The Non-Obvious Guide to Working Remotely (Being Productive Without Getting Distracted, Lonely or Bored)

by Rohit Bhargava

An all new updated 2021 edition of the popular original guide to working from home and adjusting to virtual work featuring the best tips and advice from more than 50 top experts. Most books on remote work repeat the same tired advice about being productive while wearing sweatpants. The advice in this book is different. Award winning author Rohit Bhargava reveals the secrets of remote work by curating advice from the experts. In this book, you’ll Most guides to virtual work pretend like it is better than being face-to-face. It usually isn’t. But in today’s business world, there are many reasons you need to work remotely or do virtual meetings, from taking parental leave to navigating a global health pandemic. In this short guide featuring a compilation of the best advice and insights from more than 50 experts from dozens of industries, you will learn the keys to being effective from afar. Whether you need to deliver a presentation to a virtual audience or collaborate with a global team, this handy guide will help you be more productive when you can't be there in person. This is not a book that will convince you that you need to work remotely every day or that you should go to a Caribbean island and become a digital nomad. It’s a guide for anyone forced to work remotely, stuck on too many Zoom calls, and looking for quick actionable advice on how to shift the way they work to get more done every day.

Genres: Nonfiction

204 pages, Hardcover

Published June 22, 2021

About the author

Rohit Bhargava is a leading authority on marketing, trends and innovation. He is the founder of the Non-Obvious Company and is widely considered one of the most entertaining and original keynote speakers on marketing disruption and innovation in the world. He is the #1 WSJ and USA TODAY bestselling author of eight books on topics as wide ranging as the future of business, building a human brand with personality, and how to create a more diverse and inclusive world. Rohit is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and writes a monthly column for GQ Brazil. He is married and lives with his wife and two boys in the Washington DC area, loves the Olympics and actively hates cauliflower.

Reviews

[Lisa Gemert · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some helpful tips in the book for those of us who work (or facilitate) remotely.

Oddly, for a book called "non-obvious guide" the tips were, well, obvious.

Because it's crowd-sourced, there are some conflicting pieces of advice (dress nice! wear pajamas!).

The biggest takeaways for me were:
- absolutely fabulous ideas for book layout
- using more props in online training
- taking some time to get to know the platforms I'm using so I can do more interactive stuff

Those things made it worth reading for me.

[Carla Fair-wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

engaging without being formulaic

Lots of good useful takeaways. Best of all the information is provided in a way to make it actionable immediately.

[Taher · Rating 4 out of 5]

It touched my heart deeply, as a remote worker for years!

I'm working remotely for approx. 6 years (2 full remotely due to COVID-19 and 4 partially remotely) I found this book very helpful.
Actually the first two chapters has touched my heart deeply! especially I was reading it during a severe work-burnout that I had!
It also came in the same format of Non-Obvious: concise, easy to read/skim, and advice are based on number-lists (eg 5 ways to do that...). However I felt the later chapters are not written with the same enthusiasm that in the first chapters.
Thanks Rohit Bhargava for this book

[Ren Morton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is really short, and provides great pointers on virtual meetings and hosting virtual events. The real treasure trove of the books is all the authors he references and getting connected to the non-obvious company with all their resources. Then they connect you to nonobviousdiversity.com which has a list of over 200 speakers from all industries on the topic that can be used if you’re planning an event.

Highly recommend if you need some quick tips, downloadable resources, and video resources.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a good read, and I got a handful of great concepts to start brainstorming and implementing. Received helpful direction on team accountability that I will be addressing next week with my team. Four stars because I wish it went a tiny bit deeper by providing more specific examples, but overall it was direct and relevant to post pandemic WFH changes.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

If any book is needed in 2021, this is it. I thought that I was getting pretty good at working remotely, but this book elevated my game. I cannot tell you how much I loved the way it was organized and designed…in small, attractive bits that made all of the excellent information easier to remember.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful enough

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really useful book. Minus a star for editing/formatting errors.