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During the Covid-19 pandemic, the shift towards remote work gained more traction than ever and became a critical aspect of many industries. Whether you’re a remote work veteran or transitioning to a remote setup for the first time, staying informed and updated is key.
Here are 6 highly recommended books covering a variety of topics related to remote work, including boosting productivity, mastering remote team management, running or participating in virtual meetings, and more.
These books aren’t all strictly about remote work, but they each offer essential insights that can help you boost your location-independent career in the digital space!
We know hunting for the perfect remote work-related book can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. That’s why we’ve created the freelance book finder to make your search a breeze! Simply pick a genre, rating, year of publication, or even a keyword that interests you, and we’ll serve up a selection of well-suited reads!
Work Together Anywhere: A Handbook on Working Remotely – Lisette Sutherland, Kirsten Janene-Nelson
“The top reasons workers wish to telework include schedule, commuting, family situation/caretaking, preferred work environment, increased productivity, increased opportunities, even “trying out” a position or role. Additional people who seek remote work include those wishing to supplement their income, retirees wanting to stay active, military spouses, and the disabled.”
Lisette Sutherland & Kirsten Janene-Nelson
Work Together Anywhere offers a collection of strategies, tools, and stories intended to help anyone lead, work, and thrive in a remote team. This includes the use of project management tools, document-sharing platforms, and virtual whiteboards, as well as advice on running effective virtual meetings and brainstorming sessions.
The practical advice, actionable tips, and illustrative examples are drawn from Sutherland’s extensive experience as a remote work consultant and leader of the virtual team at the 100% remote company, Management 3.0.
This handbook is designed to help remote workers (plus managers and organizations) understand and implement effective remote work practices. By following the guidelines you can enhance your productivity, foster better relationships with your team, and enjoy a fulfilling remote working life.
Working remotely can also mean working with a global team. Work Together Anywhere provides guidance on how to navigate time zone differences, language barriers, and cultural nuances to ensure everyone in a remote team feels included and valued.
Who is it for?
Remote team members and leaders seeking to improve their remote collaboration and team dynamics.
Remote Work Is The Way: A guide to making the most of our office-optional future – Iwo Szapar
“However, it is not enough to say: “Let’s work remotely!” The need for systemic changes that will not happen overnight. It will be a long and arduous process, requiring perseverance from companies, employees and governments. But the payoff – for workers, for the planet, and for the future – is worth all of the effort!”
Iwo Szapar
Remote Work Is The Way is a timely and essential guide for anyone interested in leveraging the benefits and navigating the challenges of remote work.
The book draws on Szapar’s extensive experience as a remote work advocate and founder of Remote-how, a global platform empowering the growth of remote work. It is filled with actionable tips, real-world examples, and innovative ideas that can help you and your organization transition smoothly into a remote work setting.
Szapar highlights the role of digital tools and platforms in facilitating teamwork and maintaining a sense of community among remote workers. Further, the author provides you with useful tips for fostering effective communication and collaboration in a remote setting.
The book also delves into the creation of a remote work culture. It discusses the importance of shared values, including trust, empathy, regular feedback and check-ins, and virtual team-building activities in creating an inclusive and productive remote work environment.
Who is it for?
Remote workers, team leaders, and business owners who want to successfully navigate the office-optional future.
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World – Cal Newport
“Deep work is not the only skill valuable in our economy, and it’s
Cal Newport
possible to do well without fostering this ability, but the niches where this is advisable are increasingly rare. Unless you have strong evidence that distraction is important for your specific profession, you’re best served, (…), by giving serious consideration to depth.”
Although Deep Work isn’t specifically about remote work, the principles and strategies Newport lays out should be valuable to anyone working online. This book can help you understand the importance of focused, uninterrupted work. The book provides various strategies and routines to cultivate this skill, essential for remote work where distractions can be plentiful.
As a remote worker, it’s easy to get distracted. The author defines “deep work” as “the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.” It’s a state of flow where you can make significant progress on challenging tasks.
This type of work is especially valuable in our knowledge economy, where creative and analytical thinking is often key to success. The aim is to create an environment to enter the flow state where you can concentrate fully on the task at hand.
Newport encourages you to intentionally set aside time for deep, focused work. This might mean blocking off time in your schedule when you can disconnect from email, social media, and other potential distractions.
As a result, through the concepts introduced in Deep Work, you may not only improve your productivity, creativity, and problem-solving skills but also ensure that your work is impactful and of high quality.
You can read more in our Deep Work quick review.
Who is it for?
Anyone struggling to maintain focus during (remote) work hours or seeking ways to enhance their productivity, creativity, and the quality of their work.
The Holloway Guide to Remote Work – Katie Womersley & Juan Pablo Buriticá
“Effective communication between two or more parties requires that everyone understands the message in the same way. (…) Distributed team communication requires the entire team to become skilled at clearly conveying intended meaning, and this can’t be replaced by using more or better tools. Communication tools won’t improve the quality of what you say; they can only make it happen faster or slower, or reach further.”
Katie Womersley & Juan Pablo Buriticá
The Holloway Guide to Remote Work is a comprehensive handbook that provides detailed strategies and solutions for both individual remote workers and teams. Hiring, onboarding, meetings, mental health – it’s all here.
Buriticá and Wilde have led large remote engineering teams at fast-growing startups (such as Splice and Buffer). The authors, both experienced remote leaders, draw on their own extensive experiences and collaborate with a range of experts to provide a manual that covers every conceivable aspect of remote work.
They delve into successful practices at companies like GitLab, Trello, Zapier, among others, and stress that remote work isn’t a privilege for a select few but a potential norm that can benefit everyone involved. They also emphasize the importance of clear communication, well-defined goals, and robust systems to manage work effectively in a remote setting.
The Holloway Guide to Remote Work champions remote work as a viable way to enhance work satisfaction, cut costs, and unlock opportunities for both companies and employees. For remote employees, the guide helps make the most of their experience, from avoiding burnout to establishing work-life balance.
Who is it for?
Anyone interested in making the transition to a remote position. Whether you’re an individual looking to move to a remote role, a remote team member, or a manager looking to improve your remote team’s performance and cohesion, this is an essential resource.
The Long-Distance Leader: Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership – Kevin Eikenberry & Wayne Turmel
“First, you need to cut yourself some slack. After all, if you’ve been doing this job for a long time, the things you’re expected to do and the tools you’re expected to use have changed considerably in a short period of time. If you’re new to the role of leader, chances are the people who mentor and teach you aren’t familiar with working the same way you do. This is still largely uncharted territory.”
Kevin Eikenberry & Wayne Turmel
The Long-Distance Leader is a guidebook specifically written for leaders overseeing remote teams. It offers techniques for fostering effective communication, collaboration, and strong team culture in a virtual environment.
Eikenberry and Turmel outline 19 specific rules for remote leadership. These rules cover a wide array of topics from trust building and communication to managing projects and personal productivity. Each rule is designed to tackle a specific challenge inherent in remote leadership, providing practical solutions and actionable strategies.
The authors utilize their vast experience in leadership development to equip you with the necessary skills and knowledge for successful remote leadership. They emphasize that while the workspace may have changed, the basic principles of leadership remain the same. Yet, they also point out that these principles need to be adapted to the virtual environment to be effective.
The book also addresses the need to balance autonomy and control in managing remote teams. It offers advice on how to trust your team to work independently while also ensuring accountability. In terms of individual team members, the authors provide insights on how to support them, encourage their development, and address their unique needs and concerns in a remote setting.
Who is it for?
Managers, team leaders, and supervisors handling remote teams and navigating the complexities of remote leadership.
The Remote Facilitator’s Pocket Guide – Kirsten Clacey & Jay-Allen Morris
“(…) in meetings in which certain voices dominate and others are accidentally/intentionally silenced, motivation and quality thinking are compromised. A further cost we pay in such spaces is that some people may perceive the experience as painful, and under such circumstances our brains are activated in a way that is not optimal for complex reasoning.”
Kirsten Clacey & Jay-Allen Morris
The Remote Facilitator’s Pocket Guide focuses on facilitating virtual meetings, online workshops, and brainstorming sessions. The book includes practical tools and techniques for keeping everyone engaged and interactive in a virtual setting.
The book is designed as a quick reference guide for remote facilitation, offering a range of practical tips, strategies, and insights to help you navigate through the unique challenges of remote collaboration. It emphasizes the necessity of effective communication and engagement in a virtual environment, highlighting how these elements can drive your team’s success and productivity.
The authors delve into various techniques for building rapport and trust among virtual team members, such as active listening, empathy, and acknowledgment of individual contributions. They provide advice on how to leverage various digital tools to facilitate effective virtual meetings, workshops, or brainstorming sessions.
The Remote Facilitator’s Pocket Guide also addresses the potential hurdles in remote collaboration such as time zone differences, technical difficulties, and the lack of physical cues, and proposes effective solutions to these issues. Moreover, the book gives advice on how to manage distractions and maintain focus during remote sessions, a common challenge for many remote workers.
Clacey and Morris don’t just show you the ‘how’ of leading remote teams – they also dive into the ‘why’. They inspire to create a team environment where everyone understands their role and the bigger picture and where everyone feels safe and comfortable sharing their thoughts and worries. They even share handy tips to make sure no one hesitates to express their ideas or concerns.
Who is it for?
Remote workers who run or participate in virtual meetings and workshops, and anybody who is either currently leading a team or aspires to move into such a role in the future.
Whether you’re looking to optimize your remote work routine, or seeking practical insights into the world of a remote career while transitioning to a remote setup for the first time, these books have you covered. With the right knowledge and strategies, you can make the most of your remote work experience.
Dipping your toes into the remote work scene? Dive into what remote work means and why it works so well for so many. Discover why it’s the talk of the town!
If you’re looking for more tips and resources on digital nomad life, don’t miss our handpicked collection of the best books for digital nomads & remote workers. From kick-starting your nomad journey to mastering productivity and cultural adaptability, we’ve got you covered.
