shivank

When you feel Nothing is MOVING in your Career – Read This!

Sometimes, our brain gets confused AF, it wonders, each passing day, despite doing a sh**t ton of work; Why do I still feel like the saddest guinea pig on earth? Why is it that everything I do is going in a circle? Why do I feel like my self-growth is getting sucked down the toilet drain?

Nothing is MOVING…

You’ve seen that motivational image right? Where they show this guy digging for the diamond but just when he was just about to find it, he quits!

You know what, f**ck that sh**t! It just shows you one side of the story.

He could have kept digging, found nothing, and would have died.
For what? Nothing!?

Everyone has a saturation point when they feel like ‘Nothing is MOVING’, there is no debate about that, but is there anything we can learn from this guy about what he was doing wrong?

Was there anything he could have done to change his state of mind?

When it comes to real-life scenarios, the way out of this is pretty simple and straight forward.

You need to be extremely selfish for a moment and think. Out of all the task I am doing right now, which projects would look good on my resume when I apply for my next job?

Is there anything new project I could experiment with?

Am I doing the same task each day which is leading me to learn nothing new?

When you ask these kinds of questions, you will know what are the important projects you need to focus on and where not to.

Once you have the list of projects you want to do the second step is to map these with what the company wants.

Now to do this process I have come up with a grid inspired from a very popular book known as ‘7 Habits of Highly effective people’.

Now the grid looks like the below image, but I have modified it based on what works out for me.

Source: Wikipedia

Its called the Resume vs Visibility grid, this will be your compass to grow yourself in the company.

The way I personally do this is by listing down all the major projects I have been working on in the past couple of weeks on a sheet of paper. Once I have this list I start classifying them based on ‘what’s good for my resume’ vs ‘what will give me visibility in the company’.

And by visibility, I mean getting noticed by your Manager or your Manager’s Manager or someone relatively important in the organization.

Below is the sample grid to help you understand better.

(This is the best drawing I can come up with on google docs, please bear with me 😀 )

The objective is to focus on the 1st and 2nd grid as much as possible, with of course more focus on grid 2 – which gives you more visibility and learning.

With this approach, you should be more clear about what you have to do and why you have to do it. And when you are clear about your day to day moves, perosnal growth will never be something you will question again . All you need to do is rinse and repeat this process whenever you feel like ‘Nothing is MOVING…’

The only thing to keep in mind is that you should always list down the PROJECTS you have been working on and not the ‘TASKS’! A list which has something like ‘Taking printouts daily for George’ is not gonna help anyone. LIST DOWN ONLY PROJECT NAMES!

Here is a sample of how I apply this on my work life when I am stuck, I just made it a week back, so yeah it’s pretty fresh 🙂

This is the grid on the last page of my work diary

Once you have this grid ready, you can make sure all your day to day task are more aligned towards grid 1 and 2.

So yeah, that’s pretty much what I wanted to share with you, I have been thriving on this for almost a year now and it works like a charm.

Try implementing it and let me know how it works out for you.

Wrike.com Review [In-Depth Analysis]

Reviews

Wrike is a seamless tool used for streamlining the remote work. You can integrate this project management and collaboration tool with various third-party apps and large enterprise systems like Microsoft, Salesforce, and Google.

Wrike helps you to encourage internal collaboration, manage and track the projects, schedules, deadlines, and other multiple processes. As work from home is gaining speed rapidly, so I decided to use this project management tool for my business work.

Here’s a brief what I am going to discuss about Wrike:

What is Wrike all about?
Its versatile features
Things I liked or disliked about Wrike
My Final Opinion

So, read through to acknowledge more.

What Is Wrike All About?

Wrike is a project management tool that transforms the way people work from home. It increases efficiency and business productivity. You can carry out every level of task just from intermediate to enterprise-level without any hassle.

One great thing I noticed about Wrike was it renders customized workspace where you can keep the emails or texts to be started each day. It helped me to underline the essential tasks for the day.

Also, it offered a customized space for my team. Here, you can manage your dashboards, organize information in the folders, team spaces, and mark the important dates in the calendar.

Interestingly, Wrike has its presence in almost 140 countries, and it’s a choice for more than 20,000 companies. I liked Wrike because of these versatile features and minimalist design. If you have some small task to cover, go for the free plan that accommodates five users at one time.

For a big team, the platform provides an Enterprise plan that is made customized for every individual organization. Even its professional and business plans are of par-excellence and start $9 a month.

Now, what all add-ons you can receive with these plans?

These plans include few add-ons like Wrike Proof, Wrike Resource, Wrike Integrate, Wrike Publish, Wrike Lock, and Wrike Analyze. Furthermore, I found Wrike professional and offers tailor-made services that fit in every business, including that of an individual remote team.

Significant Features Offered by Wrike

If you have a question, “Is Wrike right for me?” then go through some of the essential features of the Wrike and decide for yourself whether it supports your set-up or not. It does suit my project needs, seek features to know yours:

– Comes with a Powerful Form Builder

The software consists of a form builder that lets you create the forms to fulfill specific functions. I created the tasks using conditional logic. It helped me to get a tailor-made form according to my requirements and responsiveness as well.

So, Wrike can automatically help you with assigning the task, fill the task items with the required information, and file forms to assign them to one or multiple users.

– Great Planning and Organization Tool

Wrike helps with planning and allocating of resources before assigning the tasks. It also helps your teams to work on prioritized assignments. I was able to opt for my project view from the list, table, board, timelines, etc.

Even the adjustable and interactive Gantt charts helped me and my project manager to keep an eye on the deadline. Launch your projects quickly by using the customized project templates.

– Get Enterprise-Grade Security

Cloud collaboration is one of the significant features of Wrike. It offers ‘mission-critical servers’ that offer 24*7 security, biometric authentication system, ‘fully redundant’ power back up system, digital surveillance systems, and much more.

Even the uptime provided is 99.9% that helps you to access your projects without interruption. Another important security feature is 2-factor authentication, password-protected accounts with a verified email address, and security is also maintained using the hashing algorithm. Personally, 2FA was the security factor I used for my tasks.

– Task Management Carried Out with ‘Three-Pane’ View

Get a three-pane view with Wrike that is a wonderful feature to manage your tasks in a consolidated way without moving from one task page to another and getting involved in the time-consuming process.

Here, the left pane helped me to access the projects, teams, and finances. Middle pane supported me in creating a new Wrike task, set the dates, and assign tasks to my team. In the right pane, I could watch all the jobs and sub-tasks at once.

These are a few essential features of Wrike. Besides, many things I liked or disliked in this tool too. Watch out further.

Pros of Wrike

Time Tracking Software: It has in-built time tracking software that helped me keep track of the time of my team. I was able to recognize the tasks that took long to accomplish and how to increase my team’s productivity.
Consists of Enterprise Work Management Features: You can get access to various enterprise-level work management features like the Gantt charts, workflow statuses, use of Wrike proof tool, and file-sharing tool.
Third-Party Integration: Wrike supports Zapire that helped me to connect my project management applications to other third party applications Salesforce and QuickBooks.
Provision of Detailed Analytics: You get to use several metrics such as milestones, task duration, task digest, conflicts, top performers, etc.

Cons of Wrike

Non-Availability of Exclude this Folder: You may not require a few folders, but alas, Wrike does not give an option to exclude the non-used one.
Problem with Navigation: There is a problem with navigation as one has to spend time searching for a particular feature. Moreover, a beginner may find a problem to understand its interface too.
Expensive for Small Teams: This is fit for big businesses and enterprise-level brands that have multiple users. The small companies or startups have to shell more money for premium plans that may otherwise prove expensive.
Delay in Outlook Notification: I was not too fond of this one the most. I have to keep opening my inbox repeatedly to check the mailbox so that I do not miss out on important project information.

Final Verdict: My W r ike.com Review

Wrike has been a choice for many 500 Fortune companies as project management software, and it proved its capabilities in every field.

If the Wrike team works upon certain loopholes as cited by their customers, then nothing can beat this versatile software.

Overall, I liked working with Wrike because of its additional features and customized templates provided for every type of organization.

So, if you are looking forward to unlocking the various possibilities of managing the business remotely, then go ahead with Wrike without hesitation.

Well, thats it from my Side!

Now the decision is in your clicks –

Checkout Wrike.com

And now I’d like to hear what you have to say.

Have you tried Wrike.com before?

If so, I’d love to hear your experience.

Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment below right now.

Advising You,

Shivank

Monday.com Review [In-Depth Analysis]

Reviews

Introduction

Established in 2012, monday.com is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel. As of now, it is considered as one of the most popular team productivity tools available in the market.

Over 100,000 big and small companies are using it. Even Google Trends data about monday.com review and monday.com coupon shows the growing popularity of the platform in the recent past.

Because of its wide range of features and customizability options, the company has an extensive list of customers that includes Uber, Wix, Fiverr, HubSpot, WeWork, Samsung, and many more.

In this article, I will discuss monday.com review, which includes its features offering and the things I like and dislike.

Monday.com

Think of monday.com as a digital to-do list specifically designed as a workflow and task management tool to promote transparent and collaborative processes.

It adopts a unique way through customizable workflows that provide your team members with an efficient approach towards their projects.

The color-coded boards are an intuitive tool allowing you to have a glance at the progress of your projects, the completed tasks, and the task which needs immediate attention based on deadlines.

Moreover, the CRM tool allows you to communicate with your clients and track your leads, all in one place.

At first glance, you might think it is just a basic project management tool designed for project managers. However, dig a little deep, and you will realize there is a lot more at offering.

Developers can use it for quickly creating apps. Marketers can manage campaigns, plan strategies, and budget. Whereas, sales personnel can use it for boosting sales and enhancing customer experience.

Features

In terms of feature offerings, monday.com earns a near-perfect score. The product offers everything that you would need in a project management application – in an easy to use and convenient package.

The following are some of its features.

1. Monday.com Boards

The project management platform organizes your entire information in the board format. Along with several different visual options, you can also control who can access these boards.

Moreover, apart from showing you who is responsible for which tasks, these boards also allow you to create subtasks, assign employees, add notes, and upload files.

Therefore, offering you and your team an excellent roadmap for completing the project or task at hand. With this level of detail, you and your employees/team members will never lose sight of the bigger picture.

In addition to this, you can also customize the boards using the different types available. This includes mainboards, shareable boards, and private boards.

2. Collaboration tools

Monday.com provides all of the essential collaboration tools for you and your team member. I feel that the real-time sharing and editing of the file is an excellent feature for a team. Because of this, it becomes easier to access all the relevant information and resources.

In terms of communication, you get access to chat messenger, public discussion boards, and threads to communicate with your team.

Apart from this, monday.com also provides its users with surveys and polls tools. There is a mobile app as well that makes it easier for the team to communicate and collaborate from anywhere, anytime.

3. Notifications

The platform provides both email and in-app notification feature. Therefore, when you are assigned a specific task, you will receive an instant notification about it.

Moreover, notifications are also sent out to you, when any modifications or comments are made from another user in the team.

4. Time Tracking

If you want to track the amount of time that you are spending on a specific task, monday.com provides you with a virtual clock to keep track of. You can start, stop, and pause the clock as needed.

All of your time tracking details get stored in the platform, which you can access at any point in time.

5. Integrations

Monday.com has integrated several third-party applications with its platform to offer a convenient solution.

The different communication and collaboration tool that it integrates includes G Suite, Salesforce, Zoom, Dropbox, Mailchimp, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, and Slack among many more.

All of these third-party applications allow you and your team to streamline data flow for productive teamwork.

Things I Liked

1. It offers multiple views for your boards such as file view, calendar view, Gantt view, chart view, Kanban view, and location view. For instance, the chart view will organize the data into line, pie, or bar graphs for you.

2. Another thing I like about monday.com is the fact that it is quite easy to use. The user-interface comes with an intuitive design which makes it convenient for everyone to use it.

3. The color-coded system helps in increasing the visual organization of that task at hand. You can assign specific colors to teams, channels, and anything else that you want to.

4. I also like the way monday.com allows you to prioritize tasks and projects. You can mark specific tasks as low, medium, and high priority.

5. Apart from this, I also like clear project status updates, strong uptime, and excellent customer support of monday.com.

Things I Disliked

The only thing I dislike about the platform is the fact that it offers a limited set of features with the basic pricing tier.

You need to pick a high-end pricing tier to access features such as time-tracking, chart view, and private boards.

The Bottom Line: My Monday.com Review

In this monday.com review, I can tell you one thing that it is a robust project management platform with all the much-needed communication and collaboration tools.

If you are managing a remote team, monday.com allows you to effectively manage your employees and run your business from one flexible platform.

Overall with over 2600 hundred reviews on Trustpilot, monday.com rating is excellent with an average of 4.6 stars out of 5. It is certainly a platform that makes it easy for you to collaborate with your remote team.

Well, thats it from my Side!

Now the decision is in your clicks –

Checkout Monday.com

And now I’d like to hear what you have to say.

Have you tried Monday.com before?

If so, I’d love to hear your experience.

Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment below right now.

Advising You,

Shivank

Top 9 Project Management Tools

Reviews

Twitter’s head of Human Resources Jennifer Christie says, “We will never probably be the same.”

Yes, the statement is apt as tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, and Twitter have asked their employees to work from home. Most managers think that this way, work productivity will increase, as work from home provides flexibility to their employees.

So, we are never getting back even after the end of this pandemic. But, the companies and their team still need to manage their work. The new nomads require seamless task and project management tools to carry out their daily assignments.

Having wasted some time now, let’s begin our quick review for the Best Project Management Tools available on the web.

Top Project Management tools [Based On What I Like/Dislike]

#1 – Monday.com – Great Stuff, but Pricing can get better!

Rating – 3.75/5
Data visualization
Productivity app
Gives real-time updates
Customized templates
Learn More

Checkout Website

This particular website/app is no.1 app that has won the 2019 Webby Award. It works like a Work OS that lets the team run projects and processes on an everyday basis.

This task management software helps in managing marketing campaigns, integration with industry tools, build customized apps using the Monday framework, share work in one virtual hub, collaborate the whole team to display the 360-degrees view of the project.

#2 – ClickUp – Budget friendly option

Rating – 3.5/5
Task management
Supports complete customization
Team Collaboration
Starts at just $5 per month
Learn More

Checkout Website

ClickUp is a cloud-based project management and team collaboration tool that is fit for users from various companies.

This tool streamlines processes like sales, marketing, design, and development. It helps users to monitor every provided task in one board and also assign tasks to various members of the team.

This project management tool manages all your work at one place like the docs, tasks, team chats, goals, and much more.

Other significant features include customized workflow, provides a job to multiple assignees, complete each task precisely, supports a recurring checklist, organizes every task at one side, helps resolve comments provided by team leaders, and job management. It helps in automating your workflow with the help of pre-built templates.

#3 – Easynote – Overall seems good, although INTERFACE SUCKS!

Rating – 3.5/5
Supports more than 5 users
Affordable web and mobile app
File Sharing
Total task management solution

Easynote is a simple yet powerful task and project management tool that provides reminders for deadlines. You can set the alarm for each project.

The unique features of Easynote include task dependency, unlimited projects, and task management, file manager, manages deadlines and notifications, helps with team collaboration, and much more.

You can sign up for free where users can get access to up to 5 people for managing the tasks. It also offers business and extended packages for the companies and their teams.

#4 – Hive – Quality Tool but slightly OVER BUDGET

Rating – 4/5
The plan starts at $12 a month
Automated workflow
Integrates perfectly with Gantt and Kanban
Supports 1000 integrations
Learn More

Checkout Website

Hive is a cloud-based project management platform that caters to the requirements of businesses big or small. It helps in streamlining office productivity by allowing file sharing, workspace chat system, and automating the task management.

Hive software helps the companies to create, classify, and assign a particular task to the project team. Even the top bosses can put tags, due dates, and attach files too.

The best part of using Hive is you can create your to-do-list. Even the integration with third-party apps like Zoom and Slack is possible. The teams can streamline the work by connecting the Hive with Google Drive Account or Dropbox.

Another important thing about this tool is its integration with 1000 apps that helps in increasing efficiency and brings the information to one dashboard.

#5 – Backlog – Weak Interface but pretty good on USABILITY FACTOR

Rating – 3.5/5
Supports unlimited users
Up to 100 GB storage
30-days free trial
SAML single sign-on provision
Learn More

Checkout Website

The Backlog is an exclusive software platform that is designed for the teams involved in software development, design, marketing, production, and IT. It provides an on-premise option with a cloud-hosted platform.

The main goal of this productivity tool is it improves coordination and communication between the non-technical team and the developers. The companies can organize the tasks in one place and assign effortlessly to other team members.

It works seamlessly with the web-based and mobile-based workspace. You can use it on your Android and iOS devices. Even users can maintain security by setting up IT restrictions.

Backlog helps you to manage the project schedule with the Gantt charts and supports in fixing the bugs faster.

#6 – MeisterTask – Its basic and OK for one time project management task

Rating – 3/5
Kanban-style project boards
Cloud-based software platform
Tailored-made solutions
The plans start at just $4

MeisterTask is a cloud-hosted project management platform that provides collaboration features and monitoring capabilities to the companies.

It offers many productivity tools for reporting, integration, Kanban dashboards, and automation.

This software connects well with third-party apps like Google Drive, Dropbox, and BitBucket.

#7 – Paymo – Awesome Tool, but can get a bit COMPLEX to use

Rating – 4/5
Automated time tracking and reporting
Mobile optimized app
Free for freelancers and solopreneurs
Supports Gantt charts and Kanban board
Paymo

Checkout Website

This is a modern project management app that helps the small and medium scaled businesses to manage their projects.

It offers the requisite tools for the small and mid-sized companies to perform their daily tasks efficiently.

The versatile features provided by this app includes timesheet reporting, resource scheduling, invoicing, team collaboration, supports seamless communication, task management, provides milestone alerts, file sharing, and much more.

The Paymo app pricing feature involves one for small offices and others for large business teams.

#8 – Wrike – Simple and Quality Tool

Rating – 4/5
Supports unlimited users
Offers up to 100GB storage space under its Enterprise plan
Real-time newsfeed
Customized reporting
Wrike

Checkout Website

This software was developed to improve the efficiency and speed of the distributed and co-located groups.

It helps in improving office productivity as it is one of the flexible tools that help the multifunctional groups to collaborate and carry out work from a single location.

Wrike was adjudged winner of the “Best Project Management Software Award for 2018.” 500 Fortune companies, namely Google, HTC, Adobe, Stanford University, and EA Sports, use it.

Wrike supports tracking timely reports from anywhere just by using mobile apps. It takes care of the platform’s security by ensuring that only authorized people can access it.

The unique feature as a “3-Pane project view” helps companies to check out the critical data on the single screen.

#9 – Zoho Projects – Bang for every buck

Rating – 4/5
Cloud-based tool
SLA Integration
Customized permissions and widgets
Supports unlimited users in Enterprise plan

Zoho Projects is a seamless and unique project management tool that helps in streamlining the office productivity.

This platform allows organizations to plan and track the work efficiently. Its versatile features include team collaboration, uses Gantt charts for project planning, automation of tasks, record the time with a timer or manually, customized projects, and much more.

This platform also helps in integrating with other apps like Google, Zoho Docs, Dropbox, Slack, Zapier, etc. You can find apps for Android and iOS devices.

Wrapping Up

With these project management tools increase your work productivity manifold. Here’s a quick recap of each tool to help you pick the required one.

Easynote: Get reminders for project deadlines and manage unlimited tasks and projects.
http://monday.com/: The customized template app that gives real-time project updates.
ClickUp: This project management tool streamlines design, development, sales, and marketing.
Hive: This tool integrates greatly with Kanban and Gantt and supports small and big businesses.
Backlog: A specially curated tool for software developers, designers, IT & production teams.
MeisterTask: The cloud-based tool that supports Kanban-style tasks and project dashboards.
Paymo: The mobile-optimized app that provides automatic time tracking and reporting.
Wrike: This real-time newsfeed software improves the speed of co-located and distributed groups.
Zoho Projects: It is a cloud-based tool that comes with SLA integration and customized widgets.

Well, these essential tools can help you excellently to manage your tasks and projects. So, choose them according to your individual and organization’s requirements.

More Reviews:

Best WFH Productivity Tools – One of my personal favorite list!

Best Time Management Apps – Quick read to pick the best app

How To Be Productive When The Organization Isn’t

Office

Productivity, for many employees and employers, is not just a tag but a core signal. Better and improved productivity is the heart and essence of the success of any workplace.

The COVID 19 pandemic has pushed thousands and millions of people into work from home opportunity, including those who have never done anything like it before. Without deliberate actions from both employees and the organization, working remotely especially during stressful and chaotic times can leave everyone feeling a bit isolated, unmotivated, distracted and stressed out.

Here, we are not talking about the usual remote working scenario as work and life are colliding in ways that can be hard to manage even for the best of employees. In this article, we are going to talk about some of the means and approaches that can bring productivity in a person and his organization, especially when certain challenges are in the way.

How to be Office Productive In 7 Steps:

Setting Up Your Priorities
Confine Your Workstation
Batch-Out The Same Tasks
Focus On One Thing At A Time
Work Early And Only For Few Hours
Listen To Productive Sounds Or Music
Templates Are Your Best Friend

#1 – Setting Up Your Priorities

While working remotely, it is important for you to be the leader in yourself and take all the necessary steps required to get things done on time. Setting up your priorities and daily encouragement in any form can save you and your organization from great frustration and loss.

Because things around us are changing quickly for uncontrollable reasons, you have to become realistic about what you can and cannot achieve depending on your household’s situation. Try not to overcommit with the work and only go for achieving productivity standards that are realistic and safe.

Usually, remote workers have peacefulness, fewer interruptions and a large time frame to get the task done but for many, taking care of house, kids, spouse and working at the same time can be indifferent. To increase your productivity, get your bulk work done during off-hours instead of traditional daytime routine, get a 15-minute break every hour, give some time to your family or simply take a mental break by doing what you love.

#2 – Confine Your Workstation

As a remote worker, you should have a confined workplace at your house. Having an interplanetary for your productivity means there should be no intrusion into your projects so you can commit and stay focused on getting your work done in time.

Keep a workroom or designated desk to complete the tasks without sitting in front of a TV or on your kitchen table. If you don’t have any spare room, go with the area of your house with less traffic where you have little to almost zero distractions (particularly during working hours).

#3 – Have All The Necessary Tools And Equipment

Owning all the necessary tools and equipment to get the job done is also very important to stay productive while working at home. Doing so will allow you to perform your duties much more efficiently and on time. Ask your manager or supervisor to provide you with the modern, high-quality equipment and packages so you can make a massive difference to your organization and save your time without compromising productivity.

#4 – Limit Your Distractions And Commotions

When working from home, everything from pets, household chores, spouse, kids, TV, cooking and uninvited visitors can be a source of distraction from work. If you are a parent working from home, limiting all the distractions can be hard with numerous factors involved such as kids and routine house chores.

To deal with such situations and improve your productivity, try to implement certain boundaries around your instituted workplace. Keep the door close and put a “do not disturb sign” outside that door and make your family members understand your work-related duties. If nothing works, invest in some good noise-cancelling headphones to block out all the unnecessary noises from outside.

#5 – Take Help From Nature

The most unique way to improve your productivity with a home-based job is to bring the outdoors in your workstation. Nature, especially plants and natural sunlight have amazing benefits over your thoughts, feelings and actions. Work in an area where you have access to ample sunlight. Natural light has proven to have a positive impact on your anxiety and productivity.

Many pieces of research prove that people who work around plants and flowers are more productive and are always the best when it comes to giving new ideas. Have plants near your designated workplace to keep your attention from drifting apart.

#6 – Batch-Out The Same Tasks

Batching is an amazing choice for people who wish to improve productivity while having a pre-set, pre-maintained mind frame for their routine chores. An example can be fiver selling where you can group out similar tasks like scheduling the number of tasks for the week, preparing drafts for the projects and writing the actual content.

While planning your day always remember to batch the same tasks together to make your work process more smooth and easy.

#7 – Focus On One Thing At A Time

The biggest thing we have learned from being a remote worker for so many years is to have as fewer distractions as possible and only one task at hand. There is no need to work on ten projects at once. Never run after your status or quantity of the submitted projects, simply work on one thing at a time with all the focus and attention you have until you are done and ready to take on other assignments.

#8 – Work Early And Only For Few Hours

Another great tip from us would be to get into work during the early hours of the day. You can work in the quiet morning hours before your kids wake up and the chaos begins. Early working hours are always serene and peaceful, and you can work without much focus and no distractions.

Working for a few hours only can be a good option (depending on the nature of your job). Many organizations don’t worry about the number of hours you work from home but only for the amount of work you accomplish. To achieve this goal, always layout your plan, write up a pitch and get to it as soon as possible. This tip will help you crank out your work on time, and you will know when it’s time to stop working for the day.

#9 – Listen To Productive Sounds Or Music

Music can be the best way to stay productive and maintain focus on important tasks during work from home online. However, we are still open to the fact that every person is different and so they might have to experiment with different things before finding the right kind of music that helps stay focused. You can use various tools and programs available online to listen to scientifically driven music in order to improve your attentiveness.

#10 – Templates Are Your Best Friend

To get done with the work faster, you can opt for using templates for your daily projects and assignments. Templates are usually fill in the blank kind of document that is easy to use for projects with a more or less similar pattern.

For example, if your job is to send email updates on a regular basis, you can make a template and save your precious time. The same rule applies over spreadsheets, presentations and product reviews.

#11 – Online Scheduling Applications For Meetings

Meetings and group work sessions are a part of routine work even in a work-from-home environment. It can become a nightmare for you and your productivity if you have other remote team members from different time zones. The most sensible decisions here would be to start using scheduling applications to accomplish your tasks without any glitches or errors.

When you do have meetings (with or without scheduling applications), make sure they are highly productive. The biggest problem with telecommuting and working remotely is the weekly meetings where similar workers are involved that don’t necessarily have to be there. Sign out of group chats and look for the ones where everyone else is willing to use time and efforts to discuss/solve problems that are a hindrance towards your progress.

#12 – Reattach To Your Work Everyday

Once you are done with your work, it may be hard to find any motivation to carry on with the projects every morning. Before starting your day, take a brief amount of time to reattach to your work by thinking about your constant accomplishments and flow of positive things in your life. Evoke your goals and priorities to push-start your productivity. Doing so will not only help you make a mental plan to achieve your objectives but also make you alert of your resources that are required to boost your success.

#13 – Do Everything Related To Your Goals And Objectives

Before starting on a new task, project or assignment, make sure that it is linked to your long-term accomplishments and objectives. If there is a strong connection between the task and your goals, then carry on with the work otherwise give it to another team member or simply eliminate it from your to-do-list.

Final Thoughts

There you go. These are some of our fail-safe strategies that you can implement in your life and day-to-day remote working to become more productive. Know that there is no sure short way for becoming more productive. Instead, there are certain habits that need to be implemented for better and proficient results.

Build some of these habits and take the right steps towards becoming the most productive worker of your organization today!

How to Stop Procrastination During Quarantine and Be Productive

WFH

Procrastination is a challenge that we are not only facing during quarantine but its always there. This challenge started right with the creation of humans. To some extent, we all have been struggling with delaying tasks, avoiding, and procrastinating on important matters.

One of the major concerns of people during the COVID-19 pandemic is their reduced productivity due to procrastination. Though you have got working from home opportunities there are some drawbacks of telecommuting and working remotely as well. You find a lot of distractions at home that delaying work becomes a habit for you.

Being a freelancer, I face a lot of challenges while coping with deadlines. As I have to work from home online, I get lazy overtimes. For keeping customers happy, punctuality was the first thing that I had to achieve. I have listed some tips and started following them. You will not believe that they helped me in getting punctual. So, I thought of sharing these tips with you to help you overcome procrastination during quarantine and invest your time for a good cause.

Procrastination Sucks! (Top 10 Tips Which Work)

#1 – Define Your Workspace

Define a sperate place in your home where you can work with full concentration. Your place does not need to be very big; it can be a small place in the corner of the house without distractions. A separate room is preferred but if cannot find one, find an area with less disturbance. This creates a work environment where you can work with full dedication. When you enter that place, you know in mind what purpose you are here for.

#2 – Wake Up Early

If you become an early riser you have better sleeping patterns that lead to becoming more energetic the whole day. You can complete your tasks in a more effective way. The major difference between working from home and working from the office is the time restrictions. While working from the office, you have to get up early and reach the office on time. While when working at home you are not bound to the timings. If you maintain your routine of waking up early and starting work quickly, you will be more productive.

#3 – Set Up Your Schedule

Before starting your day make a to-do list of all the things you need to accomplish. There are different apps you can use but the best way is to use paper and a pen. Keep high priority activities on top of the list. Scheduling can help you maximize your effectiveness and reduce your stress level.

#4 – Do Some Fun Activities When You Are Bored

Working continuously can make you feel tired. If you work continuously for hours, you may lose your concentration and eventually you end up running from work. Whenever you feel tired you should take a break and go for some fun activities like doing exercise or talking to a family member.

#5 – Leave Easy Tasks For The Lazy Hours

There are times when your productivity is at its peak. You should utilize this time in doing difficult tasks as difficult tasks require more attention and energy. Whenever you feel tired, you can go for easy tasks that do not require much of your effort.

#6 – Don’t Keep Your Expectations So High

This might seem awkward for you as everyone wants to dream bigger. However, this is not effective when it comes to working. When you start work with a thought of achieving something bigger and you end up with achieving about 30% of your target, you get stressed. Its always good to keep very low expectations for the work.

#7 – Keep All Your Distractions Aside

Social media is one of the big distractions for everyone. These days, social media has taken more time in everyone’s routine. Social media can save time if you use it in the right way. Such as it can help you to browse quickly and find anything at ease. However, it can be a major distraction for you at work. If you want to cut social media effectively during work hours, you can simply make them invisible on the phone or log out from each social media accounts. If you need to use Chrome during work, you should open a new Incognito window. This is to make sure that your search doesn’t gets autocompletes the sentences you are typing, and you are signed out of all accounts.

#8 – Give yourself rewards

This is the most effective tip for everyone. Rewards and actions are tied together. You perform an action for getting a reward. Rewards do not always show up as a trophy, you can expect something in the form of return for the effort you put in. No matter what, your action is always tied to some outcome. If you keep a simple reward system for you, you have a reason to keep going. The size of the reward is not directly related to motivation. Sometimes the smallest of the rewards can make you all pumped to do more.

#9 – Set a Finishing Time

While working from home you try to do work more than you used to do in the office. In the office environment, the packing up of colleagues reminds you of finishing your work. Don’t try to burn the midnight oil at home. It is necessary to specify the finishing time. Have your meals at regular times. You don’t need to stop at the specific time but realizing that working hours are technically over can help you quit.

Final Thoughts:

Procrastination is one of the leading issues of today for working people. Some people believe that the main reason for procrastination is laziness. However, some experts believe that mood swings and anxiety are the main factors that can lead to procrastination. Mood swings can divert people’s attention to other activities.

Procrastination can be avoided in many ways. There are moments when we feel more productive and we figure out how to deal with procrastination. We should utilize those moments and try to make them routine.