I've been working remotely with flexible hours for several years now, and I've come up with a couple things that help maximize productivity: - Work in blocks,

I've been working remotely with flexible hours for several years now, and I've come up with a couple things that help maximize productivity: - Work in blocks, and don't let email/browsing/meetings interrupt that - If you can at all help it, don't check email or have meetings until your first block of work is done. Getting up and right into work is very productive and minimizes impulses to procrastinate. If you check email, you get in a different mind space and can easily start following rabbit trails until you suddenly realize most of the morning is gone and you haven't done any real work. - I work best early in the morning or late at night - Having a specific item in mind is key when starting a block of work. Either one item that will take the entire period, or a list of smaller things to knock out. - Figuring out what to do should be done at a separate time from actually doing the work. If you start to work, and then have to figure out tasks, you tend to procrastinate. If you know what you need to do, you can get in the zone and just do it. Spending a block on planning also allows you to get in the zone with that. If you try and context switch back and forth between planning and doing, you end up being far less productive. - A mid-day nap gives my brain time to rejuvenate and get ready for more work. It also lets me get up early and stay up late (to hit my most productive times) while still getting enough sleep. Based on that, my typical schedule has become: - Get up early (say 6am) and work until noon in a solid block. That 6 hours is more productive than an 8 or 10 hour day when you have to go in the office, since its uninterrupted undistracted work. - At noon, take a break, hit the gym, grab lunch, and take a nap - After the nap, spend the afternoon catching up on email, integrating with the team, and polishing off any loose ends from the morning block - If I feel I didn't get enough done in the morning block, I've got another uninterrupted stretch from 8 or 9 until midnight I can spend on work, research, or hobby coding. At that point, its easy to keep coding -- in fact, I'll usually have to make an effort to stop myself at 11 or 1130 so I can have time to relax and read a book, so my brain can calm down and stop coming up with ideas while I'm trying to sleep.