Working from home sounds like a dream. No commute. No open office drama. No one is heating up fish in the breakroom microwave. But if you’re doing it from a house tucked into the woods or miles past the last decent gas station, the fantasy can wear thin fast.
The Internet’s spotty. Deliveries go missing. Your neighbor’s donkey is braying during Zoom calls. And yet—there’s something deeply good about doing work in a place that doesn’t smell like subway steam or burnt espresso shots. You just need a strategy that doesn’t treat rural life like a problem to fix.
Here’s how to hold onto your sanity, productivity, and maybe even your love for where you live while working remotely out in the wilds.
Internet: The Non-Negotiable
Living rurally forces you to get real about the internet like it’s 1999 and you’re trying to dial-up into civilization. Because everything—email, meetings, file uploads, even your paycheck—depends on a solid connection. If your current setup has you toggling between two bars and a prayer, it’s time to get serious.
Call your provider and be aggressive about upgrades. Don’t take the first “sorry, that’s all we offer” at face value. Ask about directional antennas, bonded DSL, satellite options, even cellular boosters. Sometimes what they don’t advertise will surprise you. Starlink isn’t perfect, but it’s made life a lot easier for people who used to refresh Gmail like it was a slot machine.
And here’s the thing: you don’t need blazing-fast city internet. You just need stable, reliable speed. Ask yourself how much bandwidth do you need, and build from there. Don’t overpay, but don’t cheap out either. Lagging during a client call is more than annoying—it’s a credibility problem.
Create A Zone, Not An Office
You can’t always build out a polished office with a glass wall and ergonomic dreams, especially if your home has six windows total and none of them face north. But you can carve out a space that tells your brain, “we’re at work now.” That’s the trick.
It could be the end of your kitchen table with a proper chair, a small desk in the spare bedroom, or a corner in your barn if that’s what’s available. What matters is consistency. Don’t roam the house like a Wi-Fi-seeking ghost. Pick a spot and commit to it, even if you share the room with your great-grandma’s treadmill.
Lighting helps. So does a real monitor. Noise-canceling headphones? Life-changing. Not just for drowning out cows or construction, but for creating that mental bubble we all need to get things done.
And boundaries matter more out here. When your personal space bleeds into your work day, it gets hard to shut anything off. Set a clear start and stop time, even if nobody’s watching. The point isn’t to prove you’re busy. It’s to give your brain a way to come down from the work cliff at the end of the day.
Handle The Weird Stuff Before It Hits
Rural living means a random deer might smash into your garage door. Your power might go out because a squirrel messed with a transformer. You might lose cell service on Tuesdays for no discernible reason. Accept the chaos and plan for it.
Keep a backup power source. A decent battery pack or generator isn’t overkill—it’s smart. Especially when your house also relies on a well pump or electric heat. If your internet relies on your power, protect both.
Shipping and receiving are another beast entirely. If UPS can’t find your house, or if you’ve had a package stolen by raccoons (don’t laugh, it happens), consider a PO box or ship to your partner’s job in town. And label everything. Write delivery instructions that assume the driver is on autopilot and barely awake. Because they probably are.
These aren’t glamorous things to think about, but they’re the exact reasons rural remote workers either succeed long-term or throw in the towel. You’ve got to get ahead of your environment or it will mess with you when you least expect it.
Stay Social Without Driving 40 Miles
Working remotely is isolating. Living rurally? Even more so. You can start to feel like the only adult for miles unless you do something about it.
Use video calls to connect, but make them count. Not every meeting needs to be on camera, but a few regular face-to-face convos help. Even if they’re just chats with a coworker to complain about shared headaches. Human contact matters. Don’t be weird about needing it.
Look into local meetups, coworking days at the library, or just having coffee with a friend who also works weird hours. And if that’s not an option, schedule short trips into town. Pick a coffee shop with good Wi-Fi and make it your satellite office once a week.
Living rurally can make you more intentional about your relationships. You stop wasting time on work friends who were never really friends. And when you do connect, you actually feel it. That’s part of what makes this life work. The goal isn’t isolation—it’s a balanced and connected lifestyle. You just have to make the effort count more because your environment isn’t doing it for you.
Let Nature Help Instead Of Hurt
One of the biggest perks of rural living is right outside your door. But you won’t benefit from it if you’re chained to your laptop for ten straight hours while sunlight fades outside and your dog stares at you like you’re the worst.
Take real breaks. Walk down your long gravel driveway. Sit on the porch and stare at nothing. Let your eyes rest from screens and your brain rest from Slack pings. It’s not lazy. It’s smart.
You have something most remote workers in city apartments would kill for: space. Use it. Fresh air changes your headspace. So does touching grass—literally. That’s not internet advice. That’s biology. Your nervous system calms down when it’s not in fight-or-scroll mode all day.
And while you’re at it, ditch the guilt about taking an hour to eat lunch on your deck or watering your plants during a break. These aren’t distractions. They’re what keep you sane. You don’t need to perform your productivity. You just need to keep it steady.
Staying Human In The Middle Of Nowhere
Working from a remote part of the world doesn’t have to mean giving up on professional ambition or adult-level sanity. But you’ll need to shape your routine around reality, not some Pinterest version of country life. That means tackling tech, setting space boundaries, prepping for the weird, getting your social fix on purpose, and leaning hard into the things you actually have that most people don’t.
If you’re willing to treat rural life like an asset instead of a disadvantage, you’ll start to realize something: you’re not cut off from the world—you’re just doing it differently. And in many ways, better.
