'How to be More Productive at Work?' That's the question every employee who cares about their job wants the answer to and the answer is a little bit more complicated than just 'stop being lazy'. The spectrum can include those who get distracted easily by shiny internet marketing and those who have trouble finishing tasks in a timely manner.
We have access to more information, more tools and more resources then ever before in the history of mankind. The problem is that we have access to more information, more tools and more resources then ever before in the history of mankind.
One good idea breeds 1,000 imitations and the ‘internet of things’ (what is that by the way?) quickly becomes the internet of useless things that you could search for a day and come no closer to understanding what you need to perform your task competently.
We are also in the age of Guerrilla marketing - Advertising warfare that you probably don’t realise is advertising because as you got smarter, so did the advertiser.
The reason I have created this list is because I have personally used all of these apps to, at least partially, solve the problem of all problems in today’s information economy – ‘how to be more organised and get stuff done’.
The first problem is planning. You need to do it! There is no escaping this important part of the 'how to be more productive at work' equation. If you start your day right, then that goes a long way to being more productive.
So...
Go to a quiet place and plan your day in a workbook, diary (even a post-it note – down to the quarter hour.
My first tip isn't an app but rest assured that there are 5 apps below (promise). However, I strongly believe that low-tech options can and should live side-by-side with your daily tech options.
As I go down the rabbit hole of marketing apps, blogs, vlogs etc… I am reminded about the importance of going to work, sitting in a quiet place and taking 15 minutes to remind myself about the core tasks for the day and attach goal times to each one, down to the quarter hour.
Not only is this a good opportunity to get away from the computer screen and all your technology for 15 minutes but it’s a good way to analyse the previous day and set new, achievable goals for the day ahead - so leave your phone at your desk too.
Ideally, I would say that this activity should be done just after you get to work and repeated just after lunch to track how progress is going and to get you totally pumped about diving into your work again.
Although everyone is different, it works for me and will probably work for you:
- Spend 15 minutes planning your work day.
- Analyse the previous day – did you hit your performance targets?
- Repeat this after lunch and re-focus/update your daily goals if you need to (depending on what occurred during the morning).
- Treat your day as two separate work days. Set goals before lunch and set goals after lunch – you will then be able to see what half of the day you are more productive in and focus on making it better.
- The added bonus of this is getting you away from your computer screen for 15 minutes.
How to Be More Productive at Work: 5 Apps That Can Help
Todoist
Todoist is my own personal life-saver. Exactly as the name sounds, Todoist can organise your daily to-do list, records your exciting new ideas (the moment you have them) and can prioritise these in order from most urgent to least. You can differentiate your personal tasks from your work ones, assign a completion date, give yourself reminders, even look at your productivity analytics – and that’s just in the free version.
Pocket rocks it right up there with Todoist. Before I found Pocket (or Pocket found me), I was lost in a wilderness of open tabs, like green fields on a prairie stretching as far as the eye could see.
The Pocket app gives you a place where you can store articles that you want to read later and it lays it out like a blog homepage so you can see the title and feature image. This saves me a lot of space on my browser so I don’t have a forest of tabs open preventing me from seeing the wood from the trees and it also means I don't tempt myself into clicking on unnecessary open tabs.
Hemingway App
As a writer I can honestly say, God bless writing apps. If you’re composing an email or any type of written content, it’s not just enough to spell it right, you want it to sound right, look right, smell right and feel right – hell, if it’s possible, you want that piece of content to transport your reader to Paris and bring them back with a croissant and a beret, ‘Bonjour Monsieur!’
The Hemingway App helps you to be a better and more productive writer by saving you heaps of editing time. It will tell you if your writing has too many adverbs, too passive a voice, it will tell you if your sentences are hard to read or super hard to read and give you a grade at the end to tell you how much you suck at being a writer – the great thing is, you’re the only one who has to know that.
Stay Focusd
If you’re the type of person who works best when your boss is screaming at you every time you try and check your Facebook status, news websites or watch movie trailers on YouTube, Stay Focusd kind of does this except without the loud noises, shame and general self-hatred that goes along with it. The cool thing about Stay Focusd is that you can tell it to lock you out of certain webpages if you get side-tracked by all that shiny click-bait out there.
It’s like your mum slapping your hand every time you try and get your greedy hands in the cookie jar – sure it’s upsetting now, but your body will thank you for it later. One of the best features is the “Require Challenge” option, which requires you to complete a small challenge before being allowed to change any settings (unblock sites you want to visit).
Session Buddy
Tab managing apps are the latest craze sweeping the internet and Session Buddy can help by saving tabs as collections you can restore later and recovering open tabs after a computer crash. Use this in conjunction with Pocket and your tab drama days are all but over.
Business Improvement Resources
I hope this helped. For information on wider business improvement, not just self-improvement, take a look at our process mapping report which will show your entire company how to be more productive:
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