9 Simple Hacks for Healthy Remote Work

I work for one of the most flexible companies I know, and there is amazing trust in our ability to self organise without surveillance. At Blinkist, we work from anywhere (as long as our roles allow it) and at any time that suits us. And with the pandemic, remote work has become the norm.

But with a remote workplace come challenges: A risk of self exploitation and emotional exhaustion from being unable to disconnect. Among our team are parents and care takers, those with loud partners, singles in one bedroom apartments, … and personal circumstances can easily become additional stressors in a lockdown world.

With this post, I want to provide a set of small actions you can take to prevent (chronic) stress. This isn’t the full answer, but I have personally found these actions to really make a difference.

Stress is not just something that happens to us. It’s an individual response to stressors based on appraisal processes.

First, the obvious truth though that we don’t always acknowledge: Our jobs’ stressors have really changed in the past year, and I personally often felt stressed, exhausted, drained, … whatever you want to call it. But as a psychologist, I have to believe: We can cope with this new reality. We can find ways to establish healthy habits again.

Step #1: Understand your Preferences

Generally, when it comes to striking a work/life balance, there’s two types of preferences: integrators & segmenters. Chances are you just prefer one or the other. People's circumstances are also different; for example, families might appreciate clear boundaries so they can plan quality time to spend together. A flexible workplace can be great for both preferences, but that one integrator (me) on your team might make it hard for you to segment if they churn out notifications like crazy in the middle of the night.

I draw a hard line between my career and my non-work roles, and I don’t want to mix them. When I’m on the clock, I’m focused on my job, so that I don’t have to think about sending any late-night emails once I’m done for the day. — — Segmenter

I like having the freedom to blend my work life and non-work life, and move back and forth between the two as needed. I’m at my best when I can be flexible — taking a work call after dinner seems like a fair trade to be able to run an errand during work hours. — — Integrator

Step #2: Communicate

Start with communicating your preferences with your team. You don’t want anyone on your team to feel like they have to align with your schedule. No one should feel guilty to log off for the day just because you only just started work after a long lunch break (which you forgot to update your Slack status for, … I know how it is 😆).

Setting up a “how to work with me” doc keeps your team in the know on your preferences and style.

On the People & Workplace team, a few people now have set up “How to work with me” docs shared on 1:1 agendas or during onboarding. This was also just fun to write down, to be honest.

It’s also even more important than ever to allow yourself to be vulnerable and open up about how you feel when you feel it. In a remote workplace, it’s far more difficult for your team or lead to see how you’re really doing. All of us can fake it for that 15-min check in round and it’s oh — so — easy to forget adding I hate my job to a 1:1 agenda ahead of time.

Be a role model for others on this, especially if you bounce back easily. Over the past months, I have seen amazing examples from such strong people who said "you know what … I can't take this on right now, I'm done" – and I have seen those same people bounce back!

Step #3: Set & Track your Hours

At Blinkist, most full timers tend to work at least some hours between 9 AM and 6 PM from Monday to Friday in the Berlin timezone. That’s the time when you will get most Slack messages and E-Mails. But it might not be the time when you work.

Set goals for your schedule

On our team, we recently set a goal of “no more than 20 % of our time is spent on recurring meetings.” I am all about setting clear expectations as it’s often eye opening to see how far off from reality our expectations really are. And that’s exactly the moment when we get better at estimating and learn why we were off to begin with! We track this with a simple Slack poll to check in on our progress.

That feeling you get when someone from HR talks about stress management.

Similarly, I aim to schedule 8 hours of focus time per week. Tools like Clockwise can do this for you. Either as blocks or as a meeting free day. As a Recruiter, that’s far more difficult to achieve than it sounds — candidates don’t care about my focus time. But even if it doesn’t work every time and more often than not something will creep in, it’s a relief knowing that usually I have an hour or so set aside to get to my to-do list or that asynchronous collaboration we tout. I know, I know … you’re thinking “must be nice being on a team that can set aside ‘focus time’”, but what’s really stopping you from trying? 🧘

Track your Hours

I’m working on a 40 hour contract and like to keep myself honest here. As an integrator, there’s weeks where I do way more, and there’s weeks where I need an extra break. I use Timely as a time tracking tool because it basically monitors what apps I use on my computer which makes it easier for me to remember when I actually worked (or walked the dog). Using time tracking makes it feel a lot better for me to actually take time off — it’s that awesome feeling of: There might still be stuff on my Asana, but I have done my part for today.

Interestingly, tracking my hours made me realise that overtime was far less to blame for me feeling exhausted and drained than I had thought. That feeling came more from checking my phone for new e-mails or messages in my off hours, and so on.

Step #4: Make Notifications Work for you

FOMO is real when working in a flexible work environment. And notifications when you are winding down just make you feel like you are missing out even more. In fact, I personally found the constant urge to check what’s going on to be the most draining! No matter what your preference is — I still recommend to put notifications on a schedule.

Most desktop applications now support a that do not disturb schedule. Do yourself a favour and set it up for Slack & Asana right away. On your phone, turn off all notifications for common work apps. There’s no need to be constantly plugged into work on your private phone. Or use a tool like Dewo to automatically turn off and on notifications when you get into deep, focused work. It helped me a lot to get out of the habit of constantly checking that top right section of my screen while I was really trying to work on a presentation.

Step #5: Break the Habit of Plugging Back In

As I wrote somewhere above, I realised that me feeling drained from work had less to do with overtime than I thought. Instead, I found this: I was habitually plugging back into work even when I had just closed my laptop. For example: I’d often reply to that last e-mail of the day, close my laptop, grab some food, only to then open GMail on my phone to see if there was a response.

And even worse: This was not even productive. I wasn’t really doing anything with the incoming messages. I’d read them and archive the spam, but then mark the ones I should act on as unread for the next day. This habit definitely made me feel like I knew what was going on at all times and I wasn’t missing any urgent messages (what could even be that much of a life or death type of situation though) … but it was ruining my mental health.

Set up Screen Time limits for work apps

If you can, you should delete work apps from your phone altogether. If you’re like me, you go for the “soft break up” where you set up really strict screen time allowances for these apps. I went for 15 mins / day for Slack, Gmail, LinkedIn, Asana, … At least, I now get warned if I open these apps even though I am off — like that condescending friend who’ll ask “do you really want to smoke another cigarette already?”.

Step #6: Collect Work in Fewer Places

I used to let Slack remind me of stuff, have my Asana, get Notion notifications about due dates, go through my Gmail … But Asana has nice integrations with pretty much anything else. The beauty of this is that you don’t shift focus all the time; away from the things you actually should be working on towards stuff others ask you for. And let’s face it: There’s always going to be more to do than you realistically can get done. So might as well ruthlessly focus on the stuff that’s going to move the needle*.*

For me, Asana is the place any task will go nowadays (apart from e-mails) and I try to keep as much communication as possible around tasks in the tool as well. This is a learning curve and building any habit takes time, especially as a team. But for me, it’s far less disruptive than a Slack message and ensures that I have all the info I need when I get to the task.

I recommend to really spend some time learning Asana (especially the keyboard shortcuts). Mark as upcoming is amazing – what you won’t get done today, how about you keep your daily view clean and hit Tab+U on those tasks that you’ll need for another time? Out of view, out of mind 😎 You can add the same task to multiple projects – just add your quarterly objectives to a project, and then discuss it during a 1:1 with your lead without creating duplicates of the same thing. And as a lead: Status updates 🤤 allowing you to @-mention any task or project, so you don't need to constantly repeat yourself.

Step #7: Ditch the “Open Loops”

If we could avoid worrying about what we were supposed to be doing, we could focus more fully on what we were actually doing, achieving what [David] Allen called a “mind like water.” — Cal Newport

Check out Now Is the Time To Sweep for Open Loops on this one. In a nutshell: Writing down new ideas is a great place to start. But if you find yourself seeing that same idea from three months ago again and again without it ever becoming a priority, you are still creating a subtle feeling of “🤦‍♂️ … I should be more productive here”.

I often go through our backlog and my personal Asana, throwing out anything that’s been on there for too long and hasn’t become a priority yet. Don’t let your to-do list(s) get away from you, but just ditch that “someday maybe” stuff from your main view.

Step #8: Protect your Colleagues

Your personal remote routines are only one part of the equation. But in a team, we also have to protect each other. Else, we quickly fall back into unhealthy habits.

1. Communicate your preferences, make remote work practices a recurring topic for your team
2. Update your Slack status (or let GCal or Clockwise do it for you) regularly; also for the fun stuff 🤡
3. Use a scheduler on Slack or schedule messages on GMail
4. If you need something from your colleagues, how about sending it through Asana right away?
5. Let’s not shame each other if we’re working late or overtime. It’s good to feel supported though. Is there something you can jump in with and just get done together (rather than each of us alone)?

Step #9: Don’t Forget to Have Fun

And most importantly, don’t forget about the fun stuff. At the office, no one is working 8 highly productive, uninterrupted hours (don’t even try to convince us, Brenda!). But it’s those small interactions with your team, the gossip while getting a coffee, the dogs … that keep all of us connected beyond our to-do list. So, …

Me passive aggressive, going on my daily lockdown walk.

• When have you last just called your team mate rather than send a Slack? “Got a minute?” is among my favourite messages to receive!
• Have you shared a new song or video you just thought was fun lately with your team?
• How about you join that next meeting audio-only while going for a walk?
• No need to apologise if your kid just started screaming in the background, that’s life! Gives us all a natural break, too 😉
• It’s okay to go grab a coffee or snack during that status update meeting; I ain’t judging.
• Bad hair day? Wearing those same sweats 7 days in a row? No problemo. You don’t need to be on cam all the time.
• Do you need to share your screen or could it be just as nice to just chat and write notes for yourself?

Recap

So, how to get started on establishing healthy remote work habits? Let’s recap. If you don’t do anything else, you might want to start with these simple steps:

• Identify and communicate your needs
• Track your hours and schedule ~8 hours of focus time per week
• Put notifications on a Do Not Disturb schedule
• Set time limits for work apps on your phone
• Clean your Asana, then make it your go to