“Are you still working in the office? Then we go to you!” – this slogan suits the book best “Remote” from the creators of Rework and the creators of the legendary task manager for Basecamp teams.

Personally, I was extremely interested in reading “Remote”since it will soon be 6 years since I have been working as a remote employee (freelancer) without having worked a minute in the office. Of course, I read it not from the point of view of learning how to organize my time or find the advantages of working from home (believe me, after 1.5 years I knew everything about freelancing and could write books myself, but there are already hundreds of them), but from the point of view view of new information. After all, I have never worked in an office and I do not know how popular the idea of ​​office workers is not to go to work every day, but to sleep an extra 60-90 minutes. And in “Remote” the authors very accurately described the current state of affairs: the attitude of employers, employees and their families to remote work.

What is this book about

I will not exaggerate, the book “Remote” is a treasure trove of knowledge about remote work. After reading it, you can unequivocally decide for yourself whether you are ready for such changes or not. And directors will be able to evaluate the usefulness of remote work using specific examples and introduce this new product in their company, if they have not already done so.

Who is this book for

First of all, I recommend reading it to those people who have begun to think about daily commuting as time that they could well spend with benefit, for example, working on their own project or learning a foreign language. Of course, the pluses of remote work cannot be attributed only to the absence of such a thing as “the road to work”, but also the absence of various distractions: daily meetings, meetings, meetings that you need to go to just for show, and not with some important mission.

Also in the book, the authors appeal directly to business owners and department managers, who still believe that remote work is evil, and a remote worker is a real nightmare, because when a person is not within walking distance, he cannot be controlled, one cannot be sure. that it works! What if he went fishing for the whole day and left the job undone! So what?

The principle of remote work

The point of remote work is precisely the absence of a rigid work schedule: there are 40 working hours and 7 days a week, each of which has 24 hours before. You can work 3 days for 14 hours or 7 days for 6 hours – it doesn’t matter how you distribute your work schedule, only the result is important. And what the employee will spend the rest of the time on is his own business.

Of course, there are professions, for example, a call center operator, for which, by definition, it is difficult to match the status of “freelancer”, however, no one forbids transferring 1-2 operators in test mode to home mode with the condition of being “online” for a certain number of hours in a day. But such an operator will hardly be able to be late for work, unless some emergency happens.

Outcome

I think that it is too early to sum up the results, because a book is just a book, and what everyone who reads from it will use in life is a purely personal decision. I’m not encouraging everyone to become freelancers immediately just because you stop spending 10 hours a week commuting to the office and home. Remote work still imposes obligations that not everyone will find easy to fulfill. But if you still want to try at least 2-3 days a week to work not in the office, but, for example, at home or in a cafe, but do not know where to start and how to convince your superiors to allow you such an experiment, feel free to contact “Remote … An office is not necessary ”, in it you will find answers to all the tricky questions of the authorities, with which they will try to keep you in the office.

Video

A short video from the authors about the content of the book:

Where can I buy

The book is available for ordering at Ozone in printed or electronic formats.

Author: Pavel Ryabov