.

And prior to that, I worked remotely part-time for five years.

So the strategies that I am sharing with you here today are strategies that I use myself each and every day or have used extensively in the past to boost my own productivity, run my business, and ultimately strive to find a sense of balance with my personal life as well, as hard as that may be.

So the episode this week is all about finding that balance between,

focus and freedom. Let me break that down for a second. So the clarity around focus

is fairly obvious. We want to get stuff done, be able to block distractions and be an

effective worker, effective entrepreneur, business owner, employee, whatever your job

title happens to be as a remote worker. You want to get stuff done. That's the first

most important aspect, do your job. But the second piece, a really, really important

second piece is that balance of freedom. And by freedom, I mean being able to have a

life outside of work. But let's just pause for a second before the strategies start

and acknowledge the fact that remote work has a major flaw. And that flaw is that you

can't leave your job. I leave your job. I mean, you can do your job from anywhere.

Back in the day, I used to have jobs where I worked at restaurants. I was a waiter,

back at high school and college. And then after that, I had jobs in retail.

And those are the kinds of jobs where when you're not at the office, when you're not

in the restaurants or at the store, you can't do the job. You literally can't serve

the customers or serve your role because you're not physically present to do it.

And so when you clock out for the day and you go home, you're done. Days over.

Your personal time has begun. You could do whatever it is that you want to do.

And of course, you have to orient your life around those working hours and commute back and forth.

And there's, you know, a lifestyle around working in a physical location.

But it's very clear that when you leave the job, you're done.

Now, there are other jobs where you may leave the office, but you have the option to work from home or the expectation to work when you're not officially on the clock or in the office.

Kind of a hybrid working style of physicality where you're present and also the remote life.

style mixed in. That could be a dangerous scenario too. But today's conversation

is about full-time remote work, the kinds of people who are saying, you know what,

I want to work from home or a coffee shop or a library or wherever it is you go.

And I don't want my job to destroy my life. I don't want to have a 24-7 working cycle.

I want to be able to turn it off and go to the park with my kids or have some ice cream or take a

or just whatever it is you want to do and not be working sometimes.

And the irony of this entire conversation of this one right here is that

when I'm recording this podcast for you right now, it's a Saturday afternoon.

I'm working on the weekend.

So technically I'm working during my personal time.

Now, in reality, once again, I can work whatever I want and I choose to do so.

I flex my hours as needed to work when it makes the most sense.

Now, technically today I'm only working on a Saturday because yesterday was my recording day and the power went out of my house.

And so I lost my ability to record my show.

And so I had to bump it to Saturday, which I'm fine with.

But that's one of those cases of when you work remotely.

You've got to work around real life, your family life, your home, all the ins and outs and the complications that show up because you're not in an office where someone else will handle XYZ.

It's you.

It's your space.

And so today is all about, yes, getting things done, but also acknowledging

the reality that we're not going to get things done to the ridiculous exclusion

of the rest of our lives.

We have whole lives.

We want whole lives.

Taking care of your health, your family, your hobbies, your other aspirations

outside of the nine to five working hours or whatever hours you choose to work.

Okay.

Preamble aside, let's get to these 12 strategies.

And we're going to start with the first and most important one,

which is your physical environment, the location where you choose to work.

I discussed productivity in this podcast for over 12 years now.

And one of the key things I have always brought up about productivity itself,

regardless of remote work, is the fact that your environment is the number one factor in your ability to get things done.

It is more important than your other tools or strategies or hacks or ways to focus, which we'll get to all of those.

But the environment is the thing.

It's what determines your ability to focus, your engagement in the task, your willingness to do the work you have to do.

Environment shapes us.

It changes us.

It really does define how we approach what it is that we do.

And so if you have a home office, for example, and you want to be able to optimize that,

space. That's a really smart move because your environment dictates your output.

If you choose to work at a coffee shop and you like to be around other people

and the noise and the camaraderie of other work from home people being there that

day, also fantastic. For years, I went back and forth with a co-working space that

I kept testing. I actually worked at three different companies trying to find a good fit

and ultimately chose none of them. I work from home because the co-working space thing

doesn't work for me. I'm not effective there. Or to say, I'm only effective for a

little bit, and then it fades, and I lose interest, which is really important to know.

There are certain locations where it will be optimized because we are engaged

when we're there. We're fully focused. We're in. And then others are just,

they just don't work. They're not us. And the key is to find the thing that defines

your best ability to get stuff done. Now, one thing. One thing,

thing to the note of the co-working space is the fact that I do like to mix it up.

Working from my home is fantastic, but I cannot work exclusively here.

I do frequently mix it up by going to my wife actually works in a university

and there's a library there, so I work at that library frequently.

Or I choose a coffee shop or when I travel and visit my parents, I'll take my laptop

and work from there.

On vacation, I also bring my laptop and sometimes work there, but that's kept to a minimum.

But once again, the location does matter.

I think the really key point here is to ask the question, where do you get your

best work done?

Where when you go do you feel that sense of clarity and focus and rhythm and flow?

That's what we're trying to get to, the place where your best self comes out.

And you can stay in that zone for three, four, five hours or more and really optimize

your ability to do your best work.

And this is really important because if you can follow that protocol to dig into a space and execute well, you might be able to shorten your work hours.

Do a lot of focus in a fast way, do a great job, and then get out of there and be able to move on with the rest of your life.

I love that strategy. I use it all the time. I'm not interested in an eight hour or ten hour workday or longer. I want to get in, do my thing and move on. So if your location helps you with that, then choose wisely.

because it will make the biggest difference in your ability to get anything done.

Second strategy is to create and optimize a dedicated space for work in your home.

So let's assume for the sake of argument that as a remote worker, your home office is probably your primary place to work from.

I'm making that assumption, but it probably is true.

That's where I've worked from for a long time.

And one thing that has been clearly obvious to me in the last 12 years is how year to year,

my home office gets better and better. So not only do I have a dedicated space

for work, but it's also a better space for work every single year because I'm

trying to optimize this space at every turn. I'm looking for gadgets. I'm looking

for better computers and monitors and paint colors on the wall. It's amazing how

often this space that I'm in right now evolves year to year. Just recently I bought a little

plants that goes on my desk. Right now it's is the fall season. So I bought a small

pumpkin just decoration. Like I'm just tinkering and changing and evolving to make

this space more of my own. And one thing that is clear to me and has been for a long

time is the more that I love the space that I'm in, the more likely I am to get better

work done. And so there are certain environments. I'll use the corporate environment as a good

counter example. If you put me in a corporate office, I get antsy. I can't sit still

because I can't be there for too long. I just feel awkward in that space. Now,

I will go to those spaces. I will do good work for a short time. But there's a reason

why I don't work in a corporate office for eight hours a day, five days a week.

It's not my space. I can do work there. But once again, it's limited. And I know that

myself. And so from that perspective, I'm always looking for what's the best

kind of emblematic example of my best self. Now, being in my house probably is my

best space. However, I'm actually way more focused and I executed a much higher level

in libraries and in quiet spaces that are not in my house. So as much as I love my

dedicated space that I've optimized here, I'm actually less effective here in total. I will get

more work done in general, but it's not nearly as focused, and it requires a lot more

discipline for me to actually do a better job. So this is all the ins and outs of self-awareness

to understand how you operate, where you operate best, and to be able to optimize those

spaces, whatever those happen to look like. Back when I was in college, it took me four

full years, or really my senior year of college, to discover and utilize the library there.

Prior to that, I worked for my dorm room or around campus or at friends' houses,

but I didn't really optimize or utilize the library until my fourth year.

And then when I did, I was amazed at how much work I got done there.

It was an incredible transformation.

My grades increased overnight.

It was such an easier and better way for me to function.

And I've leveraged that same strategy ever since to find the best spaces, to optimize them, have the right tools

with me and make the most of that experience. So wherever you choose to work,

but especially in a home office, have a dedicated working space that's just for work

and make that space amazing. There was a video I saw years ago from a company called

IDEO. They're based in Boston and it's a company designed for kind of high leverage,

like tech incubator bubbles and they're trying to be like creative problem solvers for

other companies. And so the kinds of people they hire there from a wide variety

of backgrounds. And the office that they have for their workers, it's an office

designed with creativity at the forefront. So every single employee, yes, they have a

cubicle, but they have complete autonomy to design that cubicle in any way they want

to. They can be really out-of-the-box thinkers, even though they're literally in a box

with their office. And it's the kind of example that just says, wherever you happen to be,

you can do more with it. You can make it more creative, really add some pizzazz to it.

It'll feel more fun, feel more like yourself, and then I guarantee you, you'll get more

value from all of your working hours because of those choices.

Third strategy is to get the best.

best tech you can afford. I'm a tech guy. I just love technology. I am surrounded

by technology right now in this podcast studio slash home office. That's one reason

why I'm a podcaster is because I just love the tech that's part of it. And so if

you're going to do a phenomenal job at the work you do remotely, you're going to need

technology that allows you to connect to that work, of course, with a fast computer,

with fast internet, a high quality webcam, great lighting, awesome sound.

of course a high quality phone, like all the things you could imagine, I would

recommend you get the best you can afford because the speed matters, the efficiency

matters. I have a document on my computer that I call tech that just works.

And that document literally is a very up-to-date list of all the technology that I use

in my personal life and in my business. And with each one of those items, I've gone

through the list and ask the question, does this technology just work?

In other words, is it a headache?

Does it cause problems?

Do I have to troubleshoot it or talk to tech support?

Is it annoying me?

Is it an issue?

Because if the answer is yes to any of those problems, that I want to fix that

problem immediately.

Because the intention is that every single item on that list, and it's a long list

of tech, probably nearly 100 items that I own.

I want to make sure every single one of them is tech I can just ignore.

I don't want tech problems.

I don't want to deal with it or troubleshoot it or have to fix it.

I just want tech that works, which means investing in the best technology from the best companies with the highest quality products.

That will save you so much time and energy and headaches in the future.

It will cost more money.

It will initially cost you time and research, but it is absolutely worth it long term.

When I look around right now at my desk here in my office, I have so much high-quality

gear and I can remember the seasons of my life when I researched and chose

those specific pieces, each one individually, to optimize a pro-custom

solution for everything that I'm doing.

I'm actually the process right now of launching a YouTube channel, so I have

even more technology for the video element of what I'm working on, better cameras

and lights and teleprompters and all these great things, a stream deck I have

next to me right now.

Like, all these things are so fun, but they also make me better at the work that I do.

And that's the goal here.

So you've got to figure out, number one, what is your job?

And number two, how do you do your job in the best way possible?

And then number three, what are the bottlenecks that are stopping you from doing your

best work?

And technology is a very frequent bottleneck.

And the goal here is to minimize the issues there and maximize your chance to do your best work as often as possible.

Fourth strategy.

You want to wear clothing that makes you better at your job.

I am wearing a T-shirt right now and some gym shorts.

Very low-key, not attractive outfit at all, but I wore these clothes on purpose.

I wore them because when I record my podcast, which is an audio-only show, no one can see me.

me, I'm not interested right now in looking fantastic. I'm most interested in

sounding fantastic and recording a fantastic audio-only show. So the clothing choices

are designed to accentuate my ability to record this show well, which means

they have to be comfortable. They have to be clothes that allow me to do the task at

hand. Now, there's a big caveat here, and the big conversation around working from home

is kind of the sweatpants conversation, which is that the tendency is to say,

well, I used to work in an office and I had to wear a suit and tie or this weird

uniform or an outfit I hated.

And so, oh, joy of joys, I now work from home.

I can wear whatever I want.

I want to be comfortable, so I'll put on sweatpants.

I'm not opposed to sweatpants.

I love them.

I actually wear a robe oftentimes in my house while working because it's comfortable and it's

awesome.

But there's a danger here.

And the danger is that your perception of yourself, the guy or gal you see in the mirror, reflects you, literally directly, but it also reflects a vision of you as someone who is working when you're on the clock and doing your job.

And what I mean by that is that you want to have a professional perception of yourself.

When I get up every single morning, I always do my hair.

And by that I mean I wear this like small hair gel and style my hair in a certain way.

And you can see the pictures of me online.

Like I have this very specific look that I've had for decades.

And I want to maintain that look.

Each and every day, seven days a week.

It doesn't matter if no one sees me all day.

I want to look good in the mirror for me.

It matters.

My own image of myself matters.

Your image of yourself matters.

And if you put on sweatpants, each and every day,

day for weeks and months and years, you become a sweatpants person.

And a sweatpants person does not normally tend to align to highly productive

or motivated or professional or moving forward.

You can.

It's possible, but it's risky.

Now, I'm not arguing you put on a suit and tie by yourself in your home office.

You can.

The question, though, is what reflects the best version of you for the job,

but you have any requirements there you'll meet, but also your vision of

yourself, because your clothing is a reflection of your internal vision of who

you are striving to become.

And I think the best thing for you to do is to be your best, seven days a week,

with rare exceptions.

I have a clean shave.

Every single day, I look pulled together, not because I'm on camera, not because I'm giving

speeches every single day, but because I know that Jeff Sanders,

with a beard is not the best version of me.

I need to be my best self.

And your goal is to make sure that you're working from home lifestyle aligns to that same vision with or without a physical office, with or without ever seeing other human beings.

Because the risk here is that you hide by yourself, which we'll get to in a second.

But the clothing choices matter.

Your personal hygiene matters.

So do your best to optimize both of those.

Fifth strategy.

Block distractions like it's your job because it is.

On this podcast for the last 12 years, I have gone into a lot of conversations about focus blocks of time, my F-Bots.

I can't stop talking about them because they always matter.

And they matter a lot, whether in a physical office or working remotely from home or at a coffee shop, library, anywhere you go.

If you need to focus, you need a focused block of time.

which means 100% distraction-free time,

where you turn off your phone,

you turn off Slack or whatever else is trying to ping and ding and ring you.

You turn on your productive focus music,

like a brain.fm service that I absolutely love.

And you figure out what's on your checklist to guarantee

that each and every distraction has been attended to

so you can just do your one thing, get in, and do it really well.

Of all the things that could distract you at your house, what I have seen the most often is that my house is the distraction.

And by my house, I mean literally the mailman, the laundry, the dishes, the trash, my kids' toys.

All these things are just procrastination techniques to not do the work at hand.

Now, granted, I love when my house is clean.

I actually work better when my house is clean.

So as part of my morning routine, I spend a good chunk of time, 20, 30 minutes, making sure the house is in really great shape.

But then I move on and get to my job.

I'm not going to spend all day with the house and tinkering and optimizing.

That's not the priority.

It's important initially, but you've got to move on from that.

And so for you, the question is, what distracts you?

Visually, what pulls your attention away?

It could be social media, your phone, or, you know, your other, your coworkers, your team remotely.

there's a lot of potential for what could pull you away from the thing you said

was the most important thing.

But you've got to know what those things are.

Identify them, write them down, and block each and every one of them.

I cannot stress enough how important this is.

My best days are the days I have the most focus.

My most productive days are the ones where I do one thing at a time.

I do those things really well, very quickly, usually, and then I move on to the

the next item. And I don't have a lot of lost time between tasks or a lot of lost

time being pulled away from my work because I keep looking at Facebook or the news

or my phone or whatever the thing is. Taking a walk again and again just to not be in the

office again and again. You've got to figure out the distractions and individually

dissect those, break them down, and knock them out. You will love your lifestyle that

is based around focus because it is such an effective way to work and live.

Strategy number six, when you are working, just work on your work.

So this is an extension of the distraction conversation.

This is asking the question, when you are working, what are you doing?

And I think the best thing to do here is to maintain a list of chores, errands,

tasks, and activities that are not part of your work.

and ask yourself, when's the best time to do them?

And this is important, because if you are a true autonomous remote worker

and you can choose your own hours, you may choose hours that are non-traditional.

And that's completely fine.

In fact, it's probably the best thing for you.

Your goal is not to work 9 to 5 in most cases.

The goal is to get the task done.

So your question is, what are the most important things you want to get done today?

And those items you schedule first.

and those things become your highest priorities, you knock those things out,

and the rest of the day is spent on things that are not due today, but are still important.

And so when you're asking the question, well, what are those chores and errands and tasks and activities that are outside of my work?

Well, those things still have to be attended to.

And how these pieces of the puzzle fit together on your calendar is highly subjective and up to you.

But the important thing here is intention, is asking the question, today, what makes a question?

matters most in my holistic life, personal and professional, what needs to happen

today? And then you schedule your life in priority order around the things that

matter most first. This has changed my life. And what really how it plays out

practically day to day is my morning routine is really long. It is multiple hours

of tiny tasks that are all added together that sound kind of exhausting. If I play it all

out for you. It's a lot of stuff. But what it does, it guarantees that when my workday

begins, I am ready. I mean full on ready because I did all the things that had to

get done prior to 9 a.m. or whatever I began working. I did the full routine.

All the chores and errands and tasks and scheduling and all the chaos. It was all addressed.

And I moved to this kind of new way of operating a few years ago, most because of my kids,

but also because I found a lot of value in that structure.

I saw a better way of working and operating based upon priority of my whole life

and making sure the most important things were addressed to set me up for success

later in the day, which is the whole point of this, because later in the day,

I'll have less energy, less discipline, I'll be distracted more.

I'm not going to have the willingness to do the hard stuff later.

So you've got to do the most important stuff first, regardless of what that

stuff is.

Strategy number seven, work on one digital task at a time.

There's a major risk in remote work, which is that remote work tends to be

all digital all the time.

And in a digital world, multitasking is so common and so terrible.

It's the worst thing in the world because it's just so easy to try to do 17 things

at once.

And once again, with focus, yes, your goal is to block distraction.

and one of the key distractions are other things you need to do.

Your to do list is not a do everything at once list.

It's a do one thing at a time list.

But we don't usually do that.

We try to multitask and do 17 things at the same time just to find ourselves overwhelmed

and exhausted and confused and wondering why our workday felt so stressful.

Well, it's going to try to do too much.

That's not effective.

It's actually a recipe for burnout.

It doesn't lead to productivity, even though it feels like you're busier in the moment.

In totality, at the end of the workday, you actually did almost nothing.

You just stayed really busy doing lots of random nonsense.

It's incredibly important to do one thing at a time, stay lasered in, stay focused, and just do what matters.

Do it fully, do it completely, finish it, pause, and then do the next thing, completely and fully and finish it.

and then pause, and then the next, and the next, and the next.

And that's it.

It's very methodical.

It's very simple, but it requires a level of discipline and simplicity and adherence to simplicity that most people do not have the willingness to even attempt because it's just so easy to try to do it all.

Strategy number eight, schedule multiple trips per day to leave your house or your remote work space.

So fortunately for me, because I have kids, I am forced to leave the house at least twice per day.

Once in the morning for daycare drop-off and once in the evening for daycare pickup.

Now, before I had kids, I did not have to leave my house unless I chose to.

And so there were so many days I just didn't leave.

Yes, eventually I have to buy groceries.

Eventually, I would go to the gym or work out.

But really, I didn't have to leave.

And so unless I was forced to, I just didn't.

And this is a major problem with the current world we're in,

the more digital than it is, the more internet-based that it is, the less likely you are to be social.

The less likely you are to see other human beings face to face and interact with them and be an extrovert on some level.

Even if you are introverted and shows remote work because you're an introvert, you still have to see people.

Being social matters.

And so fortunately for me, I have to leave my house at least twice per day, which is very helpful.

I also pair that with trips to the grocery store or trips to the gym or other errands to run.

And so I get multiple chances per day to leave my house and do other things.

And one funny thing is on the days where I don't have to, let's say that someone else is going to grab my daughter from school today and my wife's going to or a grandparent and I have more flex time.

Well, the problem with that is is that I just stay home and I just keep working.

And this is a major flaw in the system too is that we need cutoff times, which I'm ahead of my head.

myself here, we'll get to that in the second. But just be aware of the fact that

being social matters and when you work remotely, you may have to go out of

your way to intentionally bake in these types of trips because without them,

you might just hide in a very small box for the rest of your life.

Strategy number nine. Pre-schedule all of your meals, snacks, and drinks.

This comes from personal experience. It is so easy.

to overeat when your kitchen is 10 feet away. In my home office, I'm probably 15 to 20

feet for my kitchen. It's not far. Like, I can get to it so easily. And so because of

that, there is this possibility that I would choose to eat and then eat some more and

then snack some more and then graze and then keep eating more. And the first few years

after I went remote, I definitely gained weight, definitely ate too much. It was just so

easy to keep doing that. In fact, if you go back to my earlier episodes of this podcast,

you'll hear me recommending a very specific strategy around this topic, which is to

prepack your lunch, even if you work from home. And I made that point because when I

worked at an office, my last day job, I had a very specific set of rules around the food

that I would eat. I would prepack my lunch. I would go to the office. I would only eat that

lunch and have like one or two snacks at most throughout the day. And then I would

usually go to the gym after work and then have a certain dinner. In those years,

I actually was very healthy and my weight was down and very well maintained. But as

soon as I was working from home, those guardrails were gone. And I had to be very

intentional about what I was allowing myself to eat and when those meal times were.

And those guardrails helped for two reasons. First of all, I didn't get fat. But secondly,

it also guaranteed that I had very specific work hours and then break hours for lunch, for snacks, for coffee, whatever the case was.

There were some years in there. I did a lot of fasting as well, which is a different type of productivity.

But ultimately, I was striving for this ideal.

What does it look like for me to eat the food that matters, to not overeat, to feel great and be productive also because overeating makes you tired?

It works against your ability to get stuff done.

So the food conversation is a big one that goes far beyond just your weight on the scale or how well you feel.

It also has to do with what output of your life because of your health choices.

So I feel like the best strategy for most people here is to pre-schedule and pre-pack your food.

And literally I used to use a produce bag.

So I bought this really kind of fancier one from Whole Foods, this very thick and heavy produce bag.

and I would fill it full of fruits and vegetables that I would allow myself to eat throughout the day.

These were healthy foods.

They were fantastic to eat all day.

And that was a really great strategy for me to be able to say, this is my food for the day.

Feel free to eat this and do not eat anything else.

Strategy number 10.

Leverage every single energy boost tactic you can.

So this is more of a personal take on working from home.

I have found that I love to do whatever I can to just feel energetic and feel

alive and engaged with my work.

And so I want to feel like I'm not just the kind of guy who has a laptop on my

couch and my sweatpants.

I've been that guy and I am that guy sometimes.

But the majority of my day, I want to feel like I'm engaged, which for me means

a standing desk, a cool temperature in my house, small meals, tons of hydration,

focus music, lots of activity, moving throughout the house throughout the day,

like, I'm in motion.

I am looking for excuses to do things that boosts my energy all day long.

And whenever I have those things managed well, I definitely am more productive.

I'm definitely better at my job.

I'm happier in general as well.

If I spend too much time on the couch and too much time in sweatpants, my energy drops

and I actually feel worse and I'm less healthy and less healthy.

likely to want to get off the couch and less likely to go to the gym.

You want to make sure your lifestyle aligns to your vision of your best self.

And if that means forcing yourself to stand throughout the day or making the

temperature really cold or whatever the case is, do you have to do to make sure

that the structure and the environment leads you to being that better version of

you?

Strategy number 11.

Stick to your plan.

Whatever plan you've set out, you want to make sure that that plan is followed through as often as possible.

And this includes, who I alluded to earlier, a hard start and a hard stop for each day.

And this literally means working hours, clock in and clock out hours.

Now, I hold to this fairly well on most days, and I have some wiggle room around this.

So it's not a hard and fast rule, and I'm calling a hard stop.

what it is is a very, like, well thought through guideline to make sure that I have

working hours and I stick to them as best I can.

And then if I need to flex, like today, for example, on a Saturday, I will,

but it's an exception, not the rule.

But in general, when I stick to my very clear sense of here was my plan, I set out

to do X, Y, Z, and I did it, that sense of balance in your life is a lot easier to

attend to. Because then you have a personal morning routine. You have time for your

lunch. You have time after work with your family. You have time on the weekends to not

do your work. Like you're able to create a life that you want to live, but you have to

be able to stick to a plan that aligns to that and hold yourself accountable for

those boundaries, those guardrails in the day that will absolutely shape your experience

and honestly make you feel a lot better about work to say the work day is

over. Wrap things up, put it away, we'll schedule things for tomorrow,

and that's it. And all that brings us to the 12th and final strategy,

which is collaboration. One thing I have not mentioned very much so far is the fact

that you may work remotely, but on a team. You may have others you're constantly

talking to on Slack or whatever else it may be through whatever tool you've chosen,

usually email, sometimes, you know, Zoom calls, oftentimes Zoom calls and media.

but collaboration is an extremely important component of what it means to be productive

as a remote worker and there's two angles to this.

There is the angle of you as a team member who is producing work that helps the team

and you as a team member who is in communication with others.

And I view these things as two very separate things.

Most people tend to mush these together.

So their personal tasks and their team tasks, their meetings and their priorities,

private work, all just kind of mush together and this really messy sense of just an

overwhelming workday with lots of nonsense happens.

And that's where stress shows up because everything is just messy.

There's multitasking.

There's an attempt to do all of it all the time.

I think the better solution is a very clear break between personal time and team time.

There was a book that I read years ago called ReWork.

And in that book, they had a remote company before that was even popular.

and they had a very clear sense of how their team operated that I loved,

and I still loved to this day, which in this example,

their company operated with private personal hours in the morning

and collaboration hours in the afternoon.

So you had guaranteed time every single morning to do your personal stuff

and get your work done, have total focus because nobody on your team was going to bother you.

But then in the afternoon, it was free reign.

You could do whatever you wanted, have meetings, talk to each other,

and make that the collaboration component.

And I love that perspective because it guarantees the focus that you need for your work

and guarantees time to talk to others.

When these things are mixed together and you're bouncing back and forth between focus time and collaboration and then they overlap too much,

that's when you get frustrated because you can't seem to block that distraction that is your coworker,

the distraction that is the meeting, the distraction that is collaboration.

As much as I love other people and as much I love collaboration, it's the biggest hurdle to you doing your work.

So it sucks.

It sucks sometimes.

And this is a major problem that has to be addressed at the leadership level to guarantee that you have the structure you need to make sure you can get your job done without all the noise.

Which is the whole point.

We want to be able to be effective at our jobs and not have those obstacles and bottlenecks be at a

every turn and this constant game of whack them all to knock them all down.

Another piece to this that I think is really important is let's take the example

of these 12 strategies and let's say that you implement four or five of those

and you like them and they work well for you.

Share those with your team.

I think one big missing piece in the remote work world is a lack of collaboration

about these strategies.

If you talk to your team members and say, well, hey, I'm using these focus blocks of time

they're working well. Hey, I'm pre-scheduling my meals. That's helping a lot with how I

operate. As a team, you want to adopt these kinds of strategies together because then

everyone's on board and lots of people are doing them and then everyone gets better

together, which is the rising tide floats all boats. All of a sudden, the entire

team is way more effective because as individuals, you are all way more effective.

This is a productivity angle that is missed all the time, which is that it's not

not just you as an individual doing well. It's not just the leadership kind of

forcing things upon the team, but it's the team itself working together

with each other to make the entirety of the whole unit even better.

I think there's a lot of potential here, a lot of potential for these kinds of strategies

to be implemented and executed in ways that most of us miss. Because we're siloed,

because we are on these little islands working remotely, there is a lack of

that you would get in a physical space together.

So the challenge for remote teams is to make those connections as

intentional as possible and really think through what are those limitations

that we have and how do we overcome those?

And these kinds of strategies can definitely address a lot of what that is.

All that to say, I would love to hear from you.

If you are remote worker or have worked in a virtual environment for a while

and have other strategies that have worked well for you,

Please share those. Email me, jeffat jeffsanders.com.

I would love to put together even more of a comprehensive list of the kinds of strategies that add up to more success here.

Because once again, I see so much potential for better remote teams and better operations when these types of strategies are implemented, especially on a daily basis because they scale.

They compound over time.

They get better and better.

And your ability to execute your job will just be through the roof.

It's a fantastic opportunity.

And for the action step this week.

Choose one strategy, just one, to implement this week.

Productivity strategies are best when they are slowly stacked over time.

So tackle the area that is holding you back the most with a new creative angle.

Once again, there are so many opportunities to be more productive.

productive while working remotely, you'll always have a fun new tip, strategy,

or tool to try out.

Of course, subscribe to this podcast and your favorite podcast app,

or go to 5am Miraclepremium.com to become a VIP ad-free member of this show.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5 a.m. Miracle podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life,

and all that fun begins bright and early.

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