We all have a tendency to romanticize working from home. Setting your own hours, time to work on pet projects, and freedom from prying eyes and casual conversations are just a few of the advantages. But don't let the romantic notion of working for eight hours a day in peace fool you.
While working from home affords you a reprieve from chatty co-workers and bosses who need "just a minute of your time," you are also exposed to a whole other set of disruptions to your workflow. Videoconferences, emails and chat windows pop up with a sense of urgency that does not come with an office setting.
Based on my experience, here are some tools, best practices and tips that will increase your efficiency, augment your memory and help you prioritize your work.
Best Practices And Tips To Enhance Productivity
Time is our most important commodity, and in order to save as much of it as possible, productivity is critical. If you examine where most of your time is spent, it's typically meeting with others and responding to emails. I always question whether a meeting is necessary in a given situation. Do I need a meeting, or can I communicate via text? I also ask if I need to do anything at all.
If a meeting is required, being able to see other people while communicating helps to ensure everyone is engaged and ensures clarity of understanding action items. Allowing people to book your calendar directly through scheduling tools and securing a platform for online meetings cuts down on unnecessary email.
Below are some incredible tools to further boost productivity that I've found useful.
Tools To Increase Your Efficiency
• Flycut: Do you copy and paste a lot using keyboard shortcuts only to realize that you needed that text that you copied three times prior? Flycut is a clipboard manager that allows you to cut or copy multiple chunks of text and retrieve them at a later date. It allows you to access everything from web addresses to large pieces of code with a few clicks or a hotkey. The most attractive feature is its interface with Dropbox.
• CloudApp: From app development to sales, screen sharing is vital in today's workforce. What was once done by walking to another person's computer or sitting side by side with another person can now be done via screen sharing. By combining the ability to record via webcam with screen-sharing capability, you can successfully present your products, services, findings or problems to clients, work teams, customer service or key decision-makers without having to leave the app. Why type a lengthy email when you can explain your process in a one-minute screenshot?
• Chrome URL Shortcuts: Everyone has websites they go to frequently, but who wants to have to click around in their history, search for a bookmark or try to remember the URL? A little-known secret is that in Chrome, you can set shortcuts for your frequently used websites. You can add short keystrokes for those long URLs in Chrome.
• Typinator: If you type the same thing frequently, such as a website URL or your Zoom or other conferencing link, or if you frequently write the same email, you can set an abbreviation and then the text you want the abbreviation to expand into. I used it the other day and wrote 25 emails in about 30 minutes.
We all love productivity hacks, and these are some great ones to make you more productive during these unprecedented times.
