8 tips for crushing your job while working from home, from 6 leaders who have worked remotely for years

What makes a productive home or remote office?

Hayley Peterson recommends not working on a couch, where you might feel sleepy. Everyone recommended working at a desk or a table.

Everyone spoke about sitting some place with lots of natural light. Debbie Strong, our senior contributors and freelance editor, gets flowers every week for her table to make her environment feel fresh. Buy or make some great coffee. If you're not in a self-quarantine situation or an area that needs to prevent the spread of coronavirus, work remotely from a coffee shop once per week in fact, to change your scenery and feel connected to the outside world.

As a newsroom, Business Insider uses a few productivity tools to stay in touch while remote:

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• Slack, for instant communications
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• Gmail and Google Calendar, for the obvious.
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• Google Hangouts for video conferencing with our teams around the world.

Dave Smith uses his TV as a second monitor via Apple TV + AirPlay.

Cork Gaines has the home office of your dreams, complete with bottles of whiskey and sports memorabilia. It includes:

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• A MacBook with an external widescreen monitor.
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• An external microphone that helps with meetings.
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• Cork *built* a second computer, a PC, which does most of his video recording.
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• He has Philips Hue lightbulbs to control the lighting, which helps with meeting atmosphere.
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• He uses an iPad during video meetings, in addition to his laptop where the actual conference is pulled up, so he can take notes without switching screens.
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• When he's feeling restless, he has a standing table with an exercise bike that fits under it to turn it into an exercise desk.

You think working from home means pjs, sweats, and not leaving bed? Wrong!

Tracer, our healthcare editor, wakes up at 6:30, showers, and puts on "real" clothes.

Strong, a mother to three boys, wakes up at 5:45 to feed her baby then gets caught up on news for the day and also gets dressed. "No sweats or PJs here!" she says.

Gaines wakes up at 5:30 to meditate, does some journaling, and then gets dressed.

When you work from home, you still have a job. So act like it, down to having a morning routine and looking/smelling human.

Strong sends a to-do list to herself over Slack every evening for the following morning.

Tracer uses a paper checklist as well as Google Calendar to stay on track.

Dave Smith, our front page editor, outlines a plan for the day, including errands, to make sure he stays on schedule.

Be very present over slack, calls, and text - whatever your company uses to communicate. Respond to questions quickly. Schedule meetings with teammates just like you would in the office, ideally over video conference, such as Zoom or a Google hangout.

Over communicate what you're doing and if you're a manager, what you expect from your team.

"I have check-ins with each member of my team at least weekly by video chat (Google Hangout), and we also do our team meeting in a Google Hangout," Tracer says. "Everyone on my team has my cell, and I have theirs, in case we need to get in touch quickly. They all know they can call me at any time and shouldn't hesitate to slack or call if the want to chat something through."

Julie Bort, our chief correspondent, will send a message to her editors every morning with her game plan for the day. If she is spending the day reaching out to sources, for example, she lets them know that so they don't wonder why she hasn't filed a story.

It's the same thing you'd do if you had a doctor's appointment scheduled: give your boss a heads up rather than just not show up for work.

Constant communication builds trust between managers and their reports, which is critical for successful remote working.

Tracer says it well:

"I trust my team to get work done, and this isn't about monitoring where they are all the time. If someone wants to go to a yoga class (or grab a coffee with a friend midday), that's fine, as long as 1) they get their work done and 2) I know where people are, and what resources we have available in case news breaks."

Working remotely can help you focus. There are no chatty coworkers, alluring kitchens, or big meetings to distract you.

You can also make tons of phone calls without needing to book a conference room or worrying you'll bother colleagues.

"I think I can get a lot more done from home," says Tracer. "There are fewer distractions."

In fact, you may find you're so productive that it becomes problematic.

Hayley Peterson, our chief retail correspondent, sets timers to remind herself to stretch her legs .

"One of the hardest things about working from home for me is that it's easy to fall into a routine where I don't take breaks because there are so few distractions, compared to an office full of coworkers," she says.

"In an office, I don't have to think about this as consciously because a quick conversation with a coworker on the way to the kitchen can suffice as a mental refresher. It is really hard to force myself to step away when work is crazy. Even just a 5-minute break goes a long way in preventing burnout."

Each remote worker brought up loneliness as an issue.

Solutions ranged from creating background noise that requires little to no attention - such as a news channel on at low volume, a Spotify playlist, or even a Twitch stream, used by our tech-enthusiast editor Dave Smith.

If you'll be remote for a long time, you might want to consider a pet if you have the time and resources for one. Tracer swears by having his dog as a companion and a perpetual walking-break reminder.

"There's this weird misconception that working from home is the same as not working," Julie Bort says. "But not working means you wouldn't have a job for long."

She's right! You need to be productive no matter where you work, and get results.

Dave Smith agrees. "My work speaks for itself," he says. "Producing tangible results is the best way to let people know you're actually working while remote."