While more and more are opting for working remote – be it because they don’t want to commute 1-2 hours everyday or because they love traveling, it is important that you stay connected with your work life.
If you are working remotely, you will have to
- Tele-communication
- Webinars
- Online meetings
- Freelancing
- Mobile and cloud working
- Online conferences
- Data access and high-speed internet
Based on the above characteristics there are several tools for every remote worker. The list and features of these tools are given below.
1) Workfrom
Once you have a nomad lifestyle, finding a good working space where you can find all facilities you need is essential. If you have decided to work two hours a day, you don’t want to waste 30 mins or more searching for a perfect working space.
Workform is a tool where a community of remote workers share their experiences of great remote places to work. You can filter locations based on reliable Wi-Fi, alcohol, juice, snacks store, power outlets, etc. While the tool is free to use, there are some functionalities like favoriting are locked which can be accessed only by paid accounts. The pricing is pretty minimal though – about $5/month or $50/year.
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2) Trello
Trello helps you organize everything. The tool can have multiple users to collaborate on a project. This helps remote workers to stay connected with all the minute details of every other fellow team member along with the progress towards the work completion. I have been using this tool for all my projects. You can just create a separate board and customize boards as per your goals. For example for Nomadcareers, we have a board on Trello where we track everything, from blog posts scheduled to milestones achieved. Here’s the screenshot:
You can edit the board as you want. We have Blogposts, Social Media targets, Pageviews pargets, Employers target (our paying clients), Milestones achieved, and so on. You can have these boards as per your convenience. The main attractive feature of this tool is simplicity – it’s just simple to use. You don’t need to train yourself or you co-workers or virtual assistants to start using it. Unbelievable but true, Trello is totally free of cost.
There are few pain points with this tool, no doubt, but I haven’t found a single tool where I can track project which is as simple as Trello.
3) f.lux
A remote worker gets an opportunity to choose the hour of work they prefer which could be different from the scheduled office hours of 9 AM to 5 PM. He or She can choose to work late at night or early in the morning. Accordingly this tool adjusts the brightness and glare of the screen of your personal computer to suit with the time of the day. Hence this tool acts an automatic relaxation for remote workers while working at different hours.
This tool is totally free of cost.
4) Buffer
Let’s be honest, we entered into the era of social networks where every individual loves sharing, posting and uploading pictures, videos, moods and activities.
In case of remote worker, it might happen that you might not get time to post or update social networks. In such situation, Buffer tool saves them by allowing them to manage social media, schedule posts according to right time of requirement etc. Buffer tool allows you stay connected with your social media friends no matter where and how busy you are.
That said, it’s also a nifty service for scheduling tweets for your business. One way of grabbing audience’s attention is to provide value added content. For example, target audience at Nomadcareers are looking for a job. They might find content that’s polishing a skill or a new course interesting. If we come across useful content, we just add it to our buffer account and it tweets out at a scheduled time. This way, you’re not spamming your audience and getting the message out.
5) Slack
Slack is a great tool for communication within your organization. If your company allows you to work remotely, get this tool installed for your department or within your organization. It’s a chat tool, that’s pretty simple to use. Traditionally we used Hipchat when we started but have eventually shifted to Slack for communication.
One of the advantage of Slack over Hipchat is that it allows you to quickly move between organizations. If you are a freelancer, you might work with several organizations at once and Slack makes it easier to not miss a conversation between various organizations.
Slack also has public chat rooms which anyone can join. You can discover public chat rooms for topics of your interest at Slack Chats.
The tool comes with a free package but with limited functionality, and can go up to $12.50/month. There is also an enterprise package, which most of you won’t require.
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6) 1Passowrds
With this tool you don’t need to remember your alphanumeric passwords for thousands of sites you visit on a monthly basis. Let’s be honest, it’s difficult to remember passwords and using the same password everywhere is not recommended.
With this app you can do this in a more secured pattern. Apart from that there is also an option of making a vault through which you can share important details to specific members of your team without disclosing it to every member of your team. This tool is must have tool for every remote worker to manage huge number of passwords along with respective details.
For its licenses, there are plans according to OS used (windows, Mac etc) which varies near to $49.99 per license.
Staying updated and staying connected is very important for every remote worker. Every Time Zone brings a window with highlighted time zones of several countries. There is also a marker which helps the user to set the required time zone and activated.
You have a meeting with a developer in Berlin but are based on the east cost in the US? No need to calculate the time difference for the meeting. This tool will take care of everything.
While it comes with a 14-day free trial, there are plans named as Solo, Team and organization with costs $19/month, $49/month and $199/month respectively.
8) Cloud App
While you are working in your office you can physically peep into your colleagues screen and check what he or she is doing whereas once you are a remote worker, this is not possible. With help of this tool you can take screenshots or make GIF of screen which you can upload on cloud and share with your team mates through URLs. Hence it helps in coordinating with your teammates with ongoing projects and assignments.
Cloud App comes with a 14 day free trial. After this there are several plans according to benefits of user which ranges from $8.25/month to &69/month.
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It won’t be wrong it is stated that a remote worker is obviously a passionate traveler. Whereas entering into a new city can be difficult for every individual. Hence this tool solves this issue by proving original reviews by locals of that particular city. Every remote worker should have this tool before travelling into new city to get appropriate required details.
To be a part of spotted by locals you need not pay a single penny. It is total free cost.
10) Duet
Duet is a tool which is specially designed for management of project within a small team providing appropriate visibility of details. It is self-hosted tool which can be used with own custom domain name.
This tool costs $49 as one-time fee.
Bonus: Several other tools
Other than the list of tools above mentioned, there are many important and popular must have tools for every remote worker such as:-
- Google docs
- Hangouts
- DropBox
- Weekdone
- Skype
- Microsoft’s OneNote
These tools are quite user-friendly are required in every activity of working.
If you enjoy working in your comfort zone, in your own environment either on your bean bag or sofas, then these tools are must required tools for you. With the above mentioned tools you can enjoy working at location around the world staying in any time zone and at any hour of day. Hope the above article carries all the details and descriptions of tools required by a remote worker.