Today, more and more people are running a remote business from home — or are even travelling the world with nothing much other than their laptops in tow, as “Digital Nomads.”
Developments in digital technology and the internet have meant that there are now a huge range of different tools and platforms available that can help individuals to organise and run their own businesses, to explore different avenues in their personal lives, and to engage in different leisure activities.
But whether you are signing up to a bundle of apps that includes services such as https://setapp.com/apps/glyphs-mini, or whether you are noticing the sudden rise in the number of digital freelancers out there, you’ve likely considered the prospects offered by the increasing sophistication of the digital landscape.
Running a remote business can come with many different rewards, not least of all the ability to be your own boss while avoiding a lot of the hurdles traditionally associated with many different forms of entrepreneurship.
At the same time, though, running a remote business — either from home or from the road — naturally comes with its own challenges, and one of the most significant of these is the fact that it can be difficult to properly structure the working day, and to practice good time management, when working in a location-independent fashion.
Here are a few reasons why day-to-day routine is key for running a remote business.
Routine leads to consistency when running a remote business
In order to be successful in any business venture, it’s necessary for you to do the best work you can, as reliable as you can — and it’s especially important to aim for consistency in how you structure your working day, and in the work you produce for clients and customers.
Consistency is naturally a struggle at the bets of times for most of us. Some days you are bound to just wake up on the wrong side of the bed. At other times, it will be more difficult for you than usual to unravel a particular kind of professional problem. And so on, and so on.
Maintaining a solid professional routine can go a long way in terms of helping to establish and safeguard consistency — perhaps most importantly on those days when you are feeling thrown off balance somehow.
If you get up at the same time each day, start and end work at the same times each day, and engage in a core of key professional activities and habits each day, it’s easier to keep momentum going in that direction and to move forward consistently regardless of where in the world you may find yourself, or whether or not you’d rather be on a beach somewhere.
A good professional routine can reduce obstacles to productivity
There are many potential obstacles to productivity that can arise when you are working remotely in general — not least of all the fact that there is little to no oversight to prevent you from becoming distracted and browsing the web for hours, among other things.
When running a remote business as your own boss, however, there are even more potential obstacles to productivity than there would otherwise be, as you are in a position to make all sorts of different decisions about how your time should be spent that day, and whether or not you should work on one project or another, or should — in fact — just have a long lunch and take a nap.
A good professional routine can reduce many of the obstacles that can get in the way of productivity as a remote entrepreneur, by giving you a clear “groove” to fall into, as opposed to having to make micro decisions moment by moment about how best to spend every potential fraction of your time.
If you have a set routine in place for broadly what you do, and when you do it, this can make it much easier to get your work done as effectively as possible, and to the highest standard possible.
Routine is key for avoiding burnout when you’re responsible for your own schedule
Entrepreneurs, in general, are famous for being susceptible to burnout, and for working around the clock with little if any separation between personal and professional life.
While running your own business is likely to require you to work longer hours than you otherwise would, however, it’s very important to create proper barriers between your professional life and your personal life if you don’t want to end up dramatically undermining your sense of wellbeing, causing problems for the relationships and dynamics of your personal life, and burning out as a result.
A strong and consistent routine can go a very long way in terms of helping you to keep your work from invading your personal life, or your personal life from invading your work — unless absolutely necessary.
A routine can help you to better track your energy and focus throughout the day
Have you ever found yourself feeling inexplicably more tired and less productive on some days than on others? Or have you found that, for certain projects and tasks, you seem to be really on point, whereas for others you are dragging your feet and are barely getting anything done?
While life is always dynamic and unpredictable in various ways, one of the interesting benefits of sticking to a set routine, day after day, is that it can help you to much more effectively notice and track fluctuations in your energy and focus from day to day, and from one time of day to the next.
If your “routine” constantly varies from one day to the next in terms of everything from the hours you work, to what you eat and when, and how much sleep you get, it can be essentially impossible to figure out what’s going on.
When you have a regular routine, though, you are more likely to notice certain trends and patterns. Maybe your most productive time is always first thing in the morning. Maybe eating more of a certain food at lunch causes a bigger slump in energy.
When you have more insight into these kinds of things, your productivity and wellbeing are likely to both be greater.
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Mike Gaudreau is the owner of The Wealthy Boomers, a site devoted to helping seniors make money online. Mike resides in Montreal Canada.
You should assume the owner of this website probably has an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection, to any suppliers of goods and services that may be discussed here and may be compensated for showing advertisements or recommending products or services, or linking to the supplier’s website.
