Advice for Working Remotely--or from Anyplace

After spending almost a year working remotely, I've written about quite a few do's and don'ts for doing so yourself. There was an article recently in Medium with some advice for working remotely. While I actually don't think this article is a great one for working remotely, I do think there are a few key takeaways for any employees.

The best of them references one of my favorite apps, Pocket, and described a real-life work situation:

Here’s an example: It’s Tuesday, 11am — I’m working away on a project, when Twitter prompts something of interest… Oh, man, I’m interested! Let me just click and see what it’s all about… …No, wait a minute, I’ve been in this situation hundreds of time: I’m about to click away and lose my focus… Yes, I want to read this article! And if I read it now, I’ll lose my focus for sure! Instead, I add content to Pocket, it bookmarks things on all devices — I then review it in my own time.

You will never be able to keep your employees away from other websites during work hours (I don't think you even want to, in all honestly). But the key is to keep them from sitting and reading and not paying attention to their work.

Bring in Pocket which will not only save that article to read later, but also download the article to your smartphone. So if you, like me, take a subway to work or travel for work (and so have some time without cell coverage), you can read this article on your phone. Fully downloaded.

And if you find a good article like this that you want to make sure you put in a blog post, well, you can save it and then send it to yourself and it ends up here. Whether you work from home or from your office, using productivity apps like Pocket can help you be a better employee.