Remote work has been on the rise over the past decade, and it’s clear that many people are now choosing to co-work from home rather than in an office. According to FlexJobs, the number of remote workers in the U.S. has increased by 63 percent since 2005. Working remotely has many benefits, but one of the main drawbacks is that you can feel lonely and disconnected from your coworkers. Luckily, there are several ways to stay in touch with the people you’re working with, including sharing ideas and collaborating on tasks even when you’re physically apart from them. If you want to get started with remote work but aren’t sure how to go about it, here are some ways you can co-work remotely with friends—or complete strangers!
What is working remotely?
Working remotely means working outside of your employer’s office. There are several options for working remotely, and each comes with its advantages. Choosing the best one for you will likely depend on your personal and family circumstances. Read on to learn about some of the different ways people work remotely.
Working from home
Many workers got a taste of working from home starting in 2020 because of the Coronavirus pandemic. But although many offices are beginning to reopen, many employees are choosing to continue working from home.
Working from the comfort of your home is a convenient way to say goodbye to the daily commute and say hello to a comfortable working environment. In addition to saving on travel expenses, working from home provides you with a more stress-free productivity environment.
Or, if someone has to come by to repair something, do an installation, or make a delivery, you can be there to let them in, sign for an important package, or just be present for the sake of the security of your home. However, it’s important to stay focused while working from home because there are many potential distractions. Here are some tips to help you keep your productivity high and your stress low while working from home.
Focusmate
Focusmate is one of the leading services in this particular field, connecting you with another user on the same service so you can get stuff done. There are two different aspects of using Focusmate – scheduling and working. This is perfect because in much the same way our brains have a planning mode and a doing mode. Separating those two concepts will make work easier. It will also let you plan at a convenient time, in a time when you’re not overly emotional and your head is clear.
In a nutshell, here is what you do (find the detailed version at the end of the post):
- Schedule a session with a few clicks on the Focusmate website
- Just before the session (neatly waiting in your calendar), you visit the link for the call
- Enter a video call (that’s important) with the other participant
- Do a quick introduction and share your goals for the session
- You get things done!
As long as you’ve got a camera and a microphone on your device, you can use Focusmate. It works with Chrome on the desktop and on Android, and with Safari on the iPhone and the iPad.
Life At Spaces
LifeAt has quickly become the internet’s source of joyful productivity combating anxiety, burnout, and loss of focus. It makes remote/hybrid work easy and fun while offering tons of powerful features for free and paid. Life At Spaces also has co-working video conferencing similar to Focusmate, but just one part of what Life At Spaces does. There are other tools that help with productivity, such as a desktop space to manage your emotions, ambient music to keep you focused, and a to-do list tool.
In terms of working remotely, there is a way to invite other users into your digital workspace to further focus your attention. You don’t get any of the advanced scheduling tools or collaboration technology that Focusmate offers – you need to invite people you know – but it may work better for you. You’ll need a microphone and camera to use this feature, and you’ll get an email link that you can pass on to one or more colleagues as needed. It’s entirely up to you how you use Life At spaces – in terms of session length and how you use it – and there’s a lot of flexibility in this platform.
You can put a soothing background on your laptop while you work or use a Pomodoro timer to schedule your work and break times. You can get certain features for free (including 15 minutes of coworking video chat per day), and premium accounts cost $9 per month.
Self-organized Coworking
You don’t need to sign up for a whole new service to work with others in this way: all you need is some video calling software like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or Google Meet, and the people to work with, and you can set up the connections and work sessions yourself.
Sure, you miss out on automatic scheduling features like Focusmate, but if you organize everything yourself, then you have full control over how everything runs – both in terms of who you sign up with and how long the session lasts.
One of the benefits of self-organized co-located video conferences is that you don’t have to pay any additional fees for them. On most video platforms, one-on-one video calls and even group video calls are usually free for an unlimited amount of time.
Working in a co-working space
Co-working spaces allow you to set up your own productivity center that’s away from both your employer’s office and your home. In a co-working space, you share one or more floors of a building with other professionals, and they typically hail from a variety of business backgrounds. There are several advantages to using a co-working space as your solution for working remotely:
- Distance from the distractions of home: At home, there’s often something unrelated to work that’s vying for your attention or time. In a co-working space, you get a healthy physical separation from those distractions.
- Access to office materials: Just like when working in a company’s office, while in a co-working space, you don’t have to worry about getting ink for your printer, paper, staples, and the like because everything is typically there for you.
- Spaces for events and meeting rooms: Many co-working spaces offer spaces to conduct professional meetings with others — often in a private, discreet setting.