Blogging is something I have never really ventured into previously, mostly because I have felt that I haven’t had anything useful to add. Since I have now started my own business at the beginning of the year, I have already undertaken a large trial and error period of how to best manage my time in order to keep up productivity. So here are the current methods and tools I am using which may hopefully be useful to you.
Routine
First things first, routine. Without a structured routine I have found that my motivation and productivity are pretty much non-existent! Since the majority of my time is spent working from home, without a daily routine the day becomes a mishmash of sporadic work and procrastination. I have therefore put some measures in place to make sure I have a simple daily routine that is easy to keep up.
Treat working from home the same as a day going to the office! I make sure to:
- Set a morning alarm (or 4)
- Have breakfast and a coffee on time
- Open the windows
- Get dressed (not in PJs)
- Take a proper lunch break and small breaks throughout the day
- Most importantly – finish working by a set time
Treating the day like a normal work day in an office allows your mind to focus quicker on work and get less easily distracted. Since I do not walk to and from the station now every day, this means I would get less fresh air and exercise. In order to combat this, I make sure to regularly exercise. This is a necessity, whether it is going to the gym, playing sports or even just walking further than normal to get lunch.
Recurring events! I make sure that certain tasks that need to be done are set to recurring in my calendar. Every Monday morning is company admin and catching up with weekend news. Every Wednesday I work from a WeWork in town to break up the week. Every Thursday afternoon I have dedicated creative time to keep my mind engaged. Amongst many other recurring events in my diary, these are the backbone of any given week and help me structure the rest of my work that needs to be done.
Productivity
In order to make sure I am as productive as I can be, I make sure to have a constantly evolving and dynamic to-do list. The tasks are then split between work and personal to-dos, this is so I end up not just feeling like I have had a productive day just because I have completed lots of unnecessary life admin. If something needs to be done, I make sure it is written down and organised – this creates an air of accountability. Therefore, my potential culpability from not finishing certain tasks will drive me to complete them. In order to track my ‘to-dos’, I use both an online platform and a handwritten diary/notepad. Now I know most people say duplication is not efficient, but I have found that writing down a task twice enforces that it needs to be done and increases accountability as I mentioned before.
Trello
One of the most useful tools I have found to track my progress and manage my daily/weekly tasks is Trello. Trello is a task management application that gives you a visual overview of what is being worked on. You can assign due dates, people and additional details to each task. It uses the Kanban system which is often used by companies to keep production levels high and maintain flexibility. Trello achieves this by having a digital system of boards, lists and cards. It is incredibly intuitive to use due to its drag and drop functionality and most importantly IT IS FREE!!
TrulyMine – diary/notebook
When looking for a way to write on paper my diary and today items, I experimented with some custom-made notebooks, eventually I stumbled across this beauty of a website TrulyMine. You get full customizability of your own notebook using the huge library of page templates they have, ranging from daily planners, phone wire-frames to football pitches. I ended up choosing a daily planner section where I record the time I get up and finish each day, my exercise for the day and my main task for the day. I then also included daily to-do list pages where I mimic the tasks for the day from Trello but I get the satisfaction of ticking them when done! There is nothing better than looking back at a day where each task has a tick next to it.
As a bit of a tech geek, I have a lot of other digital tools I like using as well to manage my clients and day to day activities, some notable mentions are:
Zoho CRM – This helps me manage all my client details, track email conversation and track sales leads.
QuickBooks – All my accounting is done through this platform. Every Monday morning, I spend about 15 minutes sorting all my transactions for the previous week.
MindManager by MindJet – After trying quite a few tools, I found this to be the easiest tool to use for brainstorming.
Hopefully this was useful and thanks for making it the whole way through my first blog!
Cheers,
Oli
Oli's thoughts on tech 