Being extremely successful at working remotely

Working remotely can be easy and awesome, you just need to realise that it is way more different in comparison with working in an office and also use a lot of common sense to be effective and successful.

These are some conditions that are -almost- always true when working remotely:

1. You need to be available for meetings
2. Answering and reading email is important
3. You'll need a good internet connection
4. A second monitor is a must
5. You'll be at least in one meeting during the day
6. You'll do less exercise because your home is your new office

I will present recommendations based on the given conditions, but you can always evaluate your own conditions and set up your work rules to be productive:

1. Stay visible! Make sure that during your work hours you're always reachable. Log into your IM account and stay available during work. I suggest to not spend time messing with the IM client status. Current chat clients have ways to identify if you've been away for a period of time enough to put you in a "away from computer" status. And also, changing your status to "busy" can be bad, why will you change it? if you are going to be really busy, and you're not being available for a period of time, you can log off and let everyone know the reason. On the other hand, if you're again "available" will you remember to change the status again? if you don't, then the members of the team could think that you're busy and they'll not contact you
2. Have a comfortable and effective work place. Let's talk first about furniture: Make sure that you have a desk with enough room for your hardware requirements. I suggest to have enough room for a laptop and a second monitor, another important piece of furniture, is a comfortable chair, make sure that you don't hurt your back or neck with it. Talking about an effective place, you've to take into account that you're probably being in meetings during the day, so I suggest to have a quiet place or make it quiet with a noise cancelling curtains for example. another important piece for this is a good headset, a "trick" that many people don't know is that you can probably use the headset of your cellphone in your laptop, those devices are usually great, good looking and using them can save money.
3. Be communicative. Are you about to finish a task? Have you been working a lot with a co worker? Are you changing your lunch schedule? All of these situations needs to be communicated to the team. For example, if you're about to finish a task, you'll probably need to pair with a member for reviewing or actually, your manager will be assigning a new task soon depending on how much time you're planning to spend on the current task. It's a good idea to let the members of the team that are actively working with you know when you're grabbing lunch. 
4. Be ready for stand up. Prepare a couple of minutes before stand up: check your items, your needs, open the meeting, go to the restroom, bring a cup of tea or coffee (in case you enjoy them!)
5. Email and chat latency. Set email and chat notifications to "on" and answer them quickly. For chat in less than one minute. For email, well... depends, but ideally in less than 10 minutes, sometimes email can be a little more complex. And also, don't forget to check all the emails you receive,  no matter if they're a general announcement, you'll probably want to know if the office is being closed for a couple of days :)
6. Schedules. Try to decide on an appropriate schedule. Set your work hours and lunch time and let everyone know. If you're going to change something for a reason, you should always send a message!
7. Cameras. Yes! video chats are really awesome when working remotely and they're so overrated. Seeing the people of the meeting will help in understanding the point of view of your team, you will feel closer to them and then you'll communicate better. Just give it a try! it really improves overall communication. 
8. Remote meeting tools. Try to use as much as possible tools like sharing screen, drawing in the screen, letting other person take control of your computer. Record your meetings. These tools will help in being more productive and will improve communication.
9. Set rules based on your own context. Talk with everybody on your team and set the appropriate rules for your team. For example, if a member of the team is arriving earlier than everyone, he could probably do the tasks of database maintaining.
10. The other side of the mirror. For those people on the team working in the office, remember that some rules also apply to you. For example, if you're working closely with someone, it  would be a good idea to let them know about your meetings and the times when you're going to be unavailable, remember that the remote team members cannot go to your place and see that you're not in your spot. In general, it's a good practice to set up a calendar visible to every member of the time with the available and unavailable times of everyone.
11. Do more exercise!  Trust me... you'll gain some weight because you'll be doing much less exercise, so this is the right time to attend some kick boxing classes and stay in shape! -ok just kidding, but really, try to do exercise, running, hiking, martial arts, yoga, gym, whatever you decide-

As I've already say,  these recommendations are based on my experience, every team should sit and dedicate time in creating their own particular rules, these will make them more productive.

I hope you enjoy these entry! feel free to leave your comments at the end of the post.