Do you feel your productivity wane as the week goes on? Or do you start a number of tasks and struggle to finish them, jumping from one to another all day?
The COVID-19 pandemic forced most knowledge workers to work from home, and many have found the benefits of remote working worthy of continuing even as offices open up. But remote working comes with its own set of struggles: how to be productive at work when you have more distractions?
Do you find yourself jumping up from a task to let the dog outside, or remembering to switch the laundry to the dryer while you’re in the middle of writing an email? Those little interruptions can have a negative impact on your productivity, leaving you feeling drained and unaccomplished at the end of the day.
Of course, working in an office can take a toll on your productivity as well, as meetings interrupt deep work and coworkers’ chatting keeps you from finishing a proposal.
So what can you do when you’re wondering how to be more productive at work? Start with our new productivity eBook — a thorough compilation of 25 must-know productivity tips that will have you tackling tasks with more gusto in no time. This eBook is divided into three sections of productivity hacks that will help you structure your work better, automate admin and repetitive tasks, and engage work management software that will supercharge your productivity.
Give your work more structure
Many workers start their days without a plan in place for how they’re going to tackle everything they need to get done. Putting structure in place to guide the flow of your time is an excellent place to start when you’re wondering how to be more productive at work. Here are a few examples of the powerful productivity tips included in our latest eBook.
- Embrace smarter planning: The New York Times reports that it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to a task following an interruption. Planning your day to include batches of tasks you can do together can improve productivity. Group similar tasks together to cut down on context switching and minimize stress.
- Minimize meetings: Meetings can really cut down on productivity at work. According to Hector Aguilar, President of Technology at Okta: “When meetings interrupt your day, you're switching between the two sides of your prefrontal cortex to multitask and it can take up to 40% longer to complete the same tasks.” In order to regain productivity at work, Aguilar has instituted no-meeting days, which allow for completely uninterrupted time one day each week.
Become an inbox hero: While most of us are aware that letting our inboxes dictate the workday doesn’t provide maximum productivity, the Harvard Business Review reports we still dedicate almost a third of our day to it. Creating blocks in your calendar each day to stay disciplined about the time you spend on email can help cut out up to 2.5 hours of wasted inbox time each day.
Automate admin and repetitive tasks
Daily tasks that require repeating every day can be a good place to start when you’re trying to improve productivity. With automation, those tasks can be streamlined and time working on them can be dedicated to more impactful work. Our eBook includes 12 productivity tips for automating processes using a work management platform like Wrike, including the following:
- Streamlining your intake system
- Automating your admin tasks
- Sharing updates automatically
- Connecting your apps
- Automating approvals and proofing
By automating these types of tasks, you’ll cut down on time you’re currently using to complete simple administrative tasks. You can then devote that time and focused attention to more fruitful work that moves your projects forward and gives a bigger sense of accomplishment at the end of the workday.
Engage work management software to power your productivity
Of course, the key to being able to do many of these productivity tips is versatile and intuitive work management software. Work management software like Wrike can be the difference between a day spent digging through your inbox to find a much-needed piece of information or quickly locating that info in one easily located task.
Now that you’re ready to supercharge your productivity, download our free eBook to learn more productivity tips that will help you tackle your workload today.
