Being productive at home can be a tough job for the best of us, because when returning from our jobs, or after looking after our families and keeping our households running all day (which is productivity in itself), doing more through life-planning, financial management, and charting our future can be tough. This goes twice if you work from home, which does require a certain amount of personal grit to accomplish.
Furthermore, it might be that you have hobbies that you wish to keep up with at home, such as running an online blog, or making content, or practicing an instrument, or designing your renovation plans for the future. With our families around us, our dogs running around the place, and our daily chores to keep on top of, this can seem much less comfortable than it otherwise might.
In this post, we’ll discuss a few ways you can keep up with particular projects at home and also design your space to help you with that. Put these principles and practices into motion, and you’ll hopefully discover a worthwhile way forward:
Consider The Devices You Use To Organize
Some people organize their lives through planner diaries, notebooks, and calendars. That’s totally fine. But of course, most people are starting to leverage the value of devices they have purchased for exactly this purpose, such as smartphones and laptops.
First, it’s important to become familiar with the particular operating system you may be running on your machine. This also includes checking out possible problems and their solutions if you find that you’ve ran into them.
A note-taking app can be the best place to start. Google Keep, Evernote, or another app of your own choosing can help you create notes and keep track of them as necessary. Using a worthwhile software package like this can aid you in listing out all of your checklists, dates, reminders, immediate thoughts you keep track of when out and about, as well as personal information you’d like to use.
It’s also important to make sure that your operating system and the services you use to guide you are secure. You can achieve this by enabling ‘two factor authentication’ in almost all of those devices, which uses a rotating token on another device, like your smartphone, to make logging in a twice-secure process. This way, you don’t have to worry about storing sensitive information as necessary – like your financial information or passwords.
Set Your Own ‘Productivity Space’
It’s good to have a home productivity space you can use to keep on top of your financial affairs. This may involve the use of curating a home office. No matter where you put this, a good desk, an ergonomic chair, and the space in which to think (such as a small side room with an air purifier) can make a big difference compared to trying to keep hold of everything at your kitchen table.
This way, when it’s time to be productive and manage your day to day affairs, you have a routine and most importantly a place to practice that routine as necessary. Giving yourself the space to think, where you can retire to after the school run for thirty minutes, or where you can discuss topics with your spouse at night, can be life-changing. This can also separate your ‘productivity space’ from your ‘home space’ which can help you more easily bridge that divide as necessary when planning the hours of your day.
Keep Track Of Time & Dates
Of course, no task is ever kept to and plans are never followed unless they are properly assigned a time and a date to pursue them. Keeping track of this is important. Using a large calendar, syncing up your calendar with your smartphone and laptop apps, and making sure you have access to it through your home assistant devices can all make a massive difference.
Even if this just means asking the voice assistant on your phone to remind you of certain tasks to complete can be healthy. This way, you know when to focus on things, and perhaps even more importantly than that, when to schedule a break so you can reflect and give yourself some time to recharge.
Embed Essential Home Conveniences
Home conveniences are nice to have, and they can help you when it’s time to wear your ‘productivity cap.’ For instance, having a good coffee maker you can reliably use to give you a fresh cup of energy can be helpful when waking up in the morning and needing to get stuck in. A mug warmer you can plug into a USB socket of your device to keep that warm is the icing on the cake, and can help you take your work at your own pace.
Additionally, peripherals, like wrist rests so you can type comfortably, and a webcam and microphone you can use to work remotely and attend video conferencing meetings are worthwhile investments. Some people decide to opt for even more expensive but worthwhile upgrades, such as a nice standing desk they can use to stand up and get more time on their feet during the day. This all depends on your budget and needs of course, and so identifying what those could be ahead of time may help you save much more money than you had been anticipating.
Invest In Reliability
It’s also worthwhile to make sure your home implements are up and running as necessary. For instance, making sure that your router gives you adequate wi-fi strength and doesn’t suffer downtime can help you make sure that when you do wish to be productive, you have the chance to. Additionally, as digital and refined as you may be during your daily organization efforts, it’s good to make sure you have notebooks, planners and other simple equipment around. This way, you can always jot down ideas and even during offline periods (perhaps due to bad weather), you can keep up on your tasks.
With this advice, we hope you can get the most out of productivity going forward.
Mom on the go in Holy Toledo 