5 Tips to Help Stay Productive

You did it! Congratulations on successfully navigating the abrupt transition into remote work! Even seasoned digital nomads struggled hard when they first made that move, and I can assure you that it took them way longer to adapt to their new reality. In just a few weeks you are taking video calls like a pro, collaborating on complex documents and spreadsheets in the cloud, and have become a project manager Zen master.

You have done a great job so far and to keep the energy up it is important that you learn how to continue improving by learning to stay more productive during these unusual times.

Use your natural energy

It doesn’t matter if you are a morning person or a night owl, the important thing is that you embrace that fact about yourself and use it to your advantage. So, if you know you are a morning person then it makes sense to start your day with the most demanding and creative tasks. And when your energy tank starts to feel empty then you can use that time to do easier tasks such as checking emails.

Make a to-do list

The very first thing you want to do is determine where you want to direct your energy. Write down the tasks you want to tackle the next day so you can hit the ground running instead of wasting time figuring out what you need to do.

Now make it short

You probably got a little too excited while writing the to-do list and filled it with as many tasks as you could think of. This won’t help your productivity at all and instead, it will affect it as you will have to waste time figuring out what your priorities are. So, take that list and reduce it until you have three tasks at most that need to get done no matter what.

Focus on one task at a time

Multitasking doesn’t exist. You can only focus on one thing at a time so when you think you are multitasking, what you are really doing is jumping back and forth between different tasks and not really giving your full attention to any of them either. So, forget about trying to multitask and instead focus on giving your full attention to just one task at a time. This means not checking your phone or surfing the web while you should be writing a report.

Take short breaks

Focusing on a single task can only be done effectively for about 25 to 30 minutes each time. So, in order to refresh your laser-like focus make sure to take short breaks. During this time, you can rest your mind by doing something totally unrelated to the task at hand. So, go get a cup of coffee, drink a glass of water, or better yet just take a quick walk and get some fresh air. That way when you come back to your task you will be much more productive than if you tried to work at it for 8 straight hours.