Effective Strategies to Manage Your Time as a Remote Worker, with Toms Blodnieks | DistantJob - Remote Recruitment Agency

Effective Strategies to Manage Your Time as a Remote Worker, with Toms Blodnieks

Gabriela Molina

Toms Blodnieks is the COO and head of product and business development at Desk Time. He’s been working at the company for over 5 years, helping it grow and expand.

Remote leader

Read the transcript

Luis:

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Distant Job Podcast. I am your host, Louise, in this podcast that’s all about building and leading awesome remote teams. My guest today is Toms Blodnieks. He is the COO and head of product and business development at Desk Time. Toms, welcome to the show.

Toms Blodnieks:

Thank you, thank you, Louis. I think for having me.

Luis:

It’s a pleasure having you, and we want to start this conversation in the same way. Tell me the story of how your relationship with remote work started? How did you come to work remotely? And when did you understand that this was an arena where you could make a difference?

Toms Blodnieks:

That’s something, even though the team, the company and the product that we develop, is made for remote work and hybrid work, we didn’t work remotely at all, before the pandemic hit.

Luis:

Interesting.

Toms Blodnieks:

Yeah, it is. And only now we understand how much we have not enjoyed before the pandemic, what we enjoy now, of being able to work remotely. So, yes, as I said, that we started to work remotely in the 2020, when the pandemic hit. And we were just sent home in one day, or to be precise, I think it’s still in my head, in front of me, the day. It was Friday, when the lockdown started in our country, in our region. When the planes were locked down on the ground and everything just stopped in one day. And I remember that day that I understood that there will be no day in the office on Monday. So, I will need to be at home. So how can I do that? But yeah, it was as simple as it’s now, we just make a Zoom call or Google Meet call at that time, and join all in the call and start working and start our weekly brainstorm or weekly meetings with the companies.

Luis:

Got it.

Toms Blodnieks:

So, yeah, 2020 March.

Luis:

Yeah. So what was the expectation? I assume that like most people, you were worried, it wasn’t going to work out, right? What were the things that you thought were going to be difficult that turned out to be easy? And what was the problems that you didn’t foresee that you actually had to solve?

Toms Blodnieks:

I think desk timing this case should be happy or lucky about that we are a quite small team, especially at that time. We were a small team of around 10 people only, and it was quite easy to start everything and build the remote work. How we work, how we make meetings, what we do, how we do the working hours and stuff. And I believe it’s much, much harder for large enterprises, large companies, with hundreds of people, working with thousands of people, how to you manage all that remotely in the first place when you are just it’s… The 2020, the pandemic is total different time. How to start remote work as it’s now, when you can prepare for that. Can you plan that everything? You can find tools, you can do everything. But that time, there was no options for us. So we just went it naturally, it went naturally.

Toms Blodnieks:

We made the first call, we didn’t make any difference to our usual working hours in the beginning, we stayed the same meetings with everything, just what we had in our meeting room, we just made it through the virtual call. And I think that helped as well, that we tried to live first weeks of lives, how we lived in the office. And then we started to see, yes, we can start to do and be more flexible. We can do and adapt some things. And, yeah. Then the changes started just in few weeks after the start of remote work.

Luis:

So when you started offering that flexibility, what kind of challenges did you find?

Toms Blodnieks:

Yeah, of course the first question is, I don’t see my colleague near me. So what is happening? So how do we feel about? how do I feel, how does the colleague feels? And how do I know if he’s available. If I can try to reach him her, or no, and then the opposite and how long we work and stuff like that. So, the challenge is that we don’t know when we are available. So we needed to start to prepare the timings when we all are available. And how we can communicate if we are not available. So when to expect that any feedback or answer. So, yeah, we were lucky that we were using different tools already before that, in the office space, for the communication, for the meeting, for the virtual calls with the clients. And then, so we just started to use that and made some changes in our internal policies. That, for example, we are available from 10 to four. And then if someone wants to start working earlier, they can start working earlier and finish at work. Or they can start working at 10 or 11, and work until six or 7:00 PM. So, yeah.

Luis:

What was the decision making process between that time interval? 10 to four, for availability. Because, this is what I’ve seen in many companies. Right? And I’m always interesting to figure out. We tend to agree that it’s very easy to be distracted if you are available, meaning on Slack with the green thingy and notifications enabled. Right? So, I see that a lot of companies, our included, has tried to curtail that, doing something like, “Hey, here are online hours. And then on other hours, you can work however you please.” What was your decision making process getting to that?

Toms Blodnieks:

It wasn’t complicated or difficult. It was quite easy, as we were promoting remote work, we were promoting flexibility already for eight years. We were trying to talk and teach the time management and stuff like that. But the thing that we actually didn’t try it out ourselves for real, of course, yeah. I was on vacations before when I was, or I just working from Spain, for example. So that’s nothing that I didn’t use the remote work, but not like here, now we can really work remotely. So, it wasn’t difficult to set up those hours. It wasn’t difficult to negotiate the available hours, but that thing that needed to understand and adapt is that everything goes slower. So, that you are mentioned green light to my Slack icon, isn’t saying that I’m here and I can answer now. It’s saying that I’m working.

Toms Blodnieks:

That I’m here, at my computer. But I still have my time management schedule. I still, my jobs, I still have my project tasks, meetings, what I need to do. And that slack is online and turned on doesn’t mean that I can answer right away. So, and so we just one thing.

Luis:

So what’s the policy there? When you’re talking with someone in your company, how do you decide if it’s okay to ping that person? And, well, obviously I think that it’s always okay to ping the person, but how do you decide how long is it okay, until they answer? U I usually for myself, and I know that this doesn’t work for everyone, but I usually say, I usually tell my people, the people in my team that look usually, take as much as 24 hours. If it’s really urgent, I’ll bug you. If it’s really urgent, I’ll let you know. I’ll let you know, “Hey, Hey, I really need you right? But usually if I just send a message, I’m like take a full day to answer it. I’ll make it very clear if I’m in a rush.

Toms Blodnieks:

Yeah. This is a good point. But 24 hours for a Slack message, probably for us would be much too way, too long. And the one approach that is working now, is that every hour, we need to take a break. So, to be productive, to work healthy, we need to take regular breaks. This is one of the stance’s approaches. That’s one of our also blog posts. With the data from desktop users, that we need to take regular breaks. And that’s what we try to do ourselves. Okay. If we can’t do once an hour, we can do once in 90 minutes, or once in two hours to take real break. And then when we have this break, before that, or after that, we go to all the Slack messages and check it out, if there is something urgent and we need to respond now or just react to or something.

Toms Blodnieks:

So I would say, it’s once in few hours, we expect that person will reply or react in these active hours, which is 10 to four. Outside those active hours, it can be longer and it can depends. It can up to next morning or later in the evening, when person responds or reacts. So, and that’s also it goes together that how we manage our notifications. So, we have been guided about email snoozing, a scheduled sent emails, about send Slack messages. About notification turned off on Slack and stuff like that. So everyone can use those things outside their active hours, if they don’t want to get the popup messages from the colleagues or clients.

Luis:

Yeah. I actually think that emails are very underrated, right? People have developed some hate two emails. But when I’m only talking with one or two people, I actually find emails to be very pleasing, very pleasing to use. For me, at least, maybe I’m just old fashioned, But for me, at least, it still beats Slack history or something like that. But in any case, I wanted to, because you were telling me about your processes and of involuntarily smiled a bit when you talked about the breaks every hour, because I actually have my Fitbit on my wrist, scheduled to let me know every hour to take a break and I never do it. It rings and I just ignore it and keep on working. Maybe I’m terrible, but I don’t know. Have you felt something like that in your company and have you, have you taken some steps to try to build better habits?

Toms Blodnieks:

Yeah, of course, of course. We see that. We feel that, and that’s something that we need to go through the process ourselves, that we could educate and write about that in our blog post. And also to put that everything in our product, because our product also is something that offers Pomodoro Timer, which reminds you about the break we have. Of course, we have different other reminders that we need to take a break, including the watch and stuff. But yes, it doesn’t work all the time, but what we have seen and analyzed, is that in long term, it’s bad being that you don’t take regular breaks. Yes, your work day or your regime can be different. And maybe you don’t need those once an hour breaks. You need once in two hours, that’s totally fine. But the regular breaks is the key thing that need to stick with, and don’t need to work five, seven hour nonstop. That’s really bad.

Luis:

So, when we were setting up this interview, you told me that an interesting topic that you, that you felt it would be interesting to introduce in the conversation at some time, is really the concept of us office hours, right? That office hours, it used to be something that we had, but now that’s a dying or even a dad concept. Would you care to expand a bit on what that means?

Toms Blodnieks:

Yeah. Well, the first thing about the office hours is that yes, nine to five is a typical office hours or nine to six. And actually yesterday, I had a podcast as well for a similar topic about time management. And then this was very a crucial thing that we understood with the colleagues as well, who participated, that it’s actually for large group of people, it’s hard to switch to flexible working hours, to remote working hours, to remote work and stuff like that. Because they are out of the boat. And with the office hours, in one point, it’s dead concept, because mostly people who want this flexibility and then they don’t want to see those nine to five, nine to six, as their regular basis. But from the other side, that leads, that people need to schedule, plan, manage their time themselves much more, than it was before when the office hours were saying, you work from nine to five, be at the office at nine, and you can leave by at five, and that’s it. And you just work the hours during those hours.

Toms Blodnieks:

Now it’s a bit complicated. So yes, from one side it’s a dead concept. But from the other side, it’s still somewhere that we remember. So, if you don’t know how to manage your time, just work nine to five. Even if you work remotely, stick to the nine to five and it will work for you until you realize that, “I can sleep a half hour more.” Or one hour more. And then I can start at 10 and work until six, or maybe I can work from 10 to 12 and then take a siesta. And then there is my second part of the day from three to seven or something like that. So, and this is all our current new normal that we can work, and that’s good to go.

Luis:

It’s definitely, you touch on a sore point for me actually, because I feel that I am that person that needs to do the night to five. Right? You know how the yoyo diets are, I am a bit of a yoyo time management person, right? Where I switch back and forth from having like… My calendar, just all divided in tiny neat blocks where I do this, and I do that. And work is here and lunch is here. And then shopping is here, and then work is here again. And I do that quite well, until it just builds up such an amount of stress, that I can’t do it anymore. And then I go back to completely free form, completely disorganized, nothing on the schedule, just delete the calendar.

Luis:

And then it’s a mess. And then I go back and forth between that. I feel like I either have an overload of scheduling, or I don’t have enough structure. So, I guess that would be, my thing, would be just act like as if you have a regular nine to five. And I personally find for that personally, it makes it useful for me, if I can switch my environment. Meaning not working from my bedroom. Switching to a different place in the house and getting dressed is also right. I was never a very formal attire guy. Though I do enjoy putting on a blazer every now and then. Right. But mostly, I try to dress casually, but I can’t work in my pajamas. Right? I’m not able to focus like that. So, apart from the nine to five, how do you think people can strike a good balance in time management?

Toms Blodnieks:

So, you mentioned things about how you plan the day and you put everything in calendar, and that’s the time boxing thing that is very popular and it should work for most of the people. And I think it’s a good thing. I like it to do it as well. But the thing that I have-

Luis:

But after some time, sorry to interrupt. But after doing that time boxing thing for, let’s say one month, or two months. Don’t you start feeling very constrained by it. Right. Doesn’t it feel stressing? I know it does for me.

Toms Blodnieks:

Yeah. That’s the thing.

Luis:

Yeah. So start feeling like bit like an hamster in a wheel thing.

Toms Blodnieks:

Yeah, exactly. So, that’s where the second part comes in, when you need to take a break from those, time-box things. And so, the need to take a break is in two ways. So you can do it, not always boxing the full day, or you can really take the days off that, for example, I put that my Thursdays are no meeting days, no time boxing needed for me. So I can just live that one day a week in a free wheel and just, I will find the jobs, the tasks I need to do. So, but the rest of the week, I have boxed the things on my calendar. And what’s very important is to make a space, before and after each box of the thing you want to do.

Toms Blodnieks:

So, don’t put, “Okay, I need to finish this by five. Now it’s five. Okay. I start the next one.” No, it can go slower. It can lead a little bit you, so you need to find the proper time for that. Of course, this one case is the planning, but the other case is that you need just a room for the rest, or by mention breaks, that one part of the time boxing, you take a break, stretch it out, drink coffee or water or something, and then you are ready for the next time boxing part. Yeah.

Luis:

Yeah. That’s a good point, actually. That’s something that I learned to do is to actually put in a bit of Slack, between the schedulings, right? Because it’s not like you can stop doing one thing and start doing other thing in the other minute, I learned that the hard way, right? That you should have a transition time, like 10 or 20 minutes.

Toms Blodnieks:

Yeah. And that’s why people like you, that’s time, they go through those processes, they write a blog post. They educate people about that. And then hopefully someone reads that and don’t do the same mistakes as we do. But yeah, regarding the remote work and classic nine to five, how to get rid of that or how to manage that, is just it should be quite, I would say sensitive thing for each of us that we just need to understand ourselves, so. And if we are not ready to understand or go deeper to our daily feelings, how we feel in the mornings, are we ready to start working at eight? Do we want to wake up at seven or, or earlier, or we want to sleep? And when we do we feel more productive? That’s what we need to understand.

Toms Blodnieks:

And only then, when we know that, of course, combining with your family needs, if you have kids, then even though I would like to sleep until nine, I’m not able to do that, because my kid wakes up at seven and I need to get her to the kindergarten. So, there’s no way I will be able to sleep until nine. But if it’s possible, then you can do that. Or other thing is, yeah, you and go to the bring kids to the kindergarten, then do some sports or something, and then just start working. And then you will find your time when you can work, when you are productive. And then you go to your, if you have a boss or you have a team, you schedule the time when you will be able to work.

Toms Blodnieks:

Everyone approves that, they know that you’ll be available at that time, you made that process, or you share the calendars, or maybe you use Desk Time and schedule shifts. So, and then everyone knows in your team, each day you will work. So there are different ways how to manage that. But yeah, it all starts with yourself.

Luis:

Yeah. So I agree that what you shouldn’t do, is not manage it. Right? I’ve seen the most disastrous remote work stories I’ve ever seen, are the ones where people are just, “I’ll work it out. Right? I’ll find time to work in between everything else in the day.” So in between taking the kids to the kindergarten, making lunch, having sports, et cetera, I’ll just sit, whenever I have a little bit of time, I’ll sit at the computer and I’ll get some work done. It’ll be great. This never happens. You’ll just be pulled for one thing to the other, to the other. If you don’t have a plan, you’ll never be able to sit down and focus in work. So you do need to have a plan, regardless of the time type of plan, that that is.

Toms Blodnieks:

Yeah. That’s absolutely true. So that’s about doing several things in the same time. It’s never productive and it’s never really works. It maybe works for a short time, for smaller tasks, jobs, but it doesn’t work the whole day, the whole project. You’re not able to manage that. Yes, that flexibility allows you to go to the doctor during the day, or you can take someone somewhere with the car and then work at the car. Well, but this is, you can have a meeting in the car, and that’s all fine. If that meeting allows that if you don’t have to type a script or-

Louise:

Or screen share.

Toms Blodnieks:

Yeah. Or yeah. And then you don’t need two screens and stuff like that, so.

Luis:

All right. So let’s talk a bit, because you mentioned one of the features of your product, of Desk Time, is the Pomodoro Timer. I’m actually a fan of it. I’ve become a fan of the Pomodoro Timer ever since I started working remotely, many, many years ago. Because it really allowed me to get a good chunk of work done, and then feel guilt free about taking that break. The Pomodoro Timer, definitely for some reason, works better for me, than having the little wrist wrapped Fitbit alarm to take a rest. So why don’t you talk a bit about why you had decided to integrate that feature, and maybe explain for the listeners that don’t know it, how it works? Why is it like that and how it works?

Toms Blodnieks:

Yeah. Well, the classic Pomodoro Timer is with several features that could also put you on some kind of task. And no one would try to take your time away. In our case, it’s a little bit of edited version of Pomodoro Timer, if I can say it like that. Because ours is built customly for our products, for ourselves, for our customers in meeting with this break thing that we need to take regular breaks. And it goes along with our time tracking tool, that we know how much time you actually work. It’s not about your working and maybe then reading Facebook posts during your work and then working again. But it’s actually the desk time app, is really tracking time automatically, in real time. Checking if you are active at your computer, if you’re reading something, if you’re writing something, or switching tabs, or programs and stuff.

Toms Blodnieks:

And then when there is a time for a break, you can choose the time limit. It comes out and says that you need to stop working now, please go, and we do suggest some tips how to use your break more productive than just scrolling the social media or something. There are other options. Social media is one of the options, of course, because it also-

Luis:

A terrible option.

Toms Blodnieks:

And it maybe, but time to time, it’s a good option just to rest your mind, to watch some funny videos. And that’s what you need at that point. But in most of the points, yes, you need to walk, you need to stretch, you need to drink water. You need to look in the far away and stuff like that. So yes, the Pomodoro Timer or the break reminder for us is more for reminding about the breaks. And it goes along with the time tracking and time management, what our product is about. So yes.

Luis:

Got it. All right. So I want to get into the second 1/2 of the interview by asking some rapid fire questions. The questions are rapid fire, but the answers don’t need to be, feel free to elaborate as much as you’d like. So, the first question is about your virtual office. When you arrive at your computer to start your work day, what are the tools, the apps, that you need to have immediately at hand? What are the browser tabs that you open instantly? What does your virtual office look like?

Toms Blodnieks:

Yeah. Well, the first thing I do, I log into my password manager. So this is for the cyber security, very important. So this is the first thing. Second thing is that I-

Luis:

Any recommendation? If you want to go specific?

Toms Blodnieks:

No, a lot of tools, but we use Nord Pass app, there are different tools under Nord Pass and really user friendly, easy to use, easy to share passwords, easy to share information. So really good for us. So, the second thing is that I turn, if it’s worker or life thing. So, as I’m in the office, I turn on Desk Time, because I like to turn it off manually when I don’t work, because I use my work computer for personal needs as well. So, I need to turn it on back when I log into my office and want to work. Otherwise, if people want use computers for work only, then Desk Time works automatically and runs itself. You can put that into the settings. And then yes, there is Slack, of course. And then there is Chrome, which I love instead of Firefox or Edge.

Toms Blodnieks:

Chrome, I have email as the first place. And then there is our JIRA board and My Drive with all the documents I need for my daily work. So, mainly it’s a JIRA board for our product development and see the rollouts, what are the statuses? What’s the planning things? So, I’m in the loop. And then, yeah, the email takes a lot of time, of course. And then slack takes a lot of time.

Louise:

Got it.

Toms Blodnieks:

Those are the core things.

Luis:

All right. So tell me, if you had 100 euros to spend with each person on your team and you could give them anything, could be an experience, an app, a physical tool, a software tool, but the rule is you can’t give them money or a money equivalent like a gift card. You need to buy the same thing for everyone. What would you give them?

Toms Blodnieks:

Yeah, that’s something, what we do in desk time is quarterly, not really that, but it goes along with the similar things that we quarterly learn some things. Part of our team and then educate others. So, probably I would spend those 100 dollars on our books or some kind of educational materials that they can learn. It can be about their current position or job related things, or it can be totally some kind of out of the box things that they want to know, and then explain, and then teach others.

Louise:

Okay. So what about for yourself? What purchase have you made in the last one year or six months even, that made the real difference for your work life performance, work-life balance, whatever metric you can consider?

Toms Blodnieks:

This is a tough one. When you need to evaluate yourself or find, I know that I have purchased a lot of books that I hope will change my thinking, my business thinking, my skills. But I haven’t read those yet. And I know my colleagues know about that and try to remind me all the time. But actually, that one thing I have really purchased, is a trainer for a bike. So, I have in my home office, I have a trainer. When I set up with my bike and I really wanted to make the work-life balance better. When I finished working, I exercise, and then I’m ready at home to go home, downstairs.

Luis:

I actually never heard that term. So, I do need to educate myself a bit, but what is this trainer for the bike? Is it something that makes your regular bike into a stationary bike?

Toms Blodnieks:

So, yeah. That’s somewhere that I can ride my bike in the room. So, I don’t know if you heard about the program, Zwift?

Luis:

No, no, I didn’t. I need to look up into that. That sounds awesome.

Toms Blodnieks:

So Zwift is a real-time, a game where I combine to my Bluetooth trainers, watch and hurt belt and stuff like that. The speed measurement, and then I can ride my bike in my room, and I can ride together with my colleagues in different cities. And I see everything in my screen in front of me. And then, yeah.

Luis:

Wow. It’s like gamifying the bike?

Toms Blodnieks:

Yeah.

Luis:

Nice, nice. That’s really cool. I’m going look into that. Okay. So I want to go back to the books. Because you’ve mentioned books, that you should have read, but you haven’t yet. So let’s not talk about those, because you haven’t read those. But, if I wanted, I mean, it’s obviously that you’ve thought a lot about time management, and you’ve thought a lot about remote work. So, if you were going to give me a couple of books, to help me with my time management, what books would you give me?

Toms Blodnieks:

Yeah. Well starting, what I’ve been suggested is a a basic Get Things Done. So although we think that we know how to get things done, but if we really know, if we do that properly, if we do that on time, if we do that in correct order with our teammates, and if we really, what in product development is very crucial, that only 2% of all products or developments are on time delivered. So, mostly 98% of teams are delayed. Whichever, is it a one day? Or is it the week? Or is it more? But these are delays. So, I and my team try to learn how to get things done, how to push out the MVPs. And that’s something that this is, I think, the second book I need to read.

Toms Blodnieks:

The first book is about general things, about product development, that management, that I want to inspire from product leaders, because I am in the business development. And I need to understand how the products developed better.

Luis:

All right, let’s say that you have the ear of people, let’s say that you hosted dinner, right? You hosted dinner and in attendance, they’re going to be the top execs and decision makers of the most important tech companies in the world. And the round table for the night is about remote work. Now that you have all these people gathered in the same place, what is the message that you want to give them?

Toms Blodnieks:

This is tough one, but the good thing is that I like cooking and I like preparing cocktails. So, I would start with one good old fashion, and talking about how our teams are feeling, and do they think that they can manage their office hours, and then driving two hours in the traffic home and getting to this table with us? Probably not. They’re not able to get and be on time with this dinner. So, it’s crucial that people can choose and work remotely. They can be close or at their homes, do the same job we do in the office. And the most important thing is that there is no need of being next to those people, because we have so many tools in our world, in our tech world, that says much more than we see people working by the computer, by the table. So yeah, the message would be, be more tech heavy and use tech in our modern world.

Luis:

Yeah. You’re absolutely right. The being in the office is something that’s so less centering. Really no need to keep up with that. Okay. So Toms, it was a pleasure having you here. Why don’t you tell our listeners, A, where they can continue the conversation with you, how they can reach out to you? Where can they find your stuff? How can they ping you if they want to continue the conversation? And also, B, tell us a bit about Desk Time. How can they find it? How can they benefit from it?

Toms Blodnieks:

Yeah. Well, the benefits are definitely something that we need to understand each business and how they work. And what is their problems at this time. Because, if you don’t have any problems, then it’s rarely that you will find it engaging. But desktime.com is the way you can meet us. You can see all-in-one tool, starting with time tracking, is what we started 10 years ago with our internal teams, in our holding companies that wanted to work flexible. They wanted to work remotely. They wanted to be more flexible and increase the productivity. So, this is the Desk Time, what it’s made for.

Toms Blodnieks:

Now, 10 years later, we are with more different features, especially for remote work, for hybrid work. Now with desk booking, for hot-desking companies. For shift scheduling and leave management with project time tracking and project management. So, everything in one tool that we can offer for teams here at Desk Time. And of course, if you come to desktime.com, you can always reach our friendly support via live chat or email. But if you want to talk with me, or I can introduce with some specific person in our team, then the best way to find me is on LinkedIn. Please send the connection. Don’t send any specific quotes. Don’t need to be very polite, just add to connection list, and I’ll be happy to approve that and see what’s common and what we share and what we like. So, I can learn from you. And maybe you can learn from me as well. So, yeah.

Luis:

All Right. Okay. So I incentivize people to reach out, of course. I’ll include links to all of those in the show notes. And I guess that’s it. Thank you so much, Toms. It was a pleasure having this conversation with you.

Toms Blodnieks:

Thank you, Louise. Thank you for having me. Thank you for this nice talk.

Luis:

It was my pleasure. And thank you, the listeners, for listening to this episode of Distant Job Podcast, your podcast about building and leading awesome remote teams. I was your host Louis, and my guest today was Tom’s Blodnieks, the CEO of Desk Time, the time tracking app. See you next week.

Luis:

And so we close another episode of the Distant Job Podcast. And if you enjoy the episode, please, you can help us out by sharing it on social media. That would be great. It’s how we reach more listeners. And the more listeners we have, the more awesome guests I can get in touch and convince to participate in this conversations, that are a joy to have for me. And I hope there’re a joy for you to listen to as well. You can also help a lot leaving reviews on iTunes or your podcast syndication service of choice. Reviews are surprisingly helpful, in helping the podcast get to more listeners.

Luis:

Now, another thing that you might want to do is go to distantjob.com/blog/podcast. Click on the your favorite episode, any episode, really, and subscribe. By subscribing, you will get a notification whenever a new app episode is up, and whenever we get the transcripts of the episode up. So, you can actually peruse the conversations in text form. And of course, if you need to find a great employee for your team, a great remote employee, you should take the whole world into consideration, and not just look to hire locally, not just look to hire in your country, look around the whole world, because that’s the talent pool that contains the best talent.

Luis:

And to help you with that, again, distantjob.com, is the perfect place to start. You will tell us who we need, and we will make sure that you get the best possible candidate, 40% faster than the industry standard. And with that, I bid you adieu. See you next week, on the next episode, of the Distant Job Podcast.

One of the major benefits of remote work is flexibility. You can work in the environment you feel most comfortable in, and, overall have a better work-life balance.

However, despite all the benefits, there are also challenges to overcome. For example, time management is always difficult, especially when transitioning from an onsite setting to a fully remote one. During this episode, Toms Blodnieks shares strategies and helpful insights into how to optimize your time better and become a time management pro.

Highlights:

  • How they transitioned their onsite team to a fully remote one when the pandemic started
  • Main challenges of shifting to a remote model
  • The importance of taking breaks
  • Why 9 to 5 isn’t entirely bad when working remotely
  • Managing your time effectively as a remote worker
  • Why Pomodoro Timer is a great tool for time management

Book Recommendations:

 

Don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE so you won’t miss all of the other interesting episodes that we have coming up every Monday!

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