A simple change in how you think about remote work can make your days instantly more productive and pleasant.
What does it take to make remote work successful? For both employees and entrepreneurs, a good tech setup and relatively distraction-free space is certainly essential. So are techniques to keep endless Zoom calls from destroying your productivity (and sanity). A modern approach to management that focuses on what people produce rather exactly how and when they produce it helps too.
But even with these basics in place, some people thrive in remote work while others struggle. Why is that? The nature of a team’s work clearly has something to do with it (experts say innovation is tougher at a distance), as does individual personality and seniority (young people benefit from the passive education of being around colleagues).
But, according to a fascinating new study out of the University of Cambridge recently published in Human-Computer Interaction, there’s another hidden factor that’s essential for remote work success — the right mindset.
The research team started from the same places that many bosses find themselves in today. There are about a million studies and surveys about remote work, and they often contradict each other on the benefits and drawbacks of remote setups. Which of these studies should business leaders believe?
The answer, according to this new research, is maybe all of them. Rather than finding that remote work is always good or always bad, the team discovered that mindset mattersmassively when it comes to remote work success. Those with the right mindset thrive in remote setups, and those without it don’t.
