When we first got to New Zealand I spent 8 weeks freelancing for the wonderful people at Freeformers. They were based in London, I was moving around New Zealand. Here are 7 things that I learnt in the process.
Someone’s always working
I worked on things during my day, and then they worked on things during their day. This essentially means that they would go to bed, and I would have already done my bit by the time they woke up the next morning. This was great for tight deadlines, as days essentially doubled in hours.
Absolute flexibility
I had complete flexibility to plan my day how I wanted it. Given that the rest of the team was (quite rightly) snoozing, it didn’t matter if I went for a run, took a break to go to the beach or even which days I worked.
Inconvenient time zones
Early morning (or late night) calls. New Zealand is (from October-March) 13 hours ahead of the UK. That means 7am NZT calls are 6pm GMT. Or 8am GMT is 9pm NZT.
Is anybody out there?
Being the only person on Slack. There’s a lot of hours in the day when nothing happens on Slack. I used to have to turn notifications off to get work done, now there are long periods of silence… I may have started talking to myself.
To tag or not to tag, that is the question
Most people have switched their notifications off, so I know they won’t get a rude awakening at 4 in the morning (only me, I’ve done this today). But some people haven’t. Do I tag them in the risk of ruining their evening, or is it their own fault for not snoozing notifications?
Give more detail
Unless you fancy conversations in the middle of the night, you’re not going to be around for many questions. So when setting a task, or summarising what you’ve done, give more detail than you otherwise might. Context is key.
Trust
This is the most important factor of remote working from the other side of the world. You have to trust the people that you’re working with that they will do the best they can with the tools, material and knowledge that they had available to them at the time.
Are you a remote contractor? How do you make it work? Let me know in the comments below or tweet me @emvacher
