In a time when many people are now working from home, there are many distractions that can disrupt your workflow and decrease your productivity. Here are 5 tips to help you maintain your concentration:
- Set An Alarm for Everything. Don’t try to accomplish everything on your list at once. You’ll overwhelm yourself. Instead, set a timer for the time necessary to complete each task and take 5-10-minute break in between tasks. You’ll accomplish more this way versus feeling frustrated by trying to finish everything at once.
- Schedule Everything. We’ve all told ourselves that we’ll remember that meeting at 3 PM tomorrow, but the truth is, you can forget. Especially when you have so much in front of you. Anytime someone wants to meet or request a call, send an invite to block the time on your calendar, regardless of whether it takes place in 30 minutes or 30 days. Don’t forget to add reminders to the appointment too.
- Group your activities together. If you have a ton of calls during the week, try to schedule them back-to-back in one time block. If you have a bunch of video editing, do it all in one morning, instead of some now and some later. If you must work on a proposal for a client, then block time to complete that task and focus only on that. By performing related tasks one after the other, you’ll be able to move much faster and get into a flow for that type of activity. Whereas, if you have a call, then try to edit a video for 40 minutes, then respond to emails and hop on another call, you’ll be exhausted.
- Don’t start day answering emails. Instead, start with your hardest, or least liked, task first and knock a dreaded project off your to-do list. Starting your day with email and responding to other people’s requests puts you in a reactive state that can last all day long.
- Delegate as much as possible. If you value an hour of your time at X, then tasks that are valued at less than X should be outsourced. Delegation is one of the only ways you can really scale your time. If you want to be a one-person show, then by all means, keep doing everything yourself. But if you want to scale your time and build something bigger than yourself, then you’re going to have to find someone else to do the lower-level work.
