At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the corporate world was thrown into a whole new working arrangement as the stay-at-home order was put in place. Many businesses were forced to adapt to remote working and encouraged their employees to work from home. While this was possible for most businesses, some didn’t have what it takes to migrate fully to remote working. Therefore, they resorted to adopting a mix of both models in what is commonly referred to as a hybrid work model. This guide will discuss the pros and cons of hybrid working and how businesses can adapt to it.

What Is a Hybrid Workplace? 

A hybrid workplace typically combines remote and in-office work. If this work model is done right, employees are as productive as when they are working from the office. For a hybrid model to be effective, employees must be able to flip seamlessly between the two modes of work — spending a few days at home and going to the office when needed. The switch between work models should be seamless without any dip in productivity. 

Generally, a hybrid workplace model offers employees the ability to determine on their own when to work remotely and when to work at the office. Different teams come in at different times of the week and alternately with those working remotely. In this work model, determining who works remotely and in-office is fueled by what drives the highest levels of engagement and productivity.   

Hybrid Work Environment Best Practices 

A hybrid work model is only effective when implemented properly. This means it requires some practices that will bring the best out of it. One of the most crucial practices for a hybrid work model is embracing digital transformation. The remote working part of a hybrid model cannot survive without automating and digitizing operations. This model needs sufficient technology and automation to support work-from-home operations. Employees working remotely need to convey information to their office-based counterparts in a timely and safe manner — this requires advanced technology and a support system. 

Another best practice is investing in communication. Communication must be in place for a hybrid workplace model to run efficiently. The seamless flow of information and ideas is crucial for maintaining productivity and ensuring smooth operations. Hence, it is paramount for businesses to allocate resources towards robust collaboration platforms and cutting-edge technologies that can effortlessly facilitate communication among team members, regardless of their physical location or work schedule.

In order to ensure the seamless operation of the hybrid workplace model, it is imperative for employers to establish a set of well-defined ground rules. These guidelines play a critical role in shaping the success of this model by providing clear and concise instructions that employees can rely on when carrying out their roles and responsibilities. By setting these boundaries, employers create a structured framework that promotes productivity, collaboration, and accountability in the digital workplace. This not only enhances overall efficiency but also fosters an environment of trust and transparency within the organization.

Benefits of the Hybrid Work Model 

The pros and cons of hybrid working depict a model that can be quite profitable when implemented properly and quite frustrating when applied in the wrong manner and setting. Here are some of the benefits of a hybrid work model:

Flexible Work Environment 

A hybrid model creates a flexible work environment. Employees can work from home or in-office, depending on their preferences. Besides, they will have a better work-life balance that makes them comfortable and more productive. They will not spend a lot of time commuting to and from work, which means they will be more enthusiastic and refreshed. Such an attitude is highly profitable for the company as employees will focus more on their roles. 

Flexibility benefits employees going through situations that could prevent them from working in the office. For example, employees with childcare responsibilities who would normally completely stay off work can work from home while they care for their children. In this context, a hybrid work model allows employees to address their personal issues and helps maximize productivity. A good company culture based on customer satisfaction could also be a product of this work model. 

Improved Mental Health for Employees 

Mental health is vital in determining employee productivity and efficiency. Employees will have different factors that affect their mental health, and a hybrid model helps manage these factors. For example, an employee could have challenges due to tiredness and lack of sleep, but they still prefer working in-office as it enhances social interactions and creates companionship. A hybrid work model helps such employees balance their schedule into in-office work and remote working, depending on their mental health. They can navigate challenging times by simply switching to an option that works best at that particular time. Of course, all this should be done with company policy in mind and shouldn’t impact their roles whatsoever. 

Increased Productivity 

You cannot talk about the pros and cons of hybrid working without mentioning increased productivity. A hybrid work model can increase employee productivity due to various reasons. For instance, employees will have the option to choose their work location depending on their preferences. When working from home, they don’t have to spend time commuting. This will give them more time to work on their tasks, increasing productivity. Besides, employers can monitor their progress through the employee time tracking system. This ensures the employee is still productive even when working from home. Employees can still come into the office when in-person collaboration is required. A mix of both models will go a long way in increasing productivity. 

Lower Operational Costs for the Company 

A company will have reduced operational costs due, thanks to a hybrid work model. This happens on many fronts. For example, fewer people will work from the office in a hybrid model. Therefore, things like heating and electricity bills will reduce as their usage will drop. Even basic things like drinks and communal snacks at the office will reduce, saving the business some money. Besides, if the business rents office space, it might consider downsizing when parts of its staff are working from home. This will significantly reduce operational costs. 

Disadvantages of the Hybrid Work Model 

Here are some disadvantages of the hybrid work model:

Difficulties in Team Building and Collaboration 

It is challenging for employees to build a working relationship in a hybrid work model. When employees work from the office, they interact with their colleagues and work as a team. This might not be the case with a hybrid work model, as employees are isolated. They might not interact with each other in person, hence difficulties in team building may arise. This could negatively impact company productivity. 

Increased Security Risks 

Given that digitization is a fundamental part of the hybrid work model, cyber-attacks and other threats are likely to occur. Communicating from different and changing locations puts data security at risk. This is why companies secure their digital assets through enhanced data security. Hackers can easily prey on sensitive company data and cause devastating damage. Therefore, there is an active risk to data safety that companies must mitigate in the hybrid work model. 

Employee Burnout 

When the hybrid work model is left unchecked or unsupervised, it can easily result in employee burnout. Some employees find it challenging to set boundaries when working from home and could easily overwork themselves. The temptation to work late into the night could disrupt their sleep schedule and affect productivity.

Conclusion 

The pros and cons of hybrid working show that the model can be beneficial when implemented properly, albeit with some setbacks. Businesses looking to adopt a hybrid work model should assess their ability and implement policies that support it. By doing so, they stand a good chance of benefiting immensely. 

Business performance is an essential metric to monitor in terms of company success. When your team’s work performance is lacking, it shows in your overall results. Conversely, if your team is functioning at peak work performance, you’ll likely see higher quality results and happier clients. So, how do you improve the team and individual work performance? Read on to discover the answer and learn how to improve work performance. 

Improving Work Performance 

Fortunately, there are plenty of strategies for improving work performance that you can implement in your workplace. Below are nine ways to improve work performance for both individuals and entire teams.  

Set Goals 

The first step in improving work performance is to set definitive goals. These may be daily individual goals, weekly team goals, or quarterly company goals. Discuss with your team what you would like to accomplish and the steps you will need to take to achieve those goals by a certain deadline. Establish SMART goals that are adaptable and achievable.  

Define Clear Expectations 

There are certain expectations that come with each role in the company, but it can be beneficial to clearly define what those are and how your team can reach them. Giving clear direction can help each individual on your team understand their role in the company and how their hard work plays a part in the big picture.  

Plan and Organize 

As a team, take some time each day to plan out what the day will look like. Ask each team member what they intend to get done for the day and check in as the day progresses. Keep expectations in mind as your team creates a plan for how they’ll tackle the day and make progress toward their individual and team goals.  

Eliminate Distractions 

Often, work performance is hindered by distractions. This could be caused by a lack of prioritization or external sources like office noise and an overabundance of meetings. Do what you can to eliminate distractions, such as creating office quiet hours.  

Avoid Multitasking 

As much as we’d all like to believe we can multitask, the reality is that multitasking doesn’t work. More times than not, you’ll end up dividing your attention between too many tasks instead of giving your full time and attention to one task at a time. Instead of attempting to manage multiple tasks at once, create a to-do list and work through each one individually until it is complete.  

Automate Workflows 

Human error is inevitable, but it can bring work performance down. Luckily, there is a technological solution for reducing human error, especially when it comes to repetitive tasks. Automating your workflows with a No-Code development platform can improve your work performance and overall team productivity.  

Improve Collaboration 

By improving company collaboration, you can improve work performance. When your team members are able to better communicate with one another and share information easily, productivity can increase. By investing in an enterprise collaboration platform, your team will be able to efficiently collaborate across applications with ease.  

Know Limitations 

There’s only so much work that individuals can get to in a day. Knowing individual and team capacity is essential for work performance. If your team members try to take on more work than they can manage, it can lead to an increase in errors or lower quality work. Keep in mind that learning your team’s capacity may have to occur through trial and error, so you’ll need to be understanding and flexible with adjusting workloads as needed.  

Take Breaks 

Taking breaks throughout the day can help employees avoid burnout. Though it can be easy to get caught up in your work and forget to take breaks, we tend to make more mistakes when we focus too much time on one task or project. Encourage your team members to take breaks throughout the day and come back to their work with fresh eyes. They’ll have an easier time catching mistakes and improving their overall work performance.  

Improve Work Performance with Comidor 

Hyper-automation is a key method of improving your company’s work performance and reducing costly errors. With Comidor Hyper-automation and No-Code development platform, you’ll have all the tools you’ll need to automate your workflows and increase collaboration. Watch your company results improve over time using Comidor.  

Contact Comidor today to learn more about how our technology can improve your work performance!  

* Featured image: SFIO CRACHO/Stock.adobe.com

We’ve all read articles on how to improve productivity within ourselves and the rest of the teams we’re working with, but while these generic tactics can work, few take into account the power that automation solutions can bring. Sounds confusing? It is basically about the process of automating and streamlining business processes so that no human intervention is needed, and you don’t even need to think about them.

Is there any better way to be more productive than literally allowing you not to do the task at all?

By automating aspects of your business, you’re bringing about so many benefits like keeping your employees on the same page, reducing the risk of a mistake or accident taking place, and making sure your resources are managed as optimally as possible. But how?

This guide is all about exploring some of the exciting and essential ways you can use automation to boost productivity within your business, especially in some of the ways you may not have thought of yet.

1. Improve Compliance in Regulated Industries

While it’s true that everyone makes mistakes and bad things can happen, one of the most significant considerations that most modern-day businesses have is making sure they’re compliant with the rules and regulations of the country and state they’re operating in. This can be hard to keep up with, since there’s so much to remember, and this can cause employees to become very unproductive when trying to keep up with it all.

This is especially important when it comes to highly regulated industries like finance and healthcare, where people must be on the top of their game since even minor mistakes can have massive consequences.

That is until you introduce automation.

While human intelligence still dominates complicated decision-making, advanced automation technologies, such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are significantly more successful at executing monotonous, repetitive activities and creating and collecting correct data.

Employees can feel certain that the right data is being generated and collected at the right time using workflow automation solutions, which they can then use to improve strategic decision-making.

2. Reduce administrative work

How quickly do your business and your teamwork go through the repetitive and tedious administration tasks that your business just has to do to ensure you’re working smoothly? Administrative tasks are the bane of most businesses because they get in the way of carrying out the creative or essential work that actually helps your business grow.

Take into consideration the paperwork, the data collection, the phone calls, the communication with clients and customers, and filing. Imagine being able to cut out these tasks, or at least make them as effortless as possible, so you free up your employees to work on the more important aspects of your business? Well, you can.

Nothing stifles productivity and decreases staff morale like tedious repetition and menial duties that automation software can easily handle.

As Lauren Groff, a professional content writer at Essay For Sale says: “There’s no doubting that repeated jobs kill productivity, whether it’s your marketers answering the same queries on social media or your HR specialists doing the same paperwork over and over again”.

Fortunately, every department may now discover automation software that will automate or outsource monotonous chores to a clever computer, freeing up your employees to focus on more complicated, hard duties. Automating administrative tasks in specific industries can substantially improve productivity. For businesses dealing with a high volume of customer transactions, incorporating windows invoicing software for automating the estimating and invoicing process can significantly speed up operations, allowing employees to focus on more critical tasks rather than getting bogged down by paperwork.

This will not only help you increase productivity, but it will also make your employees happier.

 

3. Maximize Workplace Safety

From slips and falls to major injuries to intangible hazards like cybersecurity threats and data breaches, there is no way of knowing what can happen in the workplace that could cause business interruption.

To mitigate these risks, you should implement rigorous workplace security policies and invest in employee education about the protection of business, customer, and employee data.

However, just having a good policy, organization, and personnel training aren’t enough to reduce long-term liabilities and hazards. You need proactive solutions that help to make following these essential practices as effortlessly as possible, so much so the employee doesn’t even need to think.

Automating certain security processes is an excellent method to remove the human risk factor from the equation.

In manufacturing, this could mean investing in automation software to take over dangerous jobs on the shop floor, while in a digital agency, it means ensuring safety and security online with cloud-based firewalls. You can use automation to keep your employees, clients, and sensitive business data safe no matter what industry you’re in.

4. Improve internal communication

When it comes to managing new and seasoned staff, you can’t expect to run a successful business solely through email communication, nor can you plan everything using your Google Calendar.

If you try to manage your staff manually during these difficult times, you’ll rapidly discover that you’re wasting valuable resources and that your company’s productivity is declining.

This is why you should use enterprise collaboration software to create a digital workplace and get a complete picture of your employee resources and workflow. This software should allow you to quickly create work schedules, use micro-scheduling to fine-tune your processes, and use process templates to automate the employee management process.

Scheduling and automation software not only helps you run a more effective operation overall, but it also helps you reduce risk, waste, and staff turnover.

5. Increase Transparency in the Workplace

With the increase of automated reporting methods, the game is changing when it comes to transparency in the workplace. Business transparency is achieved when people within a business knowing exactly where they are and what they’re doing.

For example, in the past, you may be working on a project with a strict budget. You may go out and purchase something, unaware that someone else in your team is investing in something else. This means the wires are crossed, and more budget than you intended has been spent. However, with automated reporting, financial accounts are updated automatically and in real-time, so this never has to be an issue.

This applies to all areas of business, with team members being given status updates on projects when work is handed in or submitted, when goals are met, and when deadlines are approaching. In short, automation keeps everyone on the same page and working together, regardless of where they are in the world.

How Automation helps businesses across different industries boost Employee Productivity

Let’s now go a step further and analyze how automation can benefit businesses across different industries that are seeking to improve internal processes, increase productivity and move towards digital transformation.

Automation in Customer Service

We all have experienced at least one in our lives long wait times. Without any doubt, this negative fact may impact the customer service experience and lead to customers who will never return back to your business.

To avoid this from happening again, your business should consider automation solutions.

When the workload of customer service departments is extremely high, and employees are busy trying to solve multiple issues and handle numerous support tickets simultaneously, automation gives the right solution to businesses to solve all these unexpected troubles of customer service.

Automation plays a significant role in building a proper ticket routing system and managing efficiently all the complex customer requests. With the use of the right technologies, like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, support tickets are generated automatically, when no additional assistance offered by a chatbot is available. These tickets are assigned to the responsible department or user based on the topic and the importance of the issue. By building a routing workflow, wait times are eliminated, thus delivering an exceptional customer experience.

What’s more, it is of paramount importance, businesses that have to handle thousands of emails and phone calls every day, to consider investing in an automation solution that will boost employee productivity. A leading logistics service provider, and client of ours, needed remote process automation and workflow management tool to manage all the customer support processes, monitor the information flow across the company’s departments, and enhance collaboration. The solution, provided by Comidor was a cloud-based process automation platform with built-in communication functionalities.

Automation in Accounting

Automation can unlock the full potential of the accounting industry, transform it and make financial professionals and accountants more efficient and productive. One of the biggest challenges that financial businesses face is data management since they have to gather and analyze huge amounts of data every day. Here comes the automation.

Automation aims to make accounting processes completion simpler and allow professionals to focus on more strategic tasks that result in overall business productivity and prosperity. Automation platforms do the hard work like searching for certain information in large files, transferring data from third-party systems, generating documents, and creating valuable reports. With the help of advanced technologies, like RPA, businesses can create reports in a matter of minutes, at a low cost without human intervention. What’s more, the report generation process can run on a scheduled predefined time period. Imagine that you are a financial manager and you are coming to your office where all the reports necessary to make decisions are waiting for you on your desk. Is it pretty interesting, isn’t it?

This way, you don’t have to manually enter, copy and transcribe data in endless Excel files, anymore. Data from different systems are processed and the automation platform automatically generates and sends via email the financial reports to all the responsible members.

Could you imagine the benefits of this process transformation? Here are only a few of them to take an idea of how automation can boost the productivity of businesses and teams.

• Save you time
• Eliminate human errors
• Keep all important information in one place
• Achieve process transparency
• Improve data accuracy

Automation in Manufacturing

With the ever-growing need for faster production and excellent and high-quality end products, manufacturing companies are constantly trying to find the best solutions and tools to accelerate the production process and optimize their operations. Manufacturers are seeking digital transformation approaches to managing all related processes from supply chain management to production and delivery to end-user.

As years go by, more and more manufacturing companies rely on automation to reduce downtime, decrease operational costs and finally boost productivity.

The following case study demonstrates exactly how an industrial manufacturing company achieved employee productivity through automation.

With the ultimate scope to digitalize 4 core manufacturing processes related to maintenance, control, and repair of factory services, the company was searching for an easy-to-use automation platform, that would offer a central point of information, advanced analytics, and reporting features, and would ensure full visibility over processes and bottlenecks identification. The solution provided by Comidor was to automate all the previously manually executed processes, build 4 Low-Code applications linked to each process, and offer a central point of data. At the same time, new optimization opportunities arose, like the replacement of manual tasks with bots for document creation and integration with third-party systems for data manipulation.

Manufacturing companies use advanced technologies like Predictive AI, to predict and estimate customers’ future needs at times of peak demand. With AI implementation into automation, manufacturers minimize operational costs, produce optimal solutions on time and achieve a higher customer experience. On the other hand, IoT tools ensure that manufacturing plants comply with all the necessary regulations and safety rules set by the government. Connected sensors and wearable devices monitor the employees’ equipment and notify them about any potential risks and dangers.

Automation in Pharma

Nowadays, automation is also visible throughout the pharmaceutical sector. It is quite clear that the pharma industry is under pressure more now than ever before. Low-Code and RPA technologies are used by pharma companies to automate manual, inefficient processes like invoice approval and payment run processes. Especially the use of robot software to replace repetitive, manual, and time-consuming tasks is more evident now than ever before. According to a report, the global pharmaceutical robots market is estimated to reach USD 222.40 million by end of 2026. Considering the huge impact of RPA in pharma, it is imperative to go deeper into the benefits of automation in pharma, in general.

As mentioned before, some of the major needs of pharmaceutical companies are to streamline processes, control, and ensure compliance, mitigate errors and financial risks, approve automatically documents like invoices, verify the contact details of customers, and so on.

What is the role of automation in solving these business challenges?

Automation solutions offer functionalities that speed up any process and thus boost employee productivity. By incorporating RPA, processes are fully automated, data is retrieved, synchronized, and verified automatically. Therefore, data accuracy and transparency are achieved, while real-time reporting features allow businesses to have full traceability of business progress and find optimization opportunities.

Collaboration tools are an essential part of any digital workplace. It helps people to work together, share information, and make decisions. It’s an undeniable fact that the more organized and transparent the communication between colleagues is, the more productive an enterprise becomes. Many times, people from different departments need to cooperate in order to complete successfully a project. If all of them are not informed of all the processes that are running, then the project may be a disaster.

To avoid this kind of issue, organizations use collaboration tools. There are many types of collaboration tools, depending on the operational goal and the core operational processes that need to be automated.

Introduction: What is a Collaboration Tool?

Collaboration tools started as simply team chat rooms but they have become essential because of their powerful features such as task management, video conferencing, time tracking, etc.

Besides the different types of collaboration tools, all of them fall under one general definition: A collaboration tool is a software that facilitates the sharing of information between team members or within a company. These tools can be used for a number of purposes such as managing projects, online meetings, document sharing, etc.

Collaboration tools have a variety of applications. For example, in the workplace, they are used to communicating with co-workers while collaborating on a project. In education, they are used to share lesson plans with teachers and students. In healthcare, they are used by doctors to collaborate with other doctors remotely.

Which are the types of collaboration tools?

 1. Instant Messaging

Companies use instant messaging software to improve communication between their staff members who may be located in different departments, places, or even countries. Instant Messaging is faster and easier than emails and phone calls. It’s a time-saving way to ask simple questions, propose ideas or even conduct live polls.

2. Document Management System (DMS) 

With document management systems businesses scale team productivity. Through A DMS you can create, upload, store and share your files with everyone. Knowledge flows freely and safely in the organization, enhancing teambuilding, brainstorming among teams, and teamwork performance.

3. Video Conferencing 

Video conferencing is the collaboration technology that allows businesses to hold meetings with partners,  clients, employees who are located in different places while seeing and talking to them in real-time. Through this collaboration software, you can schedule product demo appointments, interview prospective employees or discuss a new partnership without the need to travel.

4. Task Management

Task management tools offer a checklist of tasks that can be checked off as tasks are completed. The user either creates tasks by himself or is assigned tasks by a supervisor, and others can be notified when a task has been completed. Some of their key features are online whiteboards, task prioritization, and timelines to meet deadlines.

5. Cloud Storage

Data can be stored within the organization but also in the cloud. Cloud storage takes advantage of the power of the server’s information storage system which exists in the cloud. The data can be stored remotely via a telecommunications network.

6. Idea Management

Brainstorming sessions within a team can be an effective method for exchanging information and coming up with the best solution to a problem. Idea management or topics formalize this process, providing a space to capture and store ideas for review and implementation down the line.

7. Wiki and Knowledge Sharing Tools

These collaboration tools allow businesses to create wikis and manage information and internal communication in an organized way. Wikis can be accessed by all the team members so that information can be added by multiple contributors. Also, some tools allow you to assign roles such as contributors, editors, administrators, and viewers.

8. Online Shared Calendars

The shared calendar facilitates the organization’s appointments and meetings without the need to consult all participants. The person organizing the event finds a time interval and checks the availability of the other participants, of the meeting room, and then sends out an invitation. Therefore, you save a lot of time for facilitating teamwork.

9. Note Taking Management

It’s always helpful to jot down notes from meetings or ideas as soon as they appear. Note-taking management apps allow users to store all notes in one formalized app, ensuring they are organized and easily found. Most of them have collaboration capabilities so multiple people access notes for reference later.

10. Enterprise Social Network (ESN)

An enterprise social network (ESN) is an internal, private social network, which companies often use for faster networking among employees. The main advantage of these collaboration tools is that they resemble other widespread social media platforms, so employees are familiar with the use of them because they are experienced with similar interfaces such as Facebook and Twitter.

Conclusion: Bottom Line on Which type of Collaboration Tools to Use for Your Business

Collaboration tools are the backbone of any business that is looking to scale. With the help of collaboration tools, it is possible to stay connected with your customers and employees, share ideas and knowledge, get work done faster and more efficiently. There are many types of collaboration tools available on the market, but not all are suitable for all businesses. It is important to understand what your needs are and find a solution that will be able to meet those needs.

Comidor collaboration software provides a virtual environment where people can use productivity, knowledge management, and collaboration tools to efficiently perform business tasks and processes towards operational goals. The software is user-friendly and allows teams to work together in real-time on major projects. It brings the capabilities of any type of collaboration tool into one single platform. It includes tasks such as data import/export, content management, file sharing, wikis and knowledge management, and project tracking with Gantt charts for collaboration. Request a free demo to explore how to improve business collaboration through automation.

Productivity matters. Dozens of applications are developed to help in personal productivity measurement, whereas tones of ink (mainly the digital one) have been spent in articles regarding “How to” measure, boost, manage, or whatever people want to do with their productivity. Thus, I started wondering whether all these productivity tips and tricks work because if they did, the way and the hours we work would have been a lot different.

Trying to figure out these personal productivity tips that do help employees become more productive, we have collected examples of real-life situations that people actually made some changes to the way they work or live and had a positive effect on their productivity.

1. Start living healthy

Most of you may think how eating more fruits and vegetables can boost my personal productivity, but Richard Storm insists that from the moment he adopted a healthy way of living with a balanced diet sticking mainly on greens and daily exercise, he takes on every day with a clearer head and a great amount of motivation and positivity. And he is not alone! Slade Casey, owner of BlueGrace Logistics Marietta is also a big believer in the relationship between daily exercise and increased productivity at work. Running early in the morning makes you more energetic and enthusiastic at work.  But no exercise can be done without a good night sleep, as Louise Brace states. Kimberly Gauthier points out the importance of being hydrated as part of a healthier life, whereas staying active cuts back the number of days she is sick. One more reason to start exercising!

2. Organize and manage your daily tasks

No matter which century we live in, no matter if technology rules our daily life there is one thing that most people cannot start their work without: the hand-written To-Do lists. Ok, some of you may use applications, either web or mobile for that but admit, nothing can be compared with the feeling of erasing things with your pen from your To-Do list! Megan from eZanga makes her To-Do list at the end of each week in order to be ready for the following, whereas David Nakke from Money Crashers categorizes his daily list into three categories, the Today tasks, the ones that need his attention, and the minor projects that are great to be done in slow days. Mike Collins, owner of WealthyTurtle is also a To-Do list fan writing his list at the end of each day, in order to be the first thing to look at the next day. David Scarola from The Alternative Board quotes: ”Plan for tomorrow today” and he also insists on preparing your next work before you leave the office. Mitzi Weinman points out that how you prepare for your day the day before will have the biggest impact on your daily production. Soura Bhattacharyya suggests a quite interesting way of managing daily tasks. He splits the day into two halves, the morning half for reviews and meetings and the afternoon half with at least 2 hours of uninterrupted time to work on projects. On the other hand, Brittany Berger from eZanga splits the tasks into smaller ones. She makes a To-Do header before breaking it down into as many separate tasks as possible. It lays out a clear plan for the workday and staring at a bunch of things that only take 15 minutes each is less daunting than looking at something that will take hours to complete. I guess she is right! So, Zen Cachola urges us to put a white noise as a background, get a full glass of water or tea and start organizing our daily list of tasks.

3. Minimize interruptions

Or at least try to manage them! Laura Rose suggests leaving someplace on our daily schedule for interruptions as working in a team they are inevitable! Remote working can really help when there is a lot to be done, as according to Olivia Carr around 77% of IT workers report that remote work really boosts their personal productivity thanks to automation. James Fayal from Zest Tea also agrees with that as he works in the office 3 to 4 days and works from home 1-2 days a week especially when there is tedious work to do. Asking for colleagues to group their questions or sending 8 or 10 emails at one time, instead of doing it in 10 separate times are also some productivity tips from Gayle Carson. Michael Diettrich-Chastain’s quote is also relevant with this: “Turn off, tune in and timing” which means define a specific amount of time, turn off any other distraction and stay focused on this. If the time passes, just stop and do something else!

4. Set your own priorities

So you are at the office with your To-Do list first thing in the morning and you are wondering what to do first? David Scarola quotes: “Set mornings aside for your most challenging tasks” and Martin Milanov also agrees with that urging us to get the most dreaded task out of the way! Working from higher priorities to lower ones throughout the day will make it easier to go home at the end of the day, according to Mitzi. Never forget though, that if it feels a good time to get it done, just get it done. Sometimes there is no better time than the present. That’s what Louise Brace underlines and we totally agree!

5. Take a break!

Yes, it helps! When you are flat-out busy, stand up and take a break or even do some desk yoga as Fiona Patterson suggests. Dina Proctor teaches individuals and businesses how short bursts of focused thought or meditation can help them control stress and increase personal productivity. Laura Rose also helps people manage their stress and maximize their productivity telling them to take a deep breath and relax, as everything is unfolding perfectly. Try to rest your eyes every half out by cupping them with your hands in order when you open them you will not be able to see light, Ben Bernstein suggests. Music can also help you be focused on what you are doing according to Melissa Moraja. Last but not least, Mark Mathson insists on standing every 40 minutes for at least 2-3 minutes is the best productivity tip.

6. Time matters

There is no point in creating To-Do lists and setting priorities if you do not keep track of the time. Either with an hourglass-like John Olson or with a timer like Ben or with a time tracking app like Jessica Bahr. Furthermore, Brittany Berger reminds us to set start and end times when working on something, as she says that it might help her complete it faster.

7. Keep some time for yourself

Stacia Pierce uses the phrase “Me Time” in order to underline the importance of taking some time in the morning to read, pray or meditate and focus on what you want your ultimate outcome to be. Greg Archbald seems to agree with Stacia as he insists on stop checking our emails and social media or newspaper first thing in the morning, but take 20 minutes and read something motivational, inspirational, or educational instead.

Wrapping up

The conclusion is a summary of the main points that I have mentioned above regarding the personal productivity tips one should take into account to get the most out of one’s day. We can easily become overwhelmed when we have too many tasks to do and not enough time. It’s a natural human reaction. But it’s important to learn how to manage our time more efficiently so that we can be more productive. Some people find it helpful to establish a routine in advance, others prefer to work in short bursts of energy followed by breaks. There are many different ways of tackling the problem of being unproductive, but what productivity tips work for one person may not work for another.