Are you struggling to maintain a balance between work and play? Here are some tech hacks to help you make the most of your time in and out of the workplace.
1. Plan your dream vacation through TouristEye.
A vacation to look forward to is just what you need to get you through a day of deadlines and annoying co-workers. TouristEye allows you to create a vacation bucket list and visualize that sweet break from work. You don’t have to take that trip this year; it will serve as good motivation. You’ll be able to go soon if you follow these other tips.
2. Limit your social media usage.
Isn’t it annoying to go out for dinner with friends, only to find them all busy fiddling with their smartphones? Cutting down on your social media usage allows you to focus on what’s happening right in front of you and enjoy your free time proactively. RescueTime is great software that monitors and helps you cut down the time you spend on social media.
3. Use your inbox efficiently.
Learn how to identify urgent and non-urgent emails and try to plan your day around tasks that need immediate attention. If you have to be on-call 24/7, it’s best to learn how to prioritize urgent messages and delay the others until the morning. It’ll allow you to create time for yourself, your family, and your friends.
4. Make sure the meetings you attend are productive.
Nothing wastes your time like going to an unproductive meeting that goes on for an hour or two, only to be called back to another meeting… of the same nature. Unproductive meetings cut into your limited time, so make sure the time you spend in the meeting room doesn’t go to waste. You can also reach out to your company’s operations department and inquire about policies and technology that will help limit the number of meetings you’re invited to. Also good to ensure people stick to an agenda.
5. Ditch the office and work from home.
Ask for permission from your supervisor first of course! If you’re planning on working from home, take time to get acquainted with tools that are helpful to remote workers, such as Trello and HipChat. Trello allows you to organize your tasks (both solo and team projects) and keep track of their progress. HipChat is an instant messenger that allows you to easily communicate with your co-workers supporting a large number of platforms.
Great hacks, thanks for sharing, David. Especially I support the two hacks about social media and meetings. Good you mentioned also some tools, I didn’t know about the first one. Personally I use Nozbe instead of Trello. As I know there are a few apps for inbox management. I use simple stars in GMail, I just set it into to 4 level star coloring in the settings. So colors indicates for me what action I should do with email
The comment about meetings resonates with me most.
I have since had my assistant attend so I can push on with getting work done (I’m a developer).
But that has come up with its own issues: a follow meeting having to be called so that my assistant can get back to them with answers from myself.
Something needs to change with the ogranisation structure with where I am but I’m in no place to suggest or implement anything, just keep m head down and hit my project targets.
I think the day I lost access to the net was one of my most productive.
Thankfully I had a lot of locally stored code so of my grey matter wasn’t remembering something I’d fire up some old source and see where I’m going wrong.
All good advice here. I’d never come across TouristEye – interesting – I use Rome2Rio, which is prettty good. One idea I’d throw in is to use a Pomodoro timer onscreen. Taking regular breaks is productive too and that will give you 25 minutes hard, single-minded work, followed by 5 minutes to stretch your legs before the next work period.
Point two is my ultimate problem. I am always on my phone because I’m busy trying to do point five. I use multiple apps to earn money while working from my own home. I try not to be on it when I’m around my friends but it’s critical to be – especially when it’s what helps you pay your bills at the end of the day. They don’t understand that though.
Great tips.
Many people these days feel like “they don’t have enough time” to get stuff done. And it’s simply because they don’t how to balance their work/life. Being on the net all the time allows them to work more hours if they want to but shouldn’t a person also take some time off to actually enjoy their lives?
After work, if you have to be on the net then limit the time to two or so hours and use the rest of your free time to do other things like hang out with friends, spend time with your family, etc.