How to Organize Your Digital Life for Remote Work

The massive shift in individuals working from home has been life-changing, to say the least. Whether forced to do so due to the recent pandemic or your new job is predominantly remote work the change is something that can be incredibly disrupting. The following article will take a look at easily adoptable steps to make the change seamless. Even if you have been working remotely for some time these steps could help improve your productivity and overall workflow.

Bring on the Apps

While there are several things you can do to declutter your new workspace in your home, some of which will be covered, the first place to start is to empower your performance with readily available apps. This can be a daunting task as the IT infrastructure, including aspects like storage, security, and privacy, might be as readily tappable as when you were in the office.

Several great apps have been developed to help mitigate these problems. Apps like Dropbox, Google Drive, Gmail, Zoom, and Slack can be used to facilitate communication between teams, storage, and allowing the team to access important data when needed. If these apps are adopted it is better to designate an app for a specific purpose. For instance, Dropbox can be used exclusively for data access and storage, email to communicate to clients, and Slack for team communication.

Another, sometimes underrated, the tool is a screen recorder for PC to assist in both the transition to and continued remote work experience. By being able to record presentations or meetings you and your team can make sure no information regarding the meeting is lost. The recorded meeting using the right screen recorder can keep information in high definition for as long as is needed once stored in a cloud. Further, you can make quick videos to better get a point across and avoid lengthy meetings just to clear up a potential mistake.

The Great Declutter

Decluttering not only applies to your physical space but also your digital space. There are several great resources for decluttering your physical space so this article will focus on how to declutter your digital space. The first port of call should be your Internet Browser as your browser will often be the tool most used during your migration to a remote working solution. Modern browsers boast great functionality for managing bookmarks. These can be arranged in groups for added ease of access. Further, tab groups can be set up to focus purely on certain aspects of your work life.

The next place commonly needing a good cleaning is your desktop. Over time your desktop will begin to look more and more like a Jackson Pollock painting if he used icons instead of splashes of paint. Documents here, there, and everywhere intermingled with folders and application shortcuts not only look a mess but make it incredibly difficult to find anything. Keeping app shortcuts to those most used as long as dedicated folders for active projects will simplify your desktop substantially. Your peace of mind will thank you that’s a promise.

Streamline Communication

When you are no longer a stone’s throw away from your team, communication can be a nightmare. Above we mentioned how you can choose a messaging app solely for team communication and this is a good start. Further, as a group, you can set rules for appropriate response times to messages or emails as well as what platform to use and when.

Several apps now also come with handy features like on-the-fly polling which can help prevent lengthy chats where other team members may miss important information. To that extent setting up different chats for certain functions is important. Memes while funny should not be in chats relating to important projects, leave those for work and only work.

Conclusion

There is a multitude of your migration to remote working can be simplified. This article has included just a few, focusing on how you use technology and how technology can be used to improve productivity. This is not to say your physical space and the way you work are not important. These are, developing exercise routines, healthy eating habits, and taking regular breaks can be just as beneficial to your new remote working life as the tech used.