There are many benefits to working from home, but flexibility and convenience are likely the biggest draws for most professionals. While these are just some of the bonuses that a home office promises, the reality is that it can easily create more distractions that kill your flow throughout the day, quickly reducing your productivity. When you’re in your own space with many distractions at hand, even for a Productivity Ninja, maximized productivity can be difficult to achieve. Fortunately, there are many tech tools out there that can help you turn your home office into a productivity source.
Feria Kazemi from Broadband Genie explores some tips and great tech tools to help you set up a great home office.
Prioritize your tasks for the day
As any time management training will show, prioritizing your tasks is a great way to start your day off on the right foot. Create an agenda and a task list for your day of all the things that you plan to complete. Having an agenda and task-list for the things you want to accomplish that day are key tools to get your morning off to a productive start.
If you’re looking for an app to help you keep track of your time during the day, try 30/30. This app allows you to allocate and assign times to your tasks, nudging you to move on to the next task when your time is up.
Take back control of your inbox
With emails pinging in at all hours of the day, they’re a quick and easy distraction. The average adult receives so many emails daily that it is very easy to get overwhelmed with inbox overload. While it might seem like proper email etiquette to respond to your emails as they come in, this can be a killer for your productivity.
Instead, allocate a time to read and respond to emails. The right time will vary for every individual, but setting up a time to read and reply to emails will allow you to focus on the other tasks you want to accomplish throughout the day without distractions. Apps like Spark and Outlook can help you filter through the clutter and get your inbox organized and back to zero in no time.
Manage your meetings
Everyone has an opinion on meetings. For some, meetings are a great opportunity for collaboration and accomplishing tasks, but for others, meetings do nothing more than suck valuable time from your already busy day. Managing your meetings can help you prevent that, while helping maximize their potential and strengthening your own meeting skills.
Schedule your meetings for convenient times. Avoid scattering multiple meetings throughout the day. Instead, schedule your meetings in blocks within your day to maximize your time.
Having an agenda for your meetings can also help you stay on track and on task to get things accomplished. Using a calendar app like Fantastical 2 or Google Calendar is a great way to keep track of all your meetings as well as organize your task list within it.
What other tools do you use to make sure your productivity doesn’t suffer from not being in a “normal” office environment? Let us know @thinkproductive
By Feria Kazemi