Kristina Longmuir

Not as a whole. I agree some people and positions may experience higher productivity in a remote work environment but it can be difficult and detrimental to productivity for others. As a remote, self-employed consultant, I know maintaining focus and sourcing motivation to be productive takes work... a lot of work. Remote work isn't for everyone. Some people need the office setting, the...

In general, I try to avoid using "always" or "never" statements because more often than not, the real answer is... it depends. Both as a consumer and from the business perspective, whether I sacrifice one over the other comes down to the details of the transaction. Distribution and design should be evaluated along with other components such as the target audience, market duration, opportunity...

Seems to have everything the self-employed individual needs to understand their financial and tax picture all year!.

Engagement. Whether it is socially motivated, educational/informative, or for networking - the Community leaders must be engaged.

I'm a fan of some of the more physical or interactive team building. There is an outdoor laser-tag facility here that I've been to with a team and Escape Rooms can be another great source for fun and learning to communicate and rely on each other.

For me, it is remembering what day of the week it is. This is important because weekends are a reminder to take a break. Being self-employed, motivation and workload isn't the hard part. I tend to work at least a couple of hours every day. Because I don't take the weekends off entirely, I can easily forget if I need to be doing a Monday's workload or a Friday's.

I schedule my first hour to catch up on the inbox from the weekend, read news articles, research a topic I'm interested in, etc. Rather than trying to put my "work brain" into Go mode first thing, I find the hour on Monday mornings a great way to ramp up. I do have to set a timer because it is easy to "forget" to start working! My first task of each Monday, after my Ramp Up hour, is to sketch...

We used several different tools (like Slack and Jira) but then combined some of those functions by using MS Teams. Drive is where we share docs. And I'm a little old-school so for my task lists, I have note pads. The interaction of physically crossing off completed items keeps me going!

I usually join a meeting with camera OFF. Once I'm in and see if others are in attendance, I will turn it on. Occasionally I need to address something off camera and I may turn it off again to go handle that item and put it back on when I return to focus on the meeting.

I notice my stress level increasing when I can't focus on a project for more than 10 - 15 minutes. This is when I take a break. Sometimes they are short breaks...a walk around the block or even a short trip to the kitchen. Other times, I remove myself for a couple of hours. Whether I work out with a trainer or go complete a household chore that is looming... often just doing something that I...

What a cool take on the otherwise boring web calls.