A list of resources that might help if you're new to remote work

We want to help. Hotjar is a fully distributed company, so our entire team—over 100 of us—works from home instead of gathering in a physical office. We've been doing it since 2014, so we know a thing or two about how to build, grow, and nurture a remote team. We have grouped together a few tips and resources about remote work and listed them here in case they are useful to you and/or anyone in your network. A few quick tips to stay productive while working remotely:

🚧 Set boundaries (when you’re working, you’re *really* working)

🛁 Take breaks at regular intervals

⏲️ Track your time so you don’t get distracted or overworked

🛋️ Disconnect for at least a few hours a day

Remote work definitely has its perks, but it comes with challenges, too.

If you’re working from home now and are having trouble adjusting, here are a few ideas to help you settle into your new ‘normal’:

💬 If you’re on a newly-distributed team, talk to your leads about implementing tools to keep lines of communication open and to help manage tasks and projects. We Hotjarians use tools like Asana, Trello, Slack, and the G Suite.

⏲️ Use a timer or time-tracking app, such as Toggl, to remind you to take breaks and to split up your focus time.

🌲 If you can / are comfortable with it, go outside and take a walk during one of your breaks. If you can't, remember to move around the house a bit in between tasks.

📞 Stay connected. Arrange regular coffee or tea breaks with friends or colleagues over Skype or Zoom.

Hotjar resources about remote work:

• What is remote work? An introduction An introduction to the pros of remote work and how to handle the cons

• Team-building activities for remote teams or: how not to lose the 'personable' element and random interactions of working in a shared space

• Tips for leading a remote team Tips from one of Hotjar’s engineering team leads on how to work through some of the challenges of managing a remote team

• Tips for remote workers part 1 General guidance from our company manual

• Tips for remote workers part 2 Tried and tested tips to stay productive and focused

• Effective team collaboration Ideas, cheatsheets, and tools to stay on top of tasks

• Retrospective template for remote teams A free Trello template to run agile retrospectives via conference call

• Running a remote ideation workshop

  A slide deck (moderator's tool) and a digital whiteboard where the whole team collaborates during the workshop session

Resources from other companies

• Remote: Office not required from Basecamp. Note: this is a book, but they will be refunding the purchase price for the foreseeable future.

• A crash course in remote management from WordPress

• Getting started from Black & Brown Founders

• 5 tips from ramping up remote work in a hurry from Atlassian

• Remote work wiki from Notion

• Tips from 100+ remote workers from HelpScout

• Tools for remote work from ProofHub

• How to switch your company to remote in a short time from YouTeam

• 20 more remote team activities from Giftogram

• Remote work FAQs from Arc

• 10 productive things to do while trapped inside from Preply

• Answers to your hardest remote-working challenges (with 100+ tips) from Conversion Rate Experts

• 7 best practices for running a remote team from Monday.com

• Remote employee engagement ideas from Inpulse

• A complete guide to making remote work actually work from Ben