Placeless Mindset: The Perfect Mindset for Working Remotely to Ensure Success

Achieve Success

Does your success or failure depend on what you believe about yourself? Well, according to Carol Dweck, Stanford University professor of psychology, it does. In her research, Dweck explains that a person’s beliefs impact their motivation and determine whether they’ll achieve their goals.

As you can see, your mindset is a powerful tool that you need to achieve your life goals. When working remotely, you must be ready to shift your outlook, especially if you were used to the traditional workplace. Working from home is different and it requires a remote mindset. This outlook is called a placeless mindset, which we’ll be discussing in today’s post.

What Is a Placeless Mindset?

A placeless mindset involves understanding that your life and profession should always be ready for change in terms of location and communication. Having this outlook as a remote worker enables you to balance everything in your life and achieve your goals despite the circumstances.

If you just started working from home, you must learn how to thrive in the new environment and remain productive. Having a placeless mindset is what separates productive remote workers from those who see the new setup as a burden. If you’re in the latter group, then a mindset shift can help change your perspective towards working from home.

The Pillars of a Placeless Mindset

Forming the Right Mindset for Success

1. Trust

One major reason why many employers refuse to operate remotely is distrust of their employees. They worry about ensuring that everyone is productive enough. 

As an employer or remote leader, you must first adopt a placeless mindset. Then, encourage employees to do the same so that you can be on the same page. Doing the following things can help achieve the needed trust between employers and employees:

  1. Ensuring that employees remember the company’s vision and that they remain dedicated to achieving the set goals
  2. Training employees to communicate well and giving them enough time to respond to messages or emails
  3. Allowing employees to work independently provided they meet the given deadlines
  4. Using employee monitoring software such as Traqq to ensure everyone is playing their part
    Note: This time tracker takes screenshots and video recordings of your employees’ desktops to show you what they’re doing. You can also view how much time they spend doing various things. What’s more, the tool works in the background to avoid distracting you or your employees in any way.

2. A Proper Location

Most employers believe that the office is the most comfortable and reliable place to work. They argue that the office has enough infrastructure to facilitate the work and fewer distractions. However, that is not always true. Some employees may feel distracted by machine sounds, people’s movements, or just anything happening in the office. This might affect their concentration, reducing their productivity. Such people may prefer working remotely at a location that favors maximum focus.

As an employer, you should:

  1. Allow your employees to choose their preferred work location,
  2. schedule daily scrum calls to check on a project’s progress, and
  3. reward them regularly to keep them motivated.

That way, employees get a chance to work from where they can be extra productive to deliver excellent results. So, it’s a win-win situation at the end of the day.

How to Develop a Placeless Mindset

It’s worth noting that having a placeless mindset doesn’t mean you can automatically achieve anything. It means that you can work perfectly from anywhere and deliver great results. Indeed, people with this mindset focus on improving their skills and learning new things, making them better professionals.

Neuroplasticity: You Can Rewire Your Brain to Develop a Placeless Mindset

Neuroplasticity

The potential of a computer is limited to its software and hardware specifications. Thankfully, our brains are nothing like that. Whenever you learn something new, your brain creates new connections between your neurons. This ability is called neuroplasticity, which all humans have. It’s what enables you to rewire your brain to quickly adapt to unfamiliar circumstances.

With new activities and experiences, your brain forms new neural pathways. Now, as you repeatedly do or say the same things, they become hard-wired into the brain. Your brain forms routes that are easier to use, making these activities seem more natural to you.

However, you can still change these ‘brain routes’ using neuroplasticity if need be. Then, you rewire the brain by training it. 

When you want to develop a placeless mindset, you must remember that:

  • You must be ready to be consistent with the mindset for better results.
  • Mastering the mindset will put you in a better position to teach other remote professionals to do the same.
  • Sometimes, your fixed mindset voice will whisper doubts into your mind to make you feel limited. When this happens, respond with a placeless mindset approach. Tell that misleading voice that you are ready to learn and aren’t limited to anything.

Before Achieving Success, You Need to Define It Personally

The first step to achieving tremendous success is determining what it means to you because it’s not always about money. What success means to you may not apply to somebody else. The truth is its definition goes way beyond fame and money. If you think it is measured by these factors, then why are the rich and famous battling addiction, fending off scandals, and committing suicide? Moreover, it is important to remember that what success is for one person may be different for another.

Society may dictate that living a successful life means collecting trophies and tangible assets. However, only you can determine what success means in your life. You may find it in the pursuit of knowledge or making the world a better place. Perhaps, success for you may lie in the meaningful connections you make on a day-to-day basis.

With a placeless mindset and personal definition of success, you can work harder because you have a clear goal. That increases the chances of getting better results than just having a mindset without knowing what you want.

Steps to Developing a Placeless Mindset

How Do You Develop a Growth Mindset

1. Embrace Location Independence

Remote work allows people to work from their homes, co-working spaces, or any other suitable place. 

As a remote leader, you should:

  • Use communication channels that will be reliable for everyone despite their locations,
  • use time tracking methods to minimize the need for an employee’s physical presence, and
  • recognize and respect the employees’ different cultures in their specific locations.

As an employee, you must:

  • Develop great time-management, goal-setting, and stress management skills, and
  • responsibly take advantage of your location independence to travel a little and visit family and friends.

2. Use Asynchronous Communication to Ensure Productivity

Asynchronous communication allows you to speak with your remote leader about different projects at your convenient time. This ensures flexibility and freedom for the whole team since everyone plays their part without feeling like they’re being pushed around.

To achieve this, a remote leader should:

  • Create a communication charter to ensure people use the proper communication channels when discussing different things, and
  • give clear yet flexible deadlines on all tasks.

As a remote worker, you must:

  • Regularly check the created communication charter to make sure you use the right channel to connect with colleagues, and
  • use project management tools to help stay focused on your project so you can complete it on time.

3. Use Flexible Schedules

Flexible schedules are crucial for any kind of remote work. They enable you to develop a placeless mindset easily since they ensure enough time to master and enjoy corporate dynamics. Remote leaders and employees have a part to play in creating a flexible schedule.

For remote leaders:

  • Plan meetings according to the entire teams’ availability, not just yours.
  • Keep the Business Continuity document updated.
  • Determine the best practices and resources that your team needs to work autonomously.
  • Ask your team about their preferred remote work preferences so that you can create a suitable schedule.

As a remote professional:

  • Inform your team and remote leader when you can’t manage to do something. That way, the schedule can be tweaked to fit your availability or situation.
  • Take advantage of the flexible schedule to exercise and practice hobbies.

4. Be Open and Transparent

Working remotely can be lonely sometimes, especially when done for a prolonged period. You might also feel extra sad if you loved working from the office but were suddenly forced to stay at home. So, employees need an opportunity to openly share their problems with colleagues. This helps them feel more connected, thus minimizing loneliness.

As a remote leader:

  1. Make time for people to share their struggles via any suitable means such as Slack. This can be done weekly or monthly.
  2. Create a special moment during virtual meetings where people share anything.
  3. Ask employees to provide honest feedback about anything and document any provided crucial information.

For remote workers:

  1. Don’t be afraid to open up to your colleagues. Make sure they know when something is affecting your productivity.
  2. Ask your teammates how they are doing with care.
  3. Respect other people’s boundaries if they don’t want to overshare.
  4. Take care of your mental health to ensure a superb mindset performance.

Conclusion

Mindset shifts are never easy to execute, especially when dealing with an old mindset. However, nothing is impossible. By following the above steps, you should be able to properly understand what you need as a remote professional. As such, you can develop a placeless mindset easily.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Related articles

Oct 2, 2020

60 Powerful Productivity Quotes for Work Success

Feb 4, 2022

14 Amazing Employee Incentive Programs & Ideas

Dec 31, 2020

10 Effective Ways to Maintain Employee Motivation