Matt Ragland shares three habits that make remote work stick: self-discipline through morning planning with a bullet journal, changing work locations between coffee shops and coworking spaces to stay focused, and communicating your schedule clearly to teammates and family so they know when you're working.
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Morning, it's about 6:45 here in Chattanooga today on a Wednesday, and this week I want to talk to you about working remotely, some of my best tips for it, and also some of the things that people can commonly struggle with, along with some specific things for families. So happy you're here. All right, biked into town about 3 miles, headed into what's become my go-to coffee shop at Frothy Monkey. It's right on the dot at 7 AM, and I normally am started about this early, sometimes a little earlier, so I don't necessarily have to start this early, but we do want to have a little midweek micro adventure. And that's one of the great things about working remotely, and hopefully I'm going to get her to talk about a little as well.
So just getting set up inside of Frothy, and I always start my day off by planning. I pretty much already know, like in my head, what's going to happen, but being able to put it on paper just really helps it sink in for me. I use a technique called bullet journaling with kind of a combination of bar graphing that I learned from Mike Rhode, who learned it from someone else whose name I can't remember. So if you want to tie the bar graph genealogy together, I can find the notes for that. But this is what it looks like. You can see that I've got my day here, and then I've got it side. I have very similar days, and so I don't need a ton of details. Like I said, I just want to cement the idea and the event and the flow of the day in my head. One of the reasons this matters so much for remote working is that probably the biggest characteristic that you can have that's going to be helpful for you in a remote environment is the ability to stay self-disciplined. If you can't stay on task, if you can't get your work done, if you can't know what the most important things are and knock those out every single day, day, and you're really going to struggle. That is something that even if you're not working remotely, that is something that you can control. That is something that you can start to work on so that when it comes to a remote job, you can say, oh yes, you know, this is how, this is how I structure my day. This is how I make sure, this is how I communicate with the team.
The bullet stuff, I'm not going to take a picture of that.
It gives me, I give a bullet point every single morning of this is what I'm working on today.
All right, leaving Frothy, headed over to coworking space that I like to go to usually twice a week, maybe just once, really just depends on what I have scheduled. The vlog this week is not about onboarding or anything like that again. I said it's about working remotely, and the second thing that I would recommend for anyone who's starting or already in a remote position is this: you really have to understand how you work best and communicate that well with your team. Like, one of the things that I like to do is I do like to have a good amount of structure, and so I communicate that to the team, and I talk with them, and I make sure that everyone is pretty clear about what I'm doing day to day. If you are self-disciplined and you have a community culture of trust and communication, then that's totally fine. But if you're not going to talk about it and you're not going to be self-disciplined about what you're doing every single day, then you're going to struggle. The second thing that I want to be really clear about in terms of remote work is that if you are a people person, you still need to be around people. It can be kind of intoxicating early on. You're like, I get to do what I want, I can control my schedule, and I can work in my boxers if I want to. I've never known anybody that actually does that, but for for me, I don't like to work at home a ton because I like for home to stay primarily home and not home and work. I also really struggle with making a distinction in my day between work and home, you know, work life, home life, if they're the exact same place. And so I'll go out to coffee shops like you saw with Frothy Monkey, and today I'm at a coworking space in Chattanooga called Get to Work.
Or Workhorse.
There I'm around other people, we are all doing very similar work, we can ask questions of each other, it's in a great space with a lot of light. I mean, this is the conference room that I'm in right now. And so if you have a space like that in your area, think that, you know, maybe once a week— I come once or twice a week. Having a community that you can dial into, that becomes really powerful and really useful if you are working remotely.
Let me just tell you first to make sure it doesn't sound stupid. One of the things I really like about remote work, that we can do this and go on a hike midday if we want to. Um, that's been a really positive thing. Always consider new places to live, and I've always wanted to live out west, you know, Pacific Northwest, and, you know, have that option. So that's been great. And also, Kanan's been overly fussy today, so I have Matt to help if need be. So that's been really great. Some of the cons— I, I guess one of the biggest cons would be that when you work remote, like, your work can always be there, and we just try to stay mindful of it, you know, not bringing your work home as much as he could or would like to sometimes. So, but other than that, can't really think of any true cons off the top of my head.
Wow, it is still cold.
It's like the kind of cold you don't get used to.
Woo!
The coworking place that I was in earlier used to have this thing called— used to have this thing called Work Late Wednesdays where they would stay open till 8. They don't do that anymore. Exited from the building. This is another thing about remote work is that sometimes you literally have to find a place to work. We have a really small apartment right now. There's not, unless literally I'm the only one awake, there's no work going on. It's just life. I need to find a place to work at least one more hour. Maybe not work till 8 like I was planning on, but I gotta get in one more hour.
Really gotta up my bicycle game.
Hand warmers come in super handy.
Eh?
Handy? Got it? I've ended up back here at Frothy Monkey. Yeah, starting in the day here. Hooray, hooray! All right, just finishing up the day, biking home. It's a beautiful day. Live music. When it comes to remote work, there are 3 main takeaways that we've talked about, and they're really important.
And if you haven't worked remotely, if you haven't managed your time independently before, or you haven't in a while, it can, it can really be a shock.
So let's go over them just one more time. Hope they're helpful to you. If you've liked this, please subscribe and leave a comment. I'd love to know any other remote tips that you have, but here they are: self-discipline, accountability, and the ability to communicate clearly with your team. If I was to throw a fourth in there, If you have any major relationships, like you saw Morgan, my wife, talking about this earlier, it is to extend that communication to your significant other, to your partner, to the people that you live with. That's a huge thing. If she wasn't on board, if we didn't communicate about my hours and my time like we did today, then like it's, it's almost 8 o'clock and I'm just headed home. Self-discipline, accountability, and clear communication. Knock all those 3 out of the park and you'll be well on your way. So again, subscribe, leave a comment. I'd be really grateful and would love to connect with you. Thanks.
