Getting More Efficient In Your Home Office
If you’re working from home, then there’s a good chance that you’re already more productive than you would be if you were in a traditional office environment. However, that said, if you’re looking to be more productive, to hit deadlines, or simply work to the best of your ability, there are plenty of ways to make better use of your work time. Here, we’re going to look at a bunch of tips that can help you be much more focused, more efficient, and more direct when working at home.
Do the same kinds of work together
When you switch from one work task to the other, such as moving from writing content in a word processor to managing a spreadsheet, not only does it take time to switch between those different tools. It also takes your brain a moment to switch gears, getting from one “work mode” into the other. If you keep doing this throughout the day, the amount of time you spend switching modes can begin to build up. Save yourself that inefficiency. When you’re scheduling your work, batch tasks that are similar or use the same tools together. That way, you can keep moving from one task to the next but, because you’re using the same methods to do it, you don’t need to switch that work mode and you don’t need the moment to refocus that you normally might, otherwise.
Don’t type if you’re the only one who needs to read it
Typing out your words is a good idea when you’re trying to communicate with others. You want to make sure that you’re writing clearly and correctly to those who are going to be reading your messages. However, you can use speech-to-text apps like https://www.teachthought.com/technology/voice-dictation-mac when you’re only taking notes for yourself or writing something for your eyes only. It’s much, much quicker and while it can be a little error prone, you might be able to pick these up by re-reading it immediately after you finish dictating and to make the corrections that it needs. You’re still going to save time compared to if you had typed it all out.
See what time you’re spending on each project you complete
Your working day might be full of a wide variety of tasks and projects. You want to do as much as you can on each of them, but you also want to make sure that you’re not spending so much time on one that you’re losing time that could be spent on the others. To that end, there are free apps that can help you track how much time you’re spending on each task. If you see that one task is taking the time that might better go towards more crucial or important tasks, it’s a sign to adjust your schedule.
Making find the files you want much easier
If you spend a lot of time looking through your folders for the files that you need at any given moment, it can be pretty frustrating to have to keep looking through various different places and to use the Finder’s various functions to narrow down your search. You can make it much snappier by using tools like https://setapp.com/apps/filepane. A good file management program can help you move and find files much more quickly and to do it all through one window. It even makes options such as image editing and converting much more efficient so that you don’t need to go through a series of tools to work on your files, just one.
Communicate more snappily
If you spend a lot of your time typing out tweets or emails or even just content in general, then you might want to think about how, exactly, you’re communicating. Rather than typing out every single word manually, you can instead look at setting up typing shortcuts, also known as text replacements, for both your word processor and your email apps, so that you can use shorthand that will automatically convert into full phrases. This way, you can save a little time writing, which can lead to a lot of time saved if you do write a lot of content or send emails dozens of times a day. Plus, it makes typos a little less likely.
Give your workstation a health check
As well as the tips and tools that can help you work more efficiently, it’s worth taking a closer look at the physical tools you use to get your work done and, in particular, your digital tech. If your Mac is running slow, for instance, then you should consider sites like https://www.parallels.com/blogs/mac-running-slow/ that can help you troubleshoot it. A computer that stutters, fails to open files, or starts getting sluggish after a couple of hours of booting is going to start costing you noticeable time, making it impossible to be as productive as you might otherwise be. If it gets bad enough that you can’t speed it up, yourself, you may need to look into getting a replacement.
Don’t work outside of work hours
When you work from home, you tend to have a lot more control over not just how you do your work but also when you do your work. When you work when you like, it can become easy to pour yourself into things a little too hard. However, it has long been maintained and proven that working too many hours leads to a drop in overall productivity, not an increase. You’re not going to be doing good work if you’re exhausting yourself with early starts, late hours, and constantly working outside of the hours that you set for yourself. Your work-life balance is, however, going to suffer as a result.
All of the tips above might seem like they only save a little bit of time, each. However, that starts to add up and can allow you to find the space for an extra task or two a day, making it that much easier to reach your goals.