Mark Nichols:

Dur­ing the hard­est times, work­ing remote­ly can feel like a pun­ish­ment. For what, though? Your defec­tion from the norm? Your over­con­fi­dence, maybe — your inabil­i­ty to do some­thing that seems so easy? You sud­den­ly have all these ques­tions and inse­cu­ri­ties keep­ing you up at night. What’s happening? 

Mark’s expe­ri­ence has not been mine in the slight­est. I’ve had the for­tune of work­ing with com­pa­nies that real­ly under­stand remote work­ing. With­out that, you’re left with the inse­cu­ri­ties Mark has expe­ri­enced: feel­ing out of the loop and alone.

I used to think that a com­pa­ny had to be com­plete­ly remote for it to work. How­ev­er, I cur­rent­ly work some­where where only some of us are remote, and it’s been great. But it’s because online com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion has been engrained in the com­pa­ny cul­ture even when you’re work­ing at the office.

My rec­om­men­da­tion is this: if you’re feel­ing out of the loop and alone, you should address those con­cerns with your super­vi­sor. If things don’t get bet­ter, you might need to find a com­pa­ny who wants to put the effort into remote working.