How Habits Will Propel Your Remote Career Forward

The one fear I often hear about remote work is one’s ability to stay focused and achieve goals without the physical space of an office. For someone who has done both and would choose remote work over the office any day, it seems like I have figured out a secret that other people are missing. Although at first working from home was challenging (why not watch Youtube videos all day?) I found that the more I focused on my habits, the more basic work became a knee-jerk reaction.

Develop Positive Habits

It may seem easy to say “do this, do that, and you’ll be a successful remote worker!” but the reality is, positive habits are what’s going to drive your work forward and set you apart as a remote worker.

No matter what field they’re in, I’m sure many (if not most, or all) remote workers would agree that positive habits are the only way to propel yourself forward and turn remote work into a career.

Here’s the honest truth: When you perform an action over and over again, it’s likely to become a habit. And when you do something so often that it becomes a habit, you’re able to use far less brainpower to accomplish said action.

So, what this means is that if you can create better work habits, you’ll have much more time and mental effort available to throw into harder tasks that require more attention. When this happens, your days become much freer, your mental capacity expands and you’re able to accomplish so much more than you would if these tasks weren’t on autopilot.

Just about anything can become a habit. Like sticking to a routine, following through on check-ins, having focused work time, and maintaining a true work/life balance.

But it can also be something more tangible and design specific like knowing your software inside and out, utilizing hotkeys, having a deep understanding of color and design principles, prioritizing tasks, and selecting projects you’re passionate about.

What you’ll quickly realize as these items become habits, is that you can call on them whenever you’re in need and your brain will already have the answers with minimal effort.

Occasionally, I look at a design I’ve just created and something feels off. The design principles I have studied and utilized over the years kick into high gear and I will eventually realize that maybe spacing is off, even by a singular pixel, or maybe the color placement isn’t accentuating the hierarchy of elements or capitalizing on the brand the way it should. With a deep understanding of my profession, I can sense that something is off before even knowing what it is. That level of subconscious analysis takes years of building good habits.

The amazing thing about habits is they can be formed in any area of your life. They can surround almost every action a person can take and become a powerful driving force behind motivation and accomplishment.

James Clear, the author of the book Atomic Habits, put it best when he said

“Success is the product of daily habits – not once-in-a-lifetime transformations”

Remote worker success comes from building habits out of their routines and sticking to them, not being the best designer in the world.