6 Best Practices for Working With Teams in Different Time Zones

Are things ticking along relatively smoothly or do you feel rushed 🏃🏾‍♀️ and anxious? Or a couple of days in the woods 🌲, implementing time for a ‘digital detox’ can help reduce stress and mental functionality. With the digitization of our world, our brain 🧠 needs downtime from all the stimulus to recharge and restore more than ever. And you may find the most peace ✌️ when you’re unplugged and untethered 🔌.

Work is very much a part of our lives, especially for asynchronous, remote workers who may intersperse personal responsibilities with work. For this reason, you can’t expect your employees to have dedicated self-care time. Instead, self-care should be integrated throughout the day and with work. Doing this might feel a bit invasive at first; self-care is extremely personal. Leaders may worry about telling their employees they have to relax. Given the way work can take over the lives of team members, however, it’s vital to fight burnout by modeling good self-care, discussing self-care, and building in practices of self care during the workday.

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To prevent potential burnout in your employees, attempt to switch meeting times weekly and make them more convenient for your remote team. That said, it is necessary to mark your standard working hours in a team calendar along with your time zone. Doing so will prevent any confusion from occurring or request for meetings during awkward times. The remote team should also follow your example and label their working hours and time zones. Using management tools that display the timeline with crucial time zones can assist with keeping track of work schedules and updates.

Take a moment to think where in your life you’d like a little freedom and support, and make an appointment. Baking can stimulate the senses, be great for mental health 🧠 and provide you an outlet for creativity 👩🏻‍🍳. Success isn’t if your working remotely in a different time zone loaf rises or if you get a 💯 score from your most honest critics (kids! 🧒🏾), it’s in the art of experimenting with ingredients. 🏋🏽 Schedule ~30 minutes of exercise at the time that works best for you and work your tasks around it.

practical and effective remote work time management tips

If you’re able, start with bringing awareness to your sense of hearing 👂. Practicing being in “the present” will help for the times when your mind wants to remunerate on the past or focus too much on the future. Not just children can enjoy the benefits of coloring books 🎨! Coloring is actually proven to improve focus, reduce stress and anxiety, and promote feelings of calmness 🧘, peace ✌️, and wellbeing 🤟.

• Here’s how to migrate a project that was started before Django supported time
  zones.
• But if you’re not willing to adjust your timings, it will hamper yours as well as their schedule.
• That will eventually cause people to become disconnected and potentially leave the company.
• Be transported back in time to watch an artist 🎨 paint “happy clouds ☁️, mountains ⛰️, and trees.
• When it comes to work-life balance, people need to engage in a variety of activities and rest.

There’s a lot of research, for example, showing that things like exercise, yoga, and mindfulness are supportive of mental and physical health, she says. The underlying rule is that it’s something that brings you sustained joy in the long run, Courtney says. To get into a routine of regularly practicing self-care, experts recommend starting small rather than tackling the most challenging thing first. Choose one practice each week to weave into your daily routine. Note any positive changes, and add in more practices when you feel ready. You can block all the focus time in the world, but if you’re simply exhausted, then you will still struggle with staying productive.

Follow A Meaningful Self-care Routine

But despite how sweet working remotely may seem for the uninitiated, remote work carries its own unique challenges. Make good use of your calendar to keep track of your personal “to-do” lists, such as kids’ soccer games, hair appointments, or get-togethers with your friends. Take the time alone to reflect and relax before bedtime, relieve muscle pain, boost your mood, prevent inflammation, and improve heart health. The Covid-19 pandemic brought with it social distancing, which includes distancing from others in a social setting. Improve the light in your immediate environment by making sure your windows are clean, having an effective overhead light above your desk, and using a bedside lamp to prepare your body for bed at night. The brighter the light around us is, the more awake, aware, and present we feel.

Apart from these, you need to also recognize your work distractions. Let your co-workers know when you do not want to be disturbed. You may also try productivity techniques like Pomodoro timer to manage distractions. Once you identify your time robbers, you can successfully implement effective time management strategies to improve your work. Users can set distractions alerts for when they’re inactive. Time Doctor will not track your work after a certain period of inactivity.

This time management strategy allows you to prioritize the important work that requires your undivided attention so you can actually produce a high-quality output. Another busy week went by, and somehow your to-do list was neglected once again! Your tasks are adding up way faster than you can check them off, and as much as you need a quiet week to catch up, there isn’t one on the horizon. We are perfect for ice breaking, striking up interesting conversations, and having a fun time together. Another option is to have two different meetings in one day at two various times, so everyone has a chance to join.

Most websites that care about time zones ask users in which time zone they live
and store this information in the user’s profile. For anonymous users, they use
the time zone of their primary audience or UTC. Zoneinfo.available_timezones() provides a set of available timezones that
you can use to build a map from likely locations to time zones.

When you do get to your worry slot of the week, brain dump on paper to prevent them swirling around in your head ✍🏼, think through actionable steps ⛰️, and release what you can. Taking 0.20% of your week for this exercise may brighten the remaining 99.80%. Take a moment to determine the small habits you could focus on in your life to encourage continuous improvement 📈. Being within walking distance of your fridge can be a frequent temptation 😬.

Fortunately, there are many things you can do to get in control of your schedule, including effectively tracking your time and work. Your card will not be charged at any point during your 21 day free trial
and you may cancel at any time during your free trial. We ask for your credit card to allow your subscription to continue should you decide to keep your membership beyond the free trial period. HRMorning, part of the SuccessFuel Network, provides the latest HR and employment law news for HR professionals in the trenches of small-to-medium-sized businesses. Rather than simply regurgitating the day’s headlines, HRMorning delivers actionable insights, helping HR execs understand what HR trends mean to their business. Gaines says getting more organized helps create a sense of balance.

Keep up with healthy habits.

So what can remote workers do to relax and take care of themselves? We’d like to give a special shout-out to Peter Maher, Edmund Hillary Fellow and co-founder of inWonder, who was instrumental in building this list of 100 self-care activities for remote workers. One of those stressors comes from the flexible line between personal time and work time.