Staying Productive, no matter the task.
Mary Stargel, Community Manager, here. It’s a beautiful Monday. I am soaking up the sunshine while enjoying this Nordic folk playlist and sipping on my third cup of earl grey tea. The combo has turned me into a tornado of productivity and I, folks, am getting things done! I do find it strange how some days I am the busiest of bees and knock out a to do list with fervor. Other days my list seems insurmountable.
One of my favorite things about working at Society of Work is being able to reach out to my coworkers and get their insight and encouragement. So recently I asked on our Slack Channel (how we stay connected during COVID-19) how members are staying productive. Here are several tips from our members who work in a variety of industries and backgrounds:
Leah Williams, who recently started The Golden Hour, a news channel full of hope, shared:
I recently converted from my never ending to-do list to scheduling in my tasks instead. It’s made a world of difference to my stress level! I feel so much more joy and rest during my day as a result as I’m not going from task to task to task exhausted.
Jef Sewell from Amplifier® shared:
“If you routinely use different SaaS apps for your business you should definitely check out Zapier.com. It lets you connect thousands of different apps to each other. Gets you out of manually doing busy work.”
Anton Demenchuk , founder of Cresco Group and Chattanooga Marketing Clinic shared:
Since we are talking about productivity tips and especially team productivity here, we use two tools that make a big difference: Notion (where we transferred all of our knowledge base, projects and tasks) and Clockify (a platform we use to track our personal and team productivity).
And speaking about tips…we share our physical exercise routines via smart watch stats and morning smoothie recipes with each other. This helps us to get outside, get the blood flowing, and stay healthy. Some of those smoothies will bring a new life into you! Healthy body is a happy body.
Glenn Stovall, who hosts a podcast about soft skills for developers, shared:
Three things I’ve been trying:
One thing I’ve heard is to treat concentration like a muscle: set small bursts of time, even just 5–10 minutes, to try and do focus on one thing exclusively, and then work on increasing the frequency and length of these moments.
Making a reasonable to-do list at the start of every day, one I know I can finish.
Tackling the biggest, most complicated work first. This is more on a project timescale than a daily one.
Check out Glenn’s recent podcast called The Secret Skills of Productive Programmers w/ Itamar Turner-Truaring.
Well halfway through writing this blog, I got distracted and added Clockify to my computer. I’m going to give it a try and see how it helps me stay on task. Thanks to our members for their insight. A major #coworkingperk for me is just knowing I am not alone in the struggle.
