Interview with Walo Olapoju about working remotely

Check out how Walo Olapoju 👋, Copywriter at a remote recruitment agency, makes remote work, work for him.

remotewx

3 min readApr 9, 2021

Walo, where are you based out of?

I live in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria.

Can you tell us more about your job?

I’m a part-time copywriter at (arguably the most amazing remote recruitment agency in the world), Athyna.

Do you have a dedicated space to work?

Yep! I’ve developed a workspace at home.

What does your typical workday look like?

My workday is pretty weird, actually. I split my work hours into segments, based on what I have to do. Here goes:

Once I wake up, I make sure to have an awesome morning. I drink water, make my bed, do some exercises, shower, and read or listen to a podcast.
Once that’s done, I check my messages on Slack, and then I work on my podcast, music, or blog for 2–3 hours, and do some coursework on Coursera or Udemy. Then I rest a bit, and begin a work sprint for 90 minutes, mostly researching and short copywriting. Then, I scroll through social media. Afterwards go to sleep, and wake up after 4 hours. Once I wake up, I work for 2.5 hours, totalling 4 hours of work per day. Then I go back to sleep, haha.

What tools do you use to stay productive?

Google Calendar is my best friend at work. I set up reminders, tasks and goals to make sure I’m doing my best with my time.

And I use TopTracker to track my work hours.

These are psychological tweaks, but they help as well:

I have a stubborn routine.

I regularly study myself and work on improving my productivity, because I’m not a machine. I mess up.

I also have a creative space I go to recharge when I’m feeling stressed, or need to think.

Working remotely means being super responsible, honestly. When I first started, it was more work than I thought it would be, because I had to be responsible for my choices.

I found that I could be more productive by not relying only on my willpower. I created structure that mimics a workplace (but still gives me freedom), so that I can do my best work for Athyna.

What is your current workspace setup?

I have a laptop, supported by a laptop stand, a wireless keyboard and mouse with a mouse pad, hordes of notepads with sticky notes and pens, an ergonomic chair, a nice table with drawers, and a speaker for calls and ambient music. Once I have a snakeplant and desklights, I’m basically Richard Branson, haha.