10 tips for happy and productive remote workers

1. Separate your work and leisure environments

One of the big dangers of remote work is that you end up doing a little bit of work all the time. If you work from home, that's fine - but create a dedicated workspace that you can enter at the start of your work and leave at the end. This creates a psychological separation that benefits concentration during work and relaxation when needed. Alternatively, you can look for a coworking space - these are available in almost every major city these days. Overall, our team has found that working in coffee shops doesn't work in the long term. You'll be full of distractions, and you'll spend all your money on lattes.

2. Plan your days with time blocking

Plan each day in 30-minute blocks. As Michael Hyatt says, “What gets planned gets done.” Time blocking can also be a good way to limit tasks (like writing) that could otherwise easily become open-ended. This can be even more effective if you use a "Pomodoro timer": Start a 25-minute stopwatch (your phone's Clock app will do) and work on a single task until the timer runs out. This is a great way to debunk the myth of multitasking.

3. Schedule time when you won't receive messages and notifications.

Most things are not as urgent as they seem. The most productive people do all their “creative” work in the morning and don’t open an email, read Slack, or have a meeting until the afternoon. Try it for a week - you'll be amazed at how much more you get done and how much better you feel about your work.

4. Consider removing work apps from your phone

This depends heavily on personal preferences and boundaries, but some of our employees have achieved a healthier balance by engaging only in work mode on their laptop using work tools such as Slack, email and Asana. The risk of having these apps on your phone is that you're constantly thinking about work, which can lead to counterproductive stress.

5. Check your travel and health insurance carefully

If you travel regularly, you should take a close look at your insurance policies to see what may be excluded. Even if you think your insurance is comprehensive, it may not be: one of our employees only found out after an accident that he wasn't covered when traveling directly from one foreign country to another - for the insurance to be valid , the journey had to be made from his home country.

6. If you freelance, get an accountant.

It's not as expensive as you might think, and it gives you added peace of mind when it comes to tax planning and managing your finances.

7. Combining work and travel can be stressful

Just moving takes a lot of emotional energy because you're constantly having to navigate a new environment - figuring out where to find shops and restaurants, finding a suitable job, ensuring safe housing, and so on. Combine that with a demanding job and it can quickly lead to burnout. So plan your working hours carefully and try to stay in one place for at least a few weeks so that you can recharge in between moves.

8. If you are moving to a new country for a long time, do not underestimate the language barrier

Of course, this only applies to countries where you don't speak the language. For English speakers, it can be easy to rely on English in everyday life in large, remote working cities such as Berlin, Lisbon or Amsterdam. But in order to really immerse yourself in the culture of a city, make new contacts and not isolate yourself, it is important to learn the language. Luckily, there are inexpensive tools like Duolingo and Memrise to help you get started - but once you get there, it's worth taking an in-person language course to learn faster and practice real conversation.

9. If you wear glasses, get a replacement pair!

One wrong step in a strange Airbnb is enough to turn your glasses into dust. This just happened to our in-house designer Patrick the other day!

10. Remember the Pareto principle

80% of the results are achieved with 20% of the effort. As designer Ellen Lupton says, "Learn to weed out things. Learn to get rid of things you don't need. Apply that to your whole life. Get rid of the junk. Remote work offers many of us the unprecedented privilege of being ourselves deciding how much we work and what we spend our time on. Wherever possible, figure out what aspects of your work are most valuable and focus on those things. That's good for you and good for your work too.