Productivity

What a subject – I know we are all struggling with this right now: Being productive!!!

In the beginning of the quarantine, I invited five friends to talk about productivity. We did lives on Instagram and talked about their best advice to keep themselves motivated to work from home [you can find everything here].

Never in my mind did I think quarantine would last so long. For the first time in my life, I am really struggling to find motivation. After two months at home with very limited human interaction and outside walks, I decided to go back to the five lives and implement the tips from my friends, since my own tactics were not working anymore.

From the 25 tips they provided, I elected five that I practice or/and learned from them. It is funny but even though my friends did not know each other, they often provided similar tips. I guess good habits are the same anywhere in the world.

5 tips to keep yourself productive:

1. Establish a list of things to do

I have incorporated this in my life for many years now. Every night, before I go to bed, I write down five things I want to accomplish the next day. I also have a weekly and monthly goals lists. I struggle a bit more to define the monthly one, but I try my best. This allows me to keep track on my own performance.

2. Time blocks per task

Define blocks of times to do the same task. For example, set two hours to reply to all your emails; three hours to work on assignments; four hours to work on a new project. Instead of trying to reply to emails while working on a project, I have realized that our brains struggles to jump and concentrated from task to task, so blocking times helped me a lot. I was not doing this until one of my friends mentioned it during the lives. It honestly helped me a lot to organize myself and avoid the feeling of being overwhelmed. 

3. Meditate & exercise

These two always come into my list of advice because I honestly believe they are crucial. By the way, all my friends mentioned that during our lives medication and exercise do not come easily. I always try to find excuses to skip them, especially meditation, but I know they help me to keep my sanity. I usually do a quick workout and meditation session in the morning (~ 20min).

4. Define a workspace

I did not think this was so important until I started working from home full-time. I spend, on average, more than 10 hours sitting on a chair in front of my laptop. When I realized that, I tried to break the habit of sitting all the time in same place because I would think I was working even when I was on the phone with friends and family. Today, every time I am chatting and texting friends, I use other spaces in the house (dinning, living room). This helps to set my brain to work mode every time I sit at my desk, instead of wondering for hours.

5. Comprise with people or social media

I found this tip super powerful. For some reason when we talk to someone or post on social media about something we want to do, we become more engaged about accomplishing that little something. We tend to respect our words more. I found it fascinating how the opinions of others can influence us so much to get things done. So, I have started practicing this with friends and teammates on social media. I think it works well and I have seen good improvements.

That is, it! Five tips I found super helpful during quarantine. Of course, we all have less productive days but if we, at least, try to implement certain habits I think things can improve much more overall.

Daniela

Photo by Prateek Katyal & Marvin Meyer & Ohmky on Unsplash