Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us are struggling to make the shift from co-located offices to remote work environments — a transition that under normal circumstances, would take a year or so to implement. Needless to say, these are hardly normal circumstances.
Most people and organizations who are offering advice about remote work right now are coming from a good place — but there’s so much noise it can be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. Rather than add to it by offering yet another organizational perspective, we’ve curated a guide to the best resources for remote and distributed work that already exist, in no particular order. We hope it helps.
14 excellent resources for remote and distributed work
REMOTE: Office Not Required: This bestselling book from the team at Basecamp shows employers and employees how they can work together, remotely, from any desk, in any place, anytime, anywhere.
OMG I'm working remotely, now what?! This blog post by Benedikt Lehnert, Director of Product Design for Microsoft’s Mobile Experiences, compiles best practices and tips to keep you focused and boost your productivity while working from home, “because distributed teams are a reality and remote work is the future.”
Why Great Teams Embrace Remote Work: This downloadable guide from the good people at Trello compiles tried and tested strategies from the world's leading remote companies.
MiroBlog | A blog by Miro: Rather than any one post, Miro’s entire publication is dedicated to the future of distributed teamwork and includes specific insights on product development, agile management and experience design.
5 tips for ramping up on remote work in a hurry: This post from Atlassian’s “Work Life” blog is well worth the quick read.
Working across land and sea: Tips for remote communication: This post on the “Inside Intercom” blog focuses on effective remote communication to ensure positive working relationships.
Working from Home — a Guide: Charles Patterson, senior designer and editor of InVision’s “Inside Design,” relays the lessons he’s learned over five years of working remotely.
How to lead a distributed team: Jennifer Dennard, Co-Founder of Range, offers four tips for managers whose teams are suddenly split across two or more locations.
Working Remotely: Tips from 100+ Remote Workers & Leaders: Help Scout has been writing about and advocating for remote work for a long time, and this resource compiles all of those learnings throughout the years.
The software you need to lead a distributed engineering team: Cathy Reisenwitz outlines what to consider when adopting software for distributed engineering teams — the categories of software distributed engineering teams find helpful, which features to look for, and questions to keep in mind as you consider your options.
Remotely Managing: This Medium publication is the brainchild of Stella Garber, the head of Trello’s distributed marketing team. She shares remote work insights from a management as well as individual standpoint.
What’s Your Company’s Emergency Remote-Work Plan? This HBR piece outlines five steps business leaders can take “to not only flexibly respond to this potential disruption, but also to use it as an opportunity to reimagine work broadly.”
11 Tweaks to Fine-Tune Your Remote Work Routine: Even after you're used to remote working and you have a solid understanding of what the pros and cons of remote work are, there are probably a few tweaks you could make to noticeably improve your workday
Loom is free for teachers and students forever. Learn more here.