• Test SharePoint via remote access. Since your SharePoint implementation is sitting inside your firewall it is important to test typical SharePoint tasks like accessing document libraries through your remote access solution prior to turning your teleworkers loose. Access issues will only make teleworkers bypass the platform.
• Make SharePoint more social. With a product as customizable as Microsoft SharePoint, you can deploy it in any number of configurations. Unfortunately, these many choices may also mean many SharePoint sites go online with practically no frills. Starting with SharePoint 2007, you can incorporate social media options including blogs, wikis, and RSS feeds into your SharePoint sites. Launching these social media tools can help foster collaboration and ensure your SharePoint site is a focal point for project and communications activities.
• Factor SharePoint into your telework processes. I’ve been working with SharePoint off and on since its inception and seen implementations inside organizations large and small. Two common mistakes I see are SharePoint sites that are too locked down and no better than static web pages, and SharePoint sites that are implemented without input from the project teams or the business side of the organization. When creating your telework pilot plan, factor SharePoint into business processes and communications. Follow up with appropriate documentation and training for your teleworkers.
• Develop a SharePoint test site. If SharePoint is currently underutilized in your organization, then perhaps your teleworkers can help you recoup your investment by developing a SharePoint test site. Developing a test site during your telework pilot progrtam, you can discover which SharePoint features are required and how it is best used.
• Consider a hosted SharePoint solution. There might be technical, budgetary, or logistical reasons for not opening up your SharePoint site to remote access. So if SharePoint is already familiar to your teleworkers and you are looking to take advantage of SharePoint/Microsoft Office integration you may want to consider a third-party host for your SharePoint sites. Microsoft and a number of its hosting partners offer SharePoint on a monthly subscription basis.

How are the teleworkers in your organization using Microsoft SharePoint? Share your tips below.

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While it is not possible to list all of the potential kinks that you’ll need to eliminate during your pilot in this post, I am going to outline some of the basic considerations you should shoot for in your organization’s corporate telework pilot plan.

• Employee selection. Not everybody is cut out to be a web worker, so you need to determine the criteria for employees to be included in the corporate telework pilot. Factors like employee performance, position, network/information access requirement can all be part of employee selection.
• Employee home office. Organizations vary in their approach to equipping their employees’  home offices, from employees relying on their own computer equipment, software, printer, phone, and broadband access, to the employer supplying everything the employee requires, and everything in between. You’ll need to determine and document, as a minimum, the equipment the company is providing; technical support processes for the company-provided equipment; employee responsibilities for the company provided equipment; and how employee home office expenses are to be handled.
• Telework employee communications plan. Project communications are going to change as people start to work from home. The communications plan should detail access to the corporate network, email and applications, as well as any redundancies in place in case there is a communications failure. There should also be an understanding of core business hours and any processes an employee needs to follow in order to modify their core working hours so they don’t appear to be “off the grid.”
• Pilot period/metrics of success The plan should also include a documented period of time for the pilot, together with an understanding of the metrics of success your organization’s management is looking for to judge the pilot a success and move the telework program from a pilot to an actual live program.

What elements are you including in your corporate telework pilot plan? Share your advice below.

Photo by stock.xchng user furnishu.

Here are some tips if you are seeking to build a web worker friendly PMO to manage geographically dispersed employees, contractors and partners:

Democratize Project Management Data. The democratization of project data has been an ongoing theme in some of my recent project management posts; it becomes more  important as project teams leave the confines of the cubicle farm. PMOs need to become more polished communicators of project status data (including schedules, risks, and client requirements) and target audiences at every level of the project from the “worker bee” all the way up to the executive stakeholder. The challenge is that the information has to be understandable by everyone —  meaning that views of project data cannot always be shared just by using a Gantt chart.

Move Communications Outside the Email Inbox. 2010 should prove to be a pivotal year for online collaboration tools like Google Wave and enterprise-class social media tools like Yammer and Present.ly (which we’ve covered previously). While email is a traditional and often-used form of project communication it does no good as a repository for project documents. Even if you can’t get your team to embrace online collaboration tools, you at least need to take the small step of ensuring that your project documents are online in a centrally-accessible place.

Implement New Project Management Tools. Microsoft Project and spreadsheets are traditional project management tools but more suited to project teams roosted in the same cubicle farm. The web is the future for project management tools – LiquidPlanner, Zoho Projects, and Basecamp are all examples of web-based tools that are easy to use and help to foster collaboration.

Rethink Meetings. I’ll spare the usual attacks on meetings as being detrimental to productivity, and fast forward to suggesting that meetings will have to change in priority, format and technology. PMOs need to look at conference calls, web conferencing, and online chat  for real-time meetings, plus the tools to archive those meetings for later reference.

For PMOs entering a new era of web working, the old staples need to give way to new tools, processes and working styles to ensure the success of the team and timely project delivery. Remember corporate culture, not technology, drives online collaboration and the PMO is in a position to ensure geographically-dispersed project teams have the framework, leadership and tools they need.

What are your tips for building a web worker friendly PMO? Share them below.

Artwork by Stock.xchng user: Ulrik

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It sounds simple enough, but we all know how difficult it can be to drag ourselves away from our desks during the work day. Since we’re not surrounded by colleagues heading out for lunch or coffee, and we all have a lot of work on, it can be easy to forget to take breaks. We take up a task, get stuck into it, and before we know it, we’ve missed lunch time and have just a couple of hours left to get the next couple of items off our task list.

Sitting (or even standing) at your desk all day is bad for your concentration, your posture and, often, your productivity. Even if you take a half-hour to read the news headlines around 1pm, many would say that’s not enough. You actually need to get away from your workstation, stretch your legs, and clear your mind. Here’s how I make sure I get a well-earned break during my work day.

1. Plan it. If I’m feeling like my workload isn’t in hand, I’ll struggle to convince myself I have time for an ad hoc break. At the start of each day, I look at what I need to do, and work out when might be a good time to take a break. Perhaps it’ll be between tasks, or when I’ve reached a certain point on a larger task. Perhaps it’ll be at 11 on the dot. Either way, making a time to have a break can be a big help.
2. Time it. If I’m really pressed for time, I might time my break. If I’ve decided I deserve half an hour, I’ll take it — but I’ll time it, and set an alarm so I know when it’s time to get back to work. I’ve found that setting the alarm makes it easier for me to switch off from work completely while I’m on that break, probably because I don’t need to have one eye on the clock all the time.
3. Make it appealing. If it’s raining outside and there’s nothing much to do while I’m on a break, I may not have much motivation to take it — especially when I’m faced with the usual mountain of work. So I try to make my breaks appealing. Perhaps I’ll go for a run, call a friend, walk to the shop or settle down with a good book. Whatever the case, I make sure I have something I really want to do lined up for that break — even if it’s a powernap!
4. Make it your own time. I try not to fall into the trap of spending my lunch hour hanging out the washing or doing the grocery shopping. I think break time should be my time — after all, it would be if I were working on site. So I don’t even look at my email, and I let any work calls go to voicemail (unless there’s some crucial, life-changing call I’m waiting on). Instead, I aim to spend my break doing something I enjoy. Work is always still there when I return to my desk at the break’s end!
5. Make the most of it. If my break doesn’t go to plan — the book I settle down to read turns out to be a dud, for example — I try not to just look around forlornly before heading back to work early. It’s important to make the most of a break. If I find myself with more spare time on my hands than I expected, I try to enjoy it, adding that run (or nap!) to my break agenda, rather than cutting it short.

These are the tactics I use to ensure I get a break in my day. What are your secrets?

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What traits should you watch out for and how do you overcome them?

1. You are dependent on face-to-face interaction when acquiring information. A common problem I see with people who are new to teleworking is that they don’t know how to acquire information independently. This is a difficult problem to have, especially in the age of search engines. Not all information can be found online, but taking the initiative to look up solutions on your own can get you very far.
2. You are afraid of technology. While you don’t have to spend hours each day reading tech blogs and you don’t need to know the latest Gmail hacks, you need to be comfortable with technology. After all, you’ll be using it to perform your most important work tasks including collaboration and research. Don’t worry, though. There are both written and video tutorials for practically every application out there.
3. You need supervision to get things done. Whether you’re a freelancer or an employee doing remote work for a company, you need to get your major tasks done even when there’s no one to look over your shoulder. When it comes to your day-to-day accomplishments, your only supervisor is yourself.
4. You equate busy-ness with productivity. Ernest Hemingway once said “Never confuse movement with action.” To measure whether you’re accomplishing tasks throughout your workday, note your output rather than the hours you spend in front of the computer.
5. You are not organized. Being organized has nothing to do with how clean or neat your home office is. It’s about finding office supplies in a couple of seconds, knowing where you stashed each client file and scheduling your workday well. For some useful tips, refer to Leo Babauta’s WWD article on how to get organized.
6. Your work ethic is largely dependent on moods. If you keep waiting to work when you’re “inspired” or you “feel like it”, you’re likely to spend 80 percent of your time waiting around for the right mood to get started. Make the effort to develop sound working habits, especially while you’re just starting to telework. Of course, there will always be those moments where you can’t seem to focus. During these times, you can always take a break or perform other tasks that are indirectly related to your work. This allows you to come back to your work with a fresh perspective.
7. You can’t say no. Teleworking requires the ability to prioritize ruthlessly, to say “no” to requests that are neither important nor urgent. These requests can range from professional to personal. Since I work from home and have a flexible schedule, some of my relatives seem to think that it’s okay to ask me to run errands for them. Other teleworkers have told me that they also experience this problem. But if we agreed to do everything that was requested of us by our families or clients, we would have no time for the actual work.

Having these traits doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t attempt teleworking. I had at least a couple of these myself before I started out. We just need to be aware of the weaknesses that may be detrimental to our teleworking, and work towards overcoming them.

What traits or personality types prevent successful teleworking? Any suggestions on how to get over them?

Image by Viktor from sxc.hu

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In a face-to-face working relationship, you may not be particularly conscious of the need to build trust, or the innate tactics you use to do so. But when you’re working remotely, it can be a good idea to give a little thought to trust, and to be conscious of it as you build your remote working experience. Here are what I see as the most effective and most straightforward ways to build trust remotely.

1. Communicate in person.

Don’t leave your communication to email, forums and instant message. Pick up the phone or get on a video chat with your colleagues regularly to develop a sense of presence, rapport and accountability. As humans, we rely a lot on factors like body language, facial expressions and tone of voice to learn about other people.

Making the effort to communicate “in person” — even when you’re located a long way from the office — can do a lot to engender trust with your coworkers.

2. Deliver what you promise.

Yes, we all miss deadlines occasionally, but it’s important to deliver on your promises to your colleagues. I think this is especially important when those promises are yours, rather than deadlines or deliverables that have been set by a group or external party. If you say you’ll do something, do it.

If you say you’ll do something and you fail to deliver, be careful in the way you handle it. Speak to the affected colleagues as soon as you realize you’ll miss the deadline. Explain the situation, answer their questions, and project a new delivery date. Don’t just take full responsibility for your missed deliverable — proactively help your colleagues solve any problems that result from it. This will give them the message that you’re not afraid to accept the consequences of your actions, and that you genuinely care about your coworkers.

3. Be consistent.

Consistency and predictability are crucial to others’ ability to trust you. If you’re inconsistent in the way you work, operate, deal with teammates, or approach your responsibilities, you’re likely to unnerve your colleagues. This discomfort may not be conscious, but it will be there. Think about that boss you had with the wild mood swings — the one whose attitude you could never gauge or anticipate until you were asking them a question. It was difficult to trust that person, right?

Behaving in a way that lets people predict your behavior, work quality, and professional approach will allow them to trust you and encourage them to rely on you — the ultimate compliment in a working relationship.

These are the key factors that I use to build trust in a remote work partnership, and I’ve found it worthwhile to be conscious of them as you deal with colleagues remotely. What tactics do you use to build trust from a distance?

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Of course, technically, this rule doesn’t apply to those of us who can also work remotely — if we really want to, we can print everything in color and on heavy stock, single-sided in our home offices. But of course this low-print policy is also sensibly applied in my remote office as well as at company HQ.

The die-hard anti-corporate web worker may not want to hear this, but as it turns out, many corporate office policies may come in handy in your remote workplace. I can think of three very common policies that can also fit well into a remote work philosophy.

The Paperless Office

The concept of the paperless office isn’t new, and it’s popular even though few of the organizations that strive to achieve it actually do.

Why Would You Do It?
The paperless office is said to have a number of benefits: it’s neat; it’s cheap; it promotes environmental consciousness; it can help you keep track of ideas, content and work; and you never find yourself without your calendar/notebook/pen/address book.

Why Wouldn’t You Do It?
Although the sustainability issues cited as an argument for paperless offices are valid, the sustainability of the technology required to run a truly paperless office is surely just as much of an issue.

But the reason why most people who reject the paperless approach do so seems to be work practice. If you’re used to working on paper to brainstorm, plan, work out process flows, and so on, you may have trouble transitioning those practices to the electronic environment. The simple preference to do some of your work off the computer as a means to put yourself in a different frame of mind may also play a role in keeping some tasks on paper.

What Might Work?
An approach that reduces paper usage in the name of cost and the environment, but still allows you to do the tasks you love on paper might be a good way to align your home office more closely with a paperless ideal. The added features of the many handy applications that can help you cut down your paper usage may just seal the deal!

The Professional Dress Policy

I was once presented with a 30-page document on attire for women in one place I worked. Fortunately, most office dress policies are less restrictive.

Why Would You Do It?
Adhering to some degree to your company’s office attire policy in the home office can help you feel like you’re “on company time”. It can also boost motivation and provide a sense of professionalism in an environment that’s often intensely personal. And if you need to meet with clients throughout the day, it might be a necessity.

Even wearing your organizations branded t-shirt can help you identify more closely with that company, its shared sense of purpose, its team and its culture when you’re physically distant from it.

Why Wouldn’t You Do It?
It’s fair to say that a large proportion of remote workers stay out of the office specifically to avoid policies like those surrounding attire. Some feel they get more done, and feel more relaxed, in their favorite old jeans and much-loved slippers. For many, wearing whatever they like is one of the key fringe benefits of working remotely: if they can do it, they will.

What Might Work?
Each of us probably knows what works for us personally, but sometimes, if I find I’m lacking motivation, I make myself presentable, leave my home office, and head out to work in a local coffee shop for a while. This reminds me that I’m still part of the world, and usually helps me get back on track.

The Charity-leave Policy

My employer offers staff leave of a few days a year to undertake charity work, and though not everyone does it, my company’s not alone in this kind of initiative.

Why Would You Do It?
If your employer offers this leave, you should consider it among your entitlements, like sick leave or holidays. It will give you a chance to contribute to a cause you’re passionate about, may provide an opportunity to engage with people in your local community that you wouldn’t otherwise meet, can help you get to know people who share your interests, can help to refresh your approach to life (and work!), and so on.

Contributing to a good cause can expand your personal horizons, shift your perspective, and renew your sense of self and purpose — and these are just some of the potential benefits!

If you work for yourself or your employer doesn’t offer this kind of leave, taking time off work to undertake work for a not-for-profit organization may be beyond your budget, but that doesn’t mean you can’t consider slotting it into your schedule somehow. Perhaps you’ll need to do your bit out of hours, in smaller blocks than whole days, or over a weekend.

But two or three days’ worth of charity work a year should be doable for many of us — and given the potential benefits, in terms of the social aspect as well as the personal satisfaction you’ll gain, it’s definitely worth it.

Why Wouldn’t You Do It?
The time-cost associated with taking a couple of days’ leave to work for a not-for-profit organization is undoubtedly a major hurdle for any of us, but especially for the self-employed. For them, time is actually money, and time off may create holes in the cashflow that can be difficult to manage.

Even those whose employers offer social responsibility leave may have trouble justifying it at certain times of year. Some may feel a sense of obligation to bosses who “allow” them to work remotely. But just as we all have busy times, many of us also have quieter times at work, and these can provide a good opportunity to contribute our time to a good cause. After all, if you’re not going to be achieving much in the office anyway, why not get out and challenge yourself in another way?

What Might Work?
I really think donating some time to a good cause is worthwhile. You may feel you’re too busy — in life and at work — to donate your time to anything other than relaxing, and you might think that finding the right kind of work will be too difficult. But if you don’t do it, you’ll deny yourself the personal benefits of contributing to a good cause. If you can’t dedicate a whole day to charity or not-for-profit, you might consider a couple of hours a week, or a day on a weekend. You won’t regret it!

Do you apply any office policies in your remote work? Have any worked for you?

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This got me thinking about the leadership and teams I’ve worked with remotely. Most of my remote working experience has been in small teams or solo — there has been little of what I think of as traditional leadership.

Of course, the dislocation that exists when you have multiple team members working in different locations has the potential to create disaster if you have a team of people who don’t know each other, or poor leadership. When your team is spread across different locations or timezones, the usual pitfalls — miscommunication being the primary issue — can quickly conspire against us humble team members. And, yes, mayhem can ensue.

There’s No “I” in Team
Most of the times I’ve worked remotely or worked with a remote team member, we’ve comprised a team with other colleagues, but without a defined team leader. In my experience, two key factors saved these situations from becoming directionless wastes of time:

A close team. An established team whose members work well together has usually developed a working dynamic that all the players know. So the players already have “roles” as such — they know when they need to speak up, or take on a responsibility, and how others are likely to perform at particular tasks.

Fostering close team work is a good way to get things done when some or all members of the team are remote. Creating or providing opportunities for free, uninhibited group (not just one-on-one) interaction — teleconferences, group chat, and so on — is crucial.

Proactive collaboration. If you’re working in a team with no clear leadership, being proactive about teamwork, and doing what you can as an individual to support the team, can go a long way to keeping your project on time, on budget and on the rails.

Perhaps you’ll volunteer to minute your daily work-in-progress meetings or send around detailed agendas for each weekly catch up to ensure that everyone’s up to speed and aware of any issues before you meet. Maybe you’ll invite a team member to maintain the project plan. Perhaps you’ll offer to meet regularly with a third party and report back to the group so that everyone’s in the loop about the third party’s activities. Possibly you’ll be the one to recommend solutions that allow team members to contribute easily to jobs like brainstorming, task list management, and so on.

In short, the emergent team culture is what matters in a leaderless team. And as individuals within that team, we can readily affect that culture.

Following a Leader
On the few occasions when I’ve worked remotely with a leader, the situation has been different to the all-in team scenario in two key ways.

Division of labor. When I’ve worked with a leader, even when that person performed team work tasks like the rest of us, they spent a large portion of their time administering the team: managing timelines, writing agendas and scheduling meetings. They also checked in with team members to remind us of deadlines and deliverables, ascertain our progress or solve problems.

I’ve found that the best leaders in a remote scenario are extremely thorough and methodical, and they love documenting (however simply) the decisions that are reached over email, chat, voice calls, text messages — whatever.

Cherishing contact. In some cases, the presence of a leader in a team can actually reduce the frequency or depth of contact between other team members, especially if that leader divides up and farms out the work among the team members. In these situations, regular work-in-progress meetings can become your only get-togethers. Obviously this creates a very different dynamic from that which can evolve in the proactive leaderless team. A good leader will still put in place all those tools and techniques that allow spontaneous collaboration between team members, so that the team doesn’t miss out on the value that this kind of collaboration can deliver.

I hope that the more I work remotely, the more experiences I’ll have with good remote leadership. But I’m interested to hear your thoughts on whether remote teams need designated leaders, what makes for a good remote leader, and how you can support a leaderless team to be as successful as possible.

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But even without such triggers, many of us find ourselves blurring the lines between work time and down time, which is easy enough to do when your home space is your work space.

If you’re the type of person who tends to find themselves working longer hours, or doing little bits of work when you have spare moments on the weekend, these tips might help you to keep the boundaries between work and personal time nice and clear.

1. Track your hours.
For many, setting aside eight consecutive hours a day in which to work can be a problem — virtual meetings with team members in other time zones, varying deadlines, and other pressures can see us keep some pretty irregular hours, which can be difficult to reconcile with a “typical” nine-to-five day — especially if your employer has certain expectations of your availability during the day.

Rather than setting a work day schedule, you might find it more workable to track your hours to ensure that, overall, you’re working an appropriate amount of hours, and keeping aside enough personal time for yourself.

2. Protect your personal time.
It can be a challenge to keep your down time as down time, but it’s important if you’re going to recharge the batteries and be at the top of your game when you’re at work.

Value your personal time. If you track your time, you might be equally able to block out hours for personal time around the work time. Try to pursue interests that take you away from the computer, leave your PDA and work phone at home, or simply make a rule with yourself that you won’t turn to work during your personal time (incentives and rewards, like going to the movies, or paying a visit to friends, may help you kick the habit).

3. Shut the door.
If you’re fortunate enough to have a separate room as your home office, keep your work things in it, and shut the door on it when you’re having personal time. This physical indicator that you’re not at work can make a big difference to your state of mind, and your ability to let go of work at the end of the day, without your having to leave the house.

If you don’t have a separate room for your home office, you might try to physically dislocate yourself from your work in some other way: pack your laptop and other work tools like diaries and PDAs in a drawer, or cover your desk with a drop cloth, for example.

4. Use triggers to tell yourself when it is work time.
If you want to go all-out to differentiate your work time from your personal time, dressing in certain clothes, playing certain music, or having certain objects on your desk during work time can help you form mental associations about the way things are during work hours. They can help you to define the “work you” separately from the “at home you”.

For example, my workstation doubles as a desk in my house. When I’m at work, my desk looks a certain way: it’s littered with papers, my phone, pens and reference books. The reference books, in particular, tell me it’s work time. When it’s not work time, they live in a cupboard, which frees up the desk for other, personal pursuits.

5. Get outside motivation.
I’m sure that someone close to you would love to help you delineate work from personal time. Ask those people for their help — make plans to spend some of your down time with them, or if you’re getting particularly obsessive about work, ask them to tell you when you start talking or thinking about — or doing — work in your designated personal time.

Consider taking up a new hobby, sport, or other pursuit in your non-work time. Taking your mind off work and applying it to other things might take some practice, but it’ll be worth it.

What are your tips for delineating your work time from your personal time?

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While some employers will pay for the equipment expenses of their teleworking employees, there’s only so much they can cover. Freelancers like myself have it in even tougher — they need to provide their own gear from the beginning. I guess the price of location independence is that we’re often on our own when it comes to these expenses.

Because of this, I’ve been building my own “teleworking expansion fund” over the past two years. I call it that because it allows me to expand the range of tools and skills that I have. The purpose of the fund is to cover work-related emergencies and pay for equipment and software, as well as the odd educational expense, such as books or seminars. My experience with my fund has been successful, and I recommend that you consider setting one up yourself. Here’s how to do it.

Know what your expansion fund is for. Defining the purpose of your fund can allow you to objectively rate if an expense should be covered or not. Is it for emergencies? For building your skills? For purchasing new hardware and software? Or is it for all of the above? Setting your objectives will make it clear.

Here are some instances where you might need to tap into your fund:

• Equipment repairs and replacements.
• Purchasing new software or web app subscriptions.
• Fixing and renovating your home office.
• Paying for books, resources, seminars and courses, which will add to your skills and expertise.

Find out how much you spend on teleworking each month. Do the math and add up all your teleworking expenses each month. Include app subscriptions, domain name and hosting fees, and telecommunications bills to your list. If you can, try to keep two to three months’ worth of these expenses in your fund.

Why do you need to do this? In case you find yourself in a financial emergency and strapped for cash, you still need to maintain all the services that you need to do your job. This is especially important for freelancers who might occasionally suffer from a dry spell.

Compute how much you can save. Based on your monthly expenses, how much can you set aside for your expansion fund? It might be difficult to compute an exact amount if you’re a freelancer or if you don’t have a fixed predictable monthly income. If that’s the case for you, then it’s best to think in terms of percentages rather than fixed amounts.

Don’t feel pressured to set aside larger sums, especially if you’re just starting out. Even 2 percent each month can add up to a lot over the course of a year.

Automate it. Many banks offer services that allow you to automatically send a specific amount from your payroll account to a savings account each month. The benefits of doing this are twofold. First, you’re forced to save regularly. Secondly, you won’t have to remember to do it it every month.

Having this type of fund, no matter how small, is a good way to both protect and enrich your career. If you haven’t built one yet, I encourage you to try it — starting this month.

Do you save a portion of your income for business and equipment expenses? What tips can you share with other teleworkers?

Image by yochim from sxc.hu

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I know I’m not the only one who has times like this. Of course, working quite literally on the road has some serious limitations, and I’m not just talking about technicalities like power supplies and web access (and potholes). It can be extremely difficult to focus if you’re in a public or unfamiliar space, or if you’re not in one place for more than an hour at a time.

Even if you can find a reasonably quiet corner to sit down in, putting in the time is one thing; actually being able to produce quality output under such conditions can be a mighty challenge. But as they say, necessity is the mother of invention, and over these last few weeks, I’ve developed a few tricks to help myself concentrate and be productive in the least conducive, and highly pressured circumstances. Here are my top five.

1. Psych yourself up.

If I know I have just one hour on the road in which to complete a piece of work — say, to produce a document for a client — and I know it’s going to be intense, I try to prepare mentally for the challenge. When I wake up in the morning and think about the day ahead, I don’t let myself look forward to that snatched hour working in a cafe as a relief from an otherwise hectic day. I lock it into my mental schedule as I would a client meeting or presentation — it’s just as important as any other thing I need to do that day.

This way, when I sit down in that cafe, I’m as switched on and prepared to focus as I am for the rest of my work day. Often, this is the only way I can hope to get the task done in the time I have.

2. Be prepared.

Being out on the road inevitably means you have fewer resources at your fingertips than you would otherwise. Printed documents and references, data, power and web access are luxuries that simply may not be available when you’re out and about.

I try to plan my out-of-office work day in advance, so that I have all the information I need on hand, and all my batteries fully charged. If I want to lighten my load, I’ll scan printed documents and store them on my computer. And, where possible, I’ll do everything I can to ensure I can complete my work whether I have Internet access or not. Let’s face it — if you have an hour to nail down a job, you won’t want to spend half of that hour scouting around for a public space with Wi-Fi.

3. Earmark “alternative offices.”

Most of my meetings take place in a couple of nearby cities, and in each one I’ve found a few good places where I find it relatively easy to work. Some of these spots have Wi-Fi access, but all are comparatively quiet and I know I can linger over a coffee in most of them. My favorite places are cafes, closely followed by libraries.

I consider these locations my “alternative offices” when I’m out and about. I know their opening hours and I know what they have to offer (some are really quiet, others are good spots to make calls from, some make great coffee, and so on). They’re also well-placed around the cities I visit, providing me with easy access to public transport and my clients. So these days, if I need to find a place where I can focus for an hour or two, even on short notice, it’s a no-brainer.

4. Use tricks to prevent distraction.

I live out of town, so there are always going to be times when I need to work on public transport, for example. For me, the secrets to focusing on work in such conditions are simple and cost-effective.

I work well to music, so headphones are a necessity. For times when I’m under serious pressure, or my “working” conditions are crazy, I choose music that I know really helps me to focus and get things done — music I work extremely well to. For me, it’s the Beastie Boys, but for you it might be Bach. Whatever the case, it’s probably a good idea to work out what music helps you to focus, and to make sure you always have it with you when you’re on the road. Of course, music goes beyond sheer inspiration and motivation: its other benefit is that it reduces ambient noise and chatter, and that can be crucial to whether or not I actually get a job completed in the time I have available.

If I’m in a noisy train carriage or cafe, I try to get a window seat so that when I look up from my monitor, I’m not distracted by the people nearby — I can let my gaze drift to something less engaging, like passing cars or the sky, and keep my thoughts focused. And if I’m working through what would typically be a meal time, I’ll make sure I have some brain food with me, as well as something to drink. Basically, I don’t want to be distracted by hunger pangs when I’m on a time limit to get work done.

5. Just do it.

Yes — that old cliche. But seriously, if you need to get something done to a high standard in a short space of time, you need to commit to that goal. When you sit down, you need to have only that task on your mind. You need to shut off from the goings-on in your immediate area, clear your mind, and just focus on what you’re doing. It’s easy to say, but getting to the point where you can sit down and start working immediately can take some practice.

The good news is that once you can do it, you can make great use of time that you might previously have wasted between meetings or waiting for the train, thereby freeing up other time for more enjoyable pursuits.

We’ve all done it. So what are your extreme remoting tips?

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Some web workers go to great lengths to mask that our office and home are one and the same. We can use P.O. box or mailbox suite addresses, and install separate phone lines that we can always answer with a business salutation. We might keep rigidly to business hours and avoid any reference in conversation that would reveal our office/home marriage.

Of course, there is another option. We can let it all hang out, so to speak, and freely acknowledge our home office location and its attendant benefits (and disadvantages) to the people we do business with.

Which of these options is best to use is somewhat a function of the industry that each of us works in and our own personal comfort level. Personally, I have chosen the second option — complete openness. There are several reasons why:

It’s cheaper. All those additional services, like a mailbox suite and additional phone line, cost money that I would much rather spend on other things like a new computer gadget.

It’s too much work to pretend. Keeping up a pretense about where my office is just takes energy I’d rather put into my actual work. And besides, I know I’d eventually make a mistake anyway and let the secret out, so why make the effort to keep it a secret at all?

It tells me what people respect. If someone dismisses me because I work from a home office, I probably didn’t want to work with them anyway. People who respect me and the quality of my work will want to work with me, no matter where my office is located. Being upfront about where I work helps sort out who respects me, and not just the office they think I have.

It makes it easier for the next web worker. Having a good experience dealing with someone that they know is working from home will hopefully lay the groundwork with people to have a better attitude towards the next web worker they encounter.

It’s my life. The bottom line is that I work from my home office because it allows me to blend my work and my personal life in a way that works for me. Pretending otherwise would defeat the purpose of that. It would remove some of the very flexibility that I have sought in being a web worker, such as the ability to be able to care after school for my autistic 6-year-old daughter while I work.

Everyone has to do what works for them, but I have chosen to be open with my web worker status. Yes, it can occasionally be awkward or get me dismissed by a few people who don’t understand the new world of web work. But I make no apologies and find that my candor serves me well in more situations than it hurts me.

How open are you with people you do business with about where your office is? Does this help or hinder you?

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That sense of disconnection can be significant, it can be cruel, and it can be very difficult to overcome. If you’ve never had a day like this, lucky you! I’ve had my fair share, and though I’m no psychologist, I thought I’d outline my tactics for shaking off the remote working blues, just in case you ever face the same problem.

Remain Calm

Don’t hit the panic button just because you’re feeling the twin tyrannies of distance and solitude. You’re competent, capable and like everyone else, you suffer the occasional bad day. It’s cool. The fact that you may hate working remotely right now doesn’t mean you’re losing your remote working mojo — not at all! It just means you’re human.

Speak to Someone

I always find a bad day is most swiftly cut down to size if I tell someone about it. IM your best friend and let loose about how annoying it is trying to work with that guy in Marketing who never gives you the information he’s supposed to. Or call your brother and see if he wants to catch up on the weekend.

It may not matter who you get in touch with — usually I find that chatting with someone about something expands my horizons enough to remind me that I really am part of the world after all. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking everyone’s too busy to be distracted by you, either. Those closest will always have time for you, and if they don’t right now, they’ll call you back as soon as they do.

Immerse Yourself

Typically, my bad day is accompanied by a serious lack of motivation. One technique I use to overcome that is to try to immerse myself in an aspect of my job that I really enjoy. So I’ll look at my task list and pick the thing I want to do most, or what looks like it’ll be the most fun. This is a good way to remind myself of what I like about work, and gives me a sense of purpose.

If there’s nothing on your task list that you really want to do, some fresh air and a stroll around the block might make things look a little less bleak.

Arrange a Day in the Office

This may not be appropriate, or even possible, for everyone. But I find that, if I’ve been feeling isolated from work for a while, the promise of a day in the office — to reconnect with colleagues, make progress on particular projects that have hit hurdles, and remind myself how much I hate commuting — can perk me up. If you have friends in (or near) the office, you might even arrange to have lunch with them. You might as well make the most of your time on site!

I know a freelancer who, when he starts to feel isolated at home, either goes to a friend’s studio to work there for the day, or arranges a few client meetings so he has a reason to get out of the house and into the big, wide world. Do you have a cool friend with their own office, or a few clients with whom you could meet?

Be Kind to Yourself

I think the secret to getting through a bad day really lies in being kind to yourself. If I dread sitting down at my solitary old desk and starting my lonely old work, I’ll put on some good music, or take the laptop out to the deck (and the sunshine!) for a while. Perhaps I’ll treat myself to my favorite snack, call a friend to arrange to meet up later, go for a run, or spend a half hour looking at a book, magazine or site that really inspires me. These small indulgences usually make me feel pretty good, and, coupled with some of the points I mentioned above, can help me approach a mindset in which I can face up to the rest of the work day.

I know I’m not the only one to suffer the remote working blues. What do you do when they hit you?

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But what happens when you put someone else in the picture? What if, right next to the potted palm in your home office, your partner or work-from-home housemate materialized?

With more and more people working remotely at least some of the time, this is a very real question that many of us face. What should you consider if you’re about to embark on a multi-person home workplace?

There are definitely pros as well as cons. First up, let’s look at the cons. These are the main sticking points I’ve encountered when working from home with another in close proximity.

Personal Space

I’m not just talking about physical space here. There’s also the question of headspace. If you’re close to the person you live with, and you spend any amount of time together, then you may find working in the same physical space a bit intense. You may even find the realities of your both being around the house all day causes friction. You may start to feel like you don’t get a minute to yourself, or find yourself wondering why they don’t talk to you more during the day!

Being clear about your desires and expectations, and keeping your home office partner informed if something’s bugging you. Don’t wait until you reach breaking point if you find something’s not working. Talk about how things are going on a regular basis, and try to make sure you’re both prepared to try new approaches and be flexible.

Facilities

Working in the same office might be cool…until you’re both having telephone conversations at the same time, and can’t hear yourselves think. Or perhaps your home office colleague always has the printer tied up just when you need it. Perhaps they care a whole lot less than you do about office hygiene. Or perhaps they decry your taste in music and find golden silence more conducive to productivity.

“It’s OK,” you may be thinking. “We have enough space here to create separate offices.” Great! Just keep in mind that things like lighting, climate control, and doubling up on fit-outs for two offices won’t just cost you more initially, they may well cost you a lot to run on an ongoing basis.

Schedules

If you and your home office sharer have different working hours, you may find you get more done, or that you end up seeing less of each other in your “downtime.” Making the shift to working remotely will change most peoples’ schedules, since there’s no need to commute, so it’s likely that the new remote worker’s time before and after work will be spent differently than it is now. On the other hand, that person may fall into the trap of doing more hours, which again may reduce the time you spend together.

There are other considerations, too. If one expects the other to be home all day, then gets home to find themselves unexpectedly responsible for dinner or picking up the kids, that they’ve missed the plumber’s service call, or are just plain locked out, fireworks may ensue.

To some degree, the answers to these questions will depend on how much work you do from your home office and how often you’re out and about; how much space you have at home; the hours you both work; and how you arrange your out-of-work time. The solutions will undoubtedly lie in collaboration and communication, and in being flexible enough to help each other (and yourself!) find a productive way to work from home.

So, what are the highlights of sharing your home office? These are the main ones for me:

Inspiration and Motivation

Whether you want to talk about client management or get ideas for solving a problem with the cool new project you’re working on, having someone else around can really make a difference to your problem solving. As a sounding board, adviser, motivator and idea-generator, your in-home colleague can be very handy, whether they work in your industry or not.

Schedules

I know I just finished saying that schedules could be a problem, but of course having another person work from home may also make it easier to manage life. While you’re picking up the kids on your way home from a client meeting via the market, perhaps your work-at-home partner is making dinner or bringing in the washing. Such visions of domestic/work bliss sometimes seem as unlikely as a holiday on the moon, but they are possible with a little pre-planning.

Bonus: The fact that someone who was commuting now has more time in their days may also free up either or both parties to pursue additional interests outside work and home. Yes, it could be time to join the local basketball team/dance class like you’ve always wanted to!

Closeness

You may not want to get any closer to your housemate Dan who doesn’t believe that socks need washing (in which case you might want to make sure you have separate home offices), but in other cases you may hope — and find — that having both yourself and your other domestic half work from home brings you closer. Let’s face it: working solo from home can be an isolating and lonely experience, so you may well relish having someone else working from your home office.

Perhaps you’ll gain a new understanding of your home office colleague and appreciation for their work and they way they operate. You may learn from their mistakes as well as their good habits. You might benefit from their contacts and revel in the teamwork that comes from supporting each other through your busy work days. And you might look forward to those days when you actually get to eat lunch together away from your computers.

That’s my take on dual-party home office politics. But what are your tips for making a success of the two-person home office?

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1. Contactability
Each organization takes a different approach to communications, but I’ve found that, often, my remote colleagues may not be available through all the forms of communication I want or need to use.

For example, one colleague refused to use instant messaging, preferring the phone, but, since I needed to be in touch with her frequently about many small things, I preferred instant message. It grated every time — often multiple times each day — I had to call her to ask some small question.

The easier you make it for on-site colleagues to get in touch with you, the better. Little things like this don’t just make it easier to get work done, they can also enable you to feel more like you’re part of the team — and help the office team feel like you’re right there with them. Communicate the way your colleagues want to communicate, and encourage them to do the same with you (of course!).

2. Consistency
I mentioned the importance of building rapport for remote workers earlier, and consistency of communication is key to this — I find remote workers who are chatty one day but moody the next a big challenge to work with. But consistency isn’t just about communication; it’s also important to turn out work at a consistent standard, to meet deadlines and any expectations you’ve set among your on-site colleagues.

The occasions when I’ve worked with inconsistent remote workers have been very hairy indeed. I never knew how a request for help was going to be taken, or if I was going to get a satisfactory result to the timeframe we’d agreed. In situations like this, I’d end up trying to do as much as I could without that remote colleague, and I’d be less likely to involve them in additional work or projects over time.

3. Transparency
It can be all too easy for my remote colleagues to push my email to the side and keep doing something else. In an office environment, I usually get quick responses to my questions, and if not, I can always stop by my colleague’s desk and speak to them. Not so if they’re remote. Not knowing where the person is or what they’re doing can be a real pain, particularly when your communication is urgent.

The remote workers I like best are transparent about what they’re doing — they let you know if they won’t be around because they have an appointment, they tell you they’ve received your urgent email and will give you a call in ten minutes, once they’ve called someone else about something that’s a higher priority.

Those are the three things I think that remote workers do worst. They may well also be the three things that on-site workers do worst, but if you’re on-site, you have many opportunities to embellish the professional (and personal) persona you project to your colleagues. If you’re a remote worker, they can seriously hinder your working relationships and your ability to do your job.

What do you think are the things remote workers do worst?

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Think about it: You have limited contact with the people you work with. That’s fine, but because you’re not hanging around the office with everyone else, people don’t get to see you in your “peripheral moments” — the times when you’re joking with someone else, making a cup of tea, or heading out to lunch. Although these moments probably aren’t central to the way we’re perceived by our colleagues, I think they really do help to build rapport.

But as a remote worker, your contact is limited, and probably contains a much larger proportion of direct communication, and much less “peripheral” stuff.

So what? So you need to see that each point of contact is an opportunity to build rapport. I promise: This is what makes the difference between remote workers who are fun to work with and really part of the team, and remote workers you’d happily never work with again.

If you’re in a salaried position, don’t leave rapport-building to the week before your performance review. And if you’re a freelancer, don’t think you’ll make up for it by sending a friendly card in the holiday season. You won’t: The damage will have been done by then.

If you’re sending a physical package to your colleague, include a personalized note. It doesn’t have to be a “War and Peace”-length letter — just a quick, friendly note saying, “Here’s the information you wanted. Speak soon,” is far, far better than a blank compliments slip (or nothing at all). If you’re sending an email, don’t rely on the subject line to say what you need to explain, or trot out the old “See attached” followed by your email signature. Take a moment to type a sentence or two — you have the entire keyboard at your disposal, after all.

Include something personal — to connect with your colleagues — in every communication, and your co-workers will be able to fill in some of the gaps that form when you’re not all working in the same office.

What techniques do you use to build rapport with the people you work with?

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