Meaningful Productivity for the Remote Worker

Can Warren Buffet teach us all about being engaged with our work?

Recently I’ve discovered that Warren Buffet approaches his work in a way that’s very similar to a thriving remote worker.

Here are three lessons remote teams can take away from Warren Buffett’s unusual working methods:

1. Intentionally attract people who have similar values to those on your existing team. This is just how Buffett builds his team: by who he attracts, and who he generally likes to work with. “Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy,” he says. “And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.”

For remote teams, hiring for integrity is especially true. While new hires must of course have a certain level of skills for any given role, hiring someone you can trust, and someone who is a fit for the team’s specific culture is crucial for remote work.

2. Know that distraction means lower productivity—so work to combat all your personal distractions. One of the benefits of working remotely is that we face less distraction…at least most of the time. But as Buffett points out, sometimes this requires conscious effort.

Buffet has no problem working in a way will enable him to be as distraction-free as possible. His office is in his home. He has no computer in his office. He does not spend his day in meetings, rather 80 percent of his day is reading and thinking.

Even his choice to stay in Omaha is in part due to his continual emphasis on not losing focus. “In some places, it’s easy to lose perspective,” he says. “But I think it’s very easy to keep perspective in a place like Omaha…It’s very easy to think clearly here. You’re undisturbed by irrelevant factors and the noise generally of business investments.”

As remote workers, we intuitively recognize exactly what Buffet is suggesting: we know where and how we work best. You have to be intentional about setting that up; design is important. To not work in those ways is to do ourselves a disservice.

3. The power of habits compound over time—so use it to your benefit. “Just imagine you could be given 10 percent of the future earnings of one person you know,” Buffet says. “Would you pick the smartest person?” The fastest runner?”

The answer, he explains, is that you would not. Rather, “[y]ou’re going to pick the person that has the right habits.”

The same can be said for those in a remote setup. Just as Buffet exemplifies, day in and day out habits are crucial for success as a remote worker. We must look for systems that we can set up to save us time in the long run.

At Edoc, one manager saw the opportunity for one such system when she set up the hiring and onboarding process for the transcription division. She did this before there was ever the need for her to do so.

Instead of doing the “same thing” 50 or more times, by setting up a system, she only had to do the same thing a handful of times. By setting up automatized components within the process, she greatly reduced the time she had to spend on trivial parts of the hiring process.

Over time, the efficiency Edoc had as a result of Sue’s system not only saved resources, but it allowed us to scale quickly when we quickly needed to add new team members.

A Man with Conscious Habits Proves To Us What Meaningful Productivity is All About

Warren Buffett has created an environment in which he knows he can be “lifted” by likeminded people. With no meetings scheduled, he’s an example of setting up your workflow to have as little distraction (however you define it!) as possible.

Knowing that, it makes sense how Buffett can read from 500 to 1,000 pages every day, without “burning out.” (He still has time for 12 hours of bridge per week. It must be his lack of a commute!)

And that Gallup survey? Gallup also discovered that those who were allowed to work remotely were actually more engaged in their work.

Seems to me that “owning” your time, and continually setting up your habits to stay disciplined, really can mean greater engagement, as well as fulfillment.