The Internet has improved our way of communicating, of informing ourselves, it has brought about a change in almost any area of daily life. But the price to pay has not been long in coming. According to a comprehensive study of more than 2,000 Canadians over a decade, our attention has shifted from 12 seconds to 8 seconds . All because of the constant exposure to technological stimuli..
We have kitten videos, memes, the visual notice from Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and so on. Everything has been transformed, from the way of doing journalism to the reading of this same text. But let's not lose the battle. We can take advantage of the Internet without demanding total disconnection - which never hurts to avoid addictions or pathologies such as nomophobia. We are going to see how to improve our work performance , relentlessly, with various tips and applications.
5 applications with which to optimize our time
TimeTune is one of the app for Android most respected in productivity. With it we can program a daily agenda, with different profiles according to our occupation (student, worker, self-employed) and our habits. We can even design and send schedules to other people who share the application, ideal for changing shifts between colleagues..
A graph shows us the challenges achieved around the goals that we set ourselves, since we can manage our next 15 days hour by hour. And finally, we can customize the color of the widget , the tone or message of the reminders. If we do not want to waste a second, if it is difficult for us to set a firm schedule even to read half an hour a day, this application is an ideal ally.
Todoist, like Trello, is also not far behind. Considered an application nothing short of essential by media such as Forbes or The Guardian, Todoist will haunt you until you tell it that you have finished your scheduled task. Compatible with Google Drive, Cloud Magic, Sunrise Calendar or Zapier, this Android app is ideal for centralizing any type of calendar or work tool. It also has a 'Karma' system to set goals, accumulate points and offers several color graphs for a quick visualization of our performance. A smart way to synchronize new technologies with old methodologies..
QualityTime takes a reverse approach. It measures the time we spend digging through the mobile, application by application. In this way we can set restrictions and alerts or even activate the 'rest' function, which restricts access to the terminal. Its database can be consulted at any time, even back up every 6 months to check our progress.
Forest: Stay Focused is the green version of productivity apps. In Forest we planted a seed. If in the next 30 minutes we do not touch the mobile to exit the application, that seed will turn into a tree. If we go outside, the plant will wither. In this way we can either achieve an imposing forest or an unproductive desert. 'Forest' is a smart way to set short challenges to finish tasks effectively. We can even create a black list of websites that distract us - like Facebook, Netflix or similar.
And finally, we have MarinaraTimer. This app is inspired by the Pomodoro method, a well-known system for improving productivity. The scheme is as follows: 25 minutes of work followed by a 5 minute break. After four intervals, making up 120 minutes, we can rest another 15 minutes. This system does not have a particularly positive press - because, to a certain extent, it encourages distraction, fragmentation - but it is a good alternative that we can manage directly from the web application.
Procrastination is going to end
In this article we explained how to get all the game out of our Lenovo tablet. It is clear that the more agile our system is, the more time it will save us. Our work tool is our best partner. But let's go a little further and see how to optimize our work time without the need for any application, just with a handful of practical tips.
· Maintain and orderly and clean environment . Yes, it may seem like a pretty obvious premise, but chaos invites chaos. Working in an environment where we can distinguish our things at a glance allows us not to waste time. Work in a nursing control, an office, laboratory, desk or traditional desk, investing a few minutes to order all the supplies and the paperwork will make us feel more comfortable. Clutter and the unnecessary amount of many items in sight generate greater anxiety , which invites you to want to disconnect before, to surrender to the vaguerity.
· In Spain face-to-face attendance is common. It is said that only 45% of the Spanish working day is productive , the rest is outright "heating up the chair" (teleworking is yet to be completed). The problem is not, therefore, a question of lack of hours, but of optimization and time management. The best way to promote productivity is to set yourself, before starting the day, a series of goals or tasks to accomplish. Little deadlines that turn the routine into a game with marks to beat and, at the end of the day, turn the list back with the pride of having seized the day.
Therefore we must set a deadline . We are human and if stress blocks us, we cannot move forward. As the reduced hours are showing, after 50 hours a week, our health, productivity and creativity plummet. What we have not achieved long before we will not achieve by submitting ourselves to impossible schedules.
· Delegating responsibility is not cowardly, but practical . Wanting to take care of everything often results in poor quality of results. Each person must be aware of their possibilities and their limitations. We must both find our specification and enhance it, as well as find who best performs each task. Time is money, and the more you waste, the higher the price to pay.
· Prioritize and be realistic . It is useless to have the most powerful workstation as an ally, such as the Lenovo Thinkpad P70, if we are blocked and do not know where to start our daily task. The ideal is to mark the essential tasks first, even if they are the most tedious, eventually giving us moments of rest with other much lighter tasks. But, in any case, we must be realistic: many times we will not be able to do everything. First the urgent and then the rest. You know what they say: health comes first.