Four Best Practices to Raise Productivity in 2023!

For many of us a hybrid work experience is emerging, and this can obscure the dividing line between work and personal life.?Working from both the office and from home has great benefits but it is??time to explore new ways to experience the upsides that come with new work patterns. From booking focus time to taking breaks between meetings, we picked the most popular productivity tips used that we use with Microsoft 365 Tools. Here are our top four work habits to try in 2023:

?1.??????Dark Mode. ??Spending many hours staring at a screen with white light causes eyestrain.?Decreasing visual fatigue and reducing battery?usage?are some of the benefits that Dark Mode offers us in services and applications such as Microsoft 365. According to a study by?XDA Developers, when using Dark Mode, it is possible to reduce up to a 63% battery consumption.?The dark theme changes the default bright background color in?Microsoft 365?to a darker color, this theme helps protect the eyes in low light environments or if the user prefers to work on less bright interfaces.?

2. Dictate. For people on the go or who can think and talk faster than they can type, you can dictate content in several of the Office applications in Microsoft 365.?Click on the microphone icon?and start talking in Word, PowerPoint, Teams chat, and new emails created within Outlook.

3. Book focus time. We’ve all experienced days of back-to-back meetings and constant interruptions when it is hard to find a moment to focus on getting work done. Some people even?report spending 80 percent of their days collaborating, and research has shown it can take over 20 minutes to refocus after checking one email. These constant distractions can increase stress and lower productivity. Rather than trying to cram work into the small pockets of time you have between meetings, block your calendar for a few hours every day for focus time to get work done without distractions. You can even find and schedule focus time automatically in Microsoft Teams & Outlook with?Microsoft Viva Insights, which helps to minimize notifications from Teams chats and calls during these blocks.

4. Shorten Calendar Appointments and Breaks. With?55 percent more meetings on calendars each week?than before the pandemic, it’s no surprise that back-to-back meetings increase stress as well as decrease your ability to focus. The solution,?take short breaks. Just five minutes can allow our brains to “reset” and reduce meeting fatigue. This helps boost our attention and engagement for the next task at hand. So, while it may seem counterproductive, taking breaks is essential for productivity.??