Preface

HELLO,

We are so excited that you’ve picked up this book! Not only because we believe you’re on a path to designing the remote work life of your dreams, but also because it contains all of the remote work lessons we’ve learned firsthand along the way (along with dozens more from our fellow remote work leaders). It is all the advice we wish we had when we first started, and we can’t wait to share it with you!

But first, we need you to do one thing: Drop your remote work baggage at the door.

We get it. We also have a love-hate relationship with Zoom and have been in countless conversations where eyes glaze over the second we say we’re advocates for remote work. The thing is, when we started writing this book, the world was at the height of a global pandemic that looked nothing like the remote work we’ve known and loved. It’s been exhausting, even for us. All of this to say . . . there must be a better way.

Don’t worry; we guarantee you there is. We know it. We have lived it (more on that later).

Remote work is no longer a futuristic pipe dream for a few lucky people. It is the present—whether or not companies are ready to adapt. If you are sending emails, saving data to the cloud, or using countless other forms of technology, you have the tools you need to design the how, where, and when to do your best work. The real challenge lies in changing the human behaviors on your team, yourself included, to have true remote work fluency: something we define as having the right skills, behaviors, and mindset to easily navigate work in an anytime, anywhere environment as if it is second nature.

Fundamentally, remote work puts a magnifying glass on all aspects of an organization: the good, the bad, and the ugly. We believe the bad and the ugly are merely areas to improve and problems to solve. While we don’t claim to have all the answers, we do believe in you—a competent, capable, and creative human being.

That’s why Remote Works leans on reflection questions, expert interviews, group activities, and stories so that you can cocreate the best remote work life for yourself and your team—along with us, chapter by chapter. No special software needed. No complex reorganizational plan required.

Last but not least, we want you to know that we live and breathe what we preach, even beyond our combined two decades spent working in distributed environments at places such as Automattic and DuckDuckGo. The last time we saw each other “in real life,” before embarking on this writing journey, was in February 2019 in Mexico City. We were roommates for a month while organizing remote working salons.

The idea for this book came up during a casual catch-up while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. We saw midlevel managers struggling, and executive teams didn’t know how to help, given they were also unfamiliar with remote work. We saw them largely copy and paste traditional ways of working into a virtual environment. And then we got to work.

Our biggest fear was that the promise of remote work would be taken away for future generations of knowledge workers due to failed experimentation before most people even got to experience the true benefits: Seemingly simple benefits like creating our workdays around our natural energy peaks and valleys, and enjoying the freedom of choice in our schedule and locations. Bigger benefits too. Because of remote work, we found our partners, developed meaningful relationships, learned from other cultures, improved our health, and had the opportunity to work with some of the best and brightest people from around the world.

We’ve spent time teaching people on the fundamental questions you should be asking if you are committed to exploring remote options for your team. Many of those questions are woven throughout these pages. We found that once you start questioning, there is no stopping. With remote work, you open the doors to redefine work-life balance, success, and so much more!

We created this book for you and your team, each writing from our corners of the world. With multiple versions of stories in Google Docs, WhatsApp threads, and Asana tasks, we’ve strengthened our own remote working muscles as well. (Trust us, there’s always room for improvement.) We became even more confident that remote work fluency is here to stay. Strong remote work skills will improve your work game, even if you decide to be colocated part of the time. We are excited to share everything we have learned.

Saddle up. Let’s get started.

Alí & Tam