A few occasional blips are inevitable during your workday. But, if these distractions become persistent habits, they can hurt the quality and productivity of your work.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!
While some productivity killers are obvious, others disguise themselves as essential tasks. If you’re not careful, these time-wasters can easily sneak into your day and waste hours. Recognizing these activities and using appropriate tools to counter them can help you regain control of your time.
1. Spike to Reduce Email Overload
Reading and answering emails is one of those work activities that may seem harmless, but can quickly eat up your time if not managed properly. Email overload can be caused by a number of factors, such as an overflowing inbox, lack of organization, or not using the appropriate internal communication tools. If left unchecked, email overload can also become a significant source of stress and anxiety.
Enter Spike, a user-friendly yet robust collaborative email tool that can help you regain control of your overflowing inbox and boost your productivity. For starters, Spike allows you to integrate all your email accounts in one place, so you can easily manage all your messages from a single dashboard.
It also offers a number of features to help you organize and prioritize your email, such as the Prime Inbox, which separates important messages from non-priority emails, allowing you to focus on your most important communications. can.
In addition, you have complete control over your email notifications. You can take advantage of Spike’s snooze and reminder features to set aside time to read and respond to emails (batch your email activity) instead of letting them ruin productive hours of your workday.
2. Unplug to Eliminate Social Media Distractions
A round-up of the most common workplace time-wasters wouldn’t be complete without mentioning social media. It can be hard to resist the allure of checking Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok, but these activities can eat into your workday without even knowing how much time you’ve lost.
If you’re struggling to stay focused at work, Unpluck is a tool that can help you overcome distracting apps by making it difficult for you to use them. All you have to do is add the app you want to block and select your distraction constraint, for example, scanning a QR code, shaking your phone for 5 seconds, or tapping the 7 button. You can also customize the difficulty levels of these obstacles.
Unpluck will block all notifications from the app and prevent you from opening it until the set time has elapsed, or you consciously perform a distraction interruption. The goal is to help you break the habit of mindlessly scrolling through your social media feeds and focus on your work instead.
3. IFTTT to automate repetitive tasks
Like your email activity, repetitive tasks can become a wolf in the sheep’s clothing of your workday, sneaking up and eating away at your time without realizing it. Repeating similar tasks can be a significant source of wasted time and boredom in the workplace, especially if you can automate these processes to use your time and skills on high-value tasks.
IFTTT is a platform that lets you connect different apps and devices to create “recipes” that automate tasks. You don’t need to be a programmer to use IFTTT; You only need a basic understanding of making a recipe.
Like your email activity, repetitive tasks can become a wolf in the sheep’s clothing of your workday, sneaking up and eating away at your time without realizing it. Repeating similar tasks can be a significant source of wasted time and boredom in the workplace, especially if you can automate these processes to use your time and skills on high-value tasks.
IFTTT is a platform that lets you connect different apps and devices to create “recipes” that automate tasks. You don’t need to be a programmer to use IFTTT; You only need a basic understanding of making a recipe.
4. Yac to reduce the time spent in the meeting
Meetings can be an essential part of the workplace, but they can also quickly become a waste of time if you don’t manage them well. Remote workers are particularly affected by unnecessary meetings, as they have become a common way for teams to stay in the loop.
One of the main issues with meetings, especially in remote workplaces with teams scattered around the world, is that they require all participants to be available online and simultaneously, which is achieved due to time zone differences. It can be challenging to do.
Furthermore, synchronous communication is not always the most productive way to work, as it can lead to distractions and interruptions.