When I started working from home, I had no idea how autonomous you needed to be to get the most out of your day.
Over time, I realized there were so many new skills to remote work that could all be learned and improved upon.
So here are my top work from home goals worth exploring, and how to get better at them:
1) Improving Productivity
The remote work world often requires self motivation in order to be productive.
Getting your setup right, with adequate equipment and technology is a good place to start.
A consistent routine that keeps you focused and on schedule will go a long way to helping you increase your output and productivity.
🎯 GOAL: With productivity, you need to become the master of your time. Use the flexibility remote work offers to experiment in order to discover what works best for you. Asses success by not only how much you get done but the quality of the work too.
2) Learning Time Management
Productivity’s best friend is time management. If you can find a daily/weekly plan that works for you, both incorporating your personal and work time to the best effect, then you’ll find that your work gets done quicker and your work-life balance is in harmony.
The Pomodoro Technique is one of the best out there to help manage your time whilst also enabling a healthy amount of breaks to re-energize.
🎯 GOAL: Your goal here should be to have your day structured in a way that, for you, makes the most out of your time, (including both work and personal activities).
Weekly Work Planner
Take control of your work week with this simple to use planner
3) Better Work-Life Balance
Working from home I find that I can often work more hours than I’m contracted to if I let the boundaries between work and life get blurred.
Equally (believe me on this one!) If I don’t have enough work, too much recreational time leaves me lethargic and feeling like my professional skills are waning.
Creating a good work-life balance is so crucial to success working from home.
To get to a state of equilibrium you need to explore new methods of incorporating time management, utilizing your free time productively, taking care of your health, managing stress levels and more.
🎯 Goal: Your goal here is to make incremental improvements in your wellbeing – as time goes by and you learn what works best for you, the output should be an improvement in mood, happiness, productivity – all the things that make us feel like we’re spending our time well and how we want to spend it.
4) Focusing On Health
A support act to work-life balance is how you incorporate healthy behaviours into your home work life.
The target here is to make the right decisions for you and your body against your own personal goals.
A great start is to focus on ergonomics to make sure your body is comfortable throughout the day.
Building a work from home exercise routine into your day is also recommended to make sure you counteract the often sedentary nature of working from home with some much needed movement.
🎯 Goal: Set your own personal health targets, whether they are diet, exercise, mental health related or otherwise and start working towards incorporating new ideas into your wfh routine.
5) Saving Money
Working from home can create some natural cost efficiencies, no commute, no lunch out every day etc.
If you’re looking to save money, managing utility bills, food shops and leisure activities can add up to some substantial cost savings.
One example: I used to pay a fortune for a gym membership near our office, purchasing some at home exercise gear and jogging around the local park instead and 3 years later I’ve saved a decent amount of money.
🎯 Goal: Set financial targets for each month, document your expenditure and try to aim for a certain amount of savings each month, cutting back where you can.
6) Developing A Career
The dynamics of working from home, or even hybrid and career development are markedly different from ‘in-office.’
More self promotion can be required as good work is less visible.
Strong communication is key along with the utilizaiton of technology and well honed time management.
🎯 Goal: Once you have the foundations of successful remote working in place, set clear goals using the SMART framework whilst creating a clear, transparent career development plan with your manager.
7) Improving Communication
Often, the bedrock of work from home success for a number of goals comes down to good communication, paving the way for collaboration amongst teams.
A big part can be the way in which you use communication tools.
Selecting the right medium (email, instant messaging or video conferencing) for the types of discussions whilst learning how to be succinct through both verbal and written comms goes a long way to improving collaboration and efficiency.
🎯 GOAL: Try being adaptive with your approach to different types of communication. Encourage feedback on how you can improve and invest time to practise efficient, outcome based communication.
8) Managing Stress
At times stress can get on top of us. I know at times I’ve experienced high levels of stress from high amounts of work, poor internal communications, feeling like my career is going nowhere. It happens to all of us.
Once we accept it’s part and parcel of work, the best goal we can set in relation to this is to learn and improve our stress management techniques.
Having an armoury of go-to coping methods for stressful periods will alleviate the amount of stress we feel each time we go through them.
🎯 GOAL: Learn what works for you whether it’s hobbies, exercise, improved communication, getting outside etc and know when to utilize them to counteract stressful moments.
9) Mental Health
I live alone and I can often find working from home can lead to feelings of isolation sometimes.
There’s also periods where being at home generally for days on end can lead to lethargy and boredom.
Expelling any sense of loneliness by varying things up can be crucial to reposition work and re-energize the mind.
🎯 GOAL: Remember to invest in yourself and your own happiness. Work can absorb us sometimes, but it’s so important to take time to do the things we love and spend time with the people we care about too.
Summary
If you’re looking for more ways to improve your remote work life, these top remote work skill ideas to learn might come in handy.
James Waite
Founder of Remoteopia, James has worked in remote roles for 6 years. After a stint in recruitment, he now works as a director of website strategy in tech.
