1. Set your expectations

Working remotely means fluid schedules. It means you might mow your grass during the late morning. It might mean running some errands over lunch. Don’t feel shame. Everyone does it. And it’s actually a good thing.

So don’t expect your team to be at your beck and call. And don’t feel you need to, either. Do you want people to be available at a certain time? Let them know that. Don’t be the manager who sends an invite for a meeting that starts in 25 minutes. They will dislike that. And you.

2. Call it a day

Study after study shows that people working remotely are both more productive and work more hours than those in office settings. Sounds great, right? It’s not. Because the burnout factor is real.

At my first job with direct reports, I sent an email to a client at 11PM. My boss told me that set two standards, both of them unhealthy. First, I was telling the client that they could expect our team to be in touch at all hours of the day. Second, I was unwittingly modeling behavior to my direct reports that they would feel the need to follow.

Since then, I’ve tried my best to limit my communications to something loosely defined as work hours. Sure, I work outside of that time. But (try to) never send emails. Need to get your thoughts out? Write your message and use the Delay Send feature available in most email programs.

3. Give them a place to be human

One of the advantages of the office is the option to interact with other humans. Our co-workers might get on our nerves, but after four months of being confined in houses with our significant others and spawn, most of us would gladly put up with even the most peculiar of quirks from a co-worker. We’re social animals, after all.

Looking to help your team further human interaction? One of the clients we work with set up a “Water Cooler” Zoom Room. Anyone can come and go as they please. They’re free to talk about the weather, what happened in the game last night, or any otherwise benign topic we used to fill our days with. Give it a try with your teams.

4. Have a chain of communication

This extended period of forced solitude has proven what we’ve known all along: There are entirely too many meetings. We have a sign in our office (at least I think we still do, haven’t been there in awhile) that says: Meetings are where we go to talk about the work we’d do if we didn’t have meetings.

Not everything needs to be a video meeting. If it wouldn’t be a meeting when you’re in the office, it surely doesn’t need to be a video meeting now. If your goal can be accomplished in a quick email, DM, or phone call, for the love of all that is good in the world, do that instead. The world will be a better place.

5. Be patient

Working remotely is a balancing act, even in the best of times. And these are, well, decidedly less than the best of times.

Things are going to happen. The internet is going to take a digger right when you need it. The neighbor will start mowing the grass right as you need to present. Someone’s kids will start fighting. It happens. The world will continue spinning. I promise.

Realize we’re all in this together, practice a bit of empathy, and try to find the good in it all. It goes a long way.

I’m challenging myself to a 365 Photo challenge in 2016. The plan is to take and post one photo (roughly) each day. And, because this doesn’t seem impossible enough on its own, my plan is to pair each photo with a line of text.

Why do this?

First, I want to better hone my skills at the melding the visual with the textual. Second, it’s my hope that examining the artful each day will force me to take note of the minutiae I otherwise miss in the rush through the day.

Some of the art might make a cameo on Facebook. But if you want to follow the full journey, I will post all the photo/text art on Instagram @neidtwriter.

Wish me way more than luck.

Most brands already are busy promoting, tracking, analyzing, and any number of other –ings of their content. But what are many forgetting? The actual story.

How did this happen? How did we get to a place where companies worry more about how people access their content than what that actual content says? Better yet, how can we reverse the trend and get content people not only read, they seek out—customers not only interact with, they request more of?

Sell the story.

Whether it’s a book, movie, or website, people love a good story. Stories delight and entertain. And, most importantly, stories engage our brains. Researchers found that reading action-based passages stimulated the same areas of the brain as actually performing the action. Meaning that reading content about climbing a tower stimulates the brain as if actually climbing the tower.

Use this to leverage audience behavior. Instead of providing facts and statistics, provide a first- hand story of a customer experiencing and interacting with a product or service.

Providing the story around a product or service drives behavior and engages the customer in ways data and numbers cannot.

Oh the possibilities...

Companies love to talk about the benefits of a new product. How much better, faster, or amazing-er it is than the competition. But customers don’t respond to superlatives. I can almost hear you objecting. “But, but...” No buts. Customers are bombarded with these messages until they become meaningless.

So what should you say? Talk about the possibilities of your new product or service—show what you can accomplish by using them. Think about Apple commercials. They don’t talk about processor speed or megapixels. It’s people using their products to conquer the world.

For brands, this means no more content touting a 3% stronger product or 7.2% tastier. Produce content that illustrates enhanced strength and tastiness.

Take a chance.

Your audience demands content that is new and exciting. Quality content anticipates customer problems before they even know they are problems.

Take risks and reinvent your content. Not everything will work for you. Maybe the idea didn’t resonate; maybe it didn’t feel authentic for your audience. But you won’t know what works until you try it.

Do these three things and you will have content worth promoting, tracking, analyzing, and any other –ing you can dream up.