Displaying All Posts in the Productivity category

5 Ways to Stay Productive When Working from Home

Stay Productive When Working from Home

As a freelance writer turned community manager, I’ve spent entire weeks working from my couch in my pajamas.

For many it sounds appealing — no commute time to wrestle with, no wardrobe requirements and no one standing over your shoulder requesting updates on your progress.

But I’ve also found that these are the same reasons why staying productive when working from home, sans a designated office, can be such a challenge. There’s not a pressing reason to leave the house or get dressed, and there is no one there keeping you from spending the afternoon eating junk food and watching trashy TV. Click Here to Read Article …

How Naps Can Increase Your Productivity

Do you wake up at the crack of dawn tired but knowing you have to get to work? Do you check your messages from your smart phone before you even pull back the covers in bed? How about skipping breakfast or lunch because you feel like you just have to much to do?

What about your email? Do you find that the sheer volume of email you get every day is growing at an alarming rate? Do you leave work later than you’d like to or take work home with you? The more we work, the more it becomes a job in itself to get things done. Face it, sometimes you just want to hit delete and start all over again.

More and more of us are finding ourselves in this situation, and it really shouldn’t have ever reached this point when something a simple as a nap might alleviate the issue. Time is the resource on which we’ve relied to get more accomplished. So when there’s more to do, we invest more hours or more time.

But time is finite – you can never get more. There is no app that creates a 26 hour day. That means many of us feel we’re running out of time, that we’re investing as many hours as we can while trying to retain some semblance of a life outside work. The truth is, it’s exhausting. Click Here to Read Article …

How to Fight Afternoon Exhaustion without Coffee

A cup of coffee a day can be good for you, boosting energy and even helping to stimulate your metabolism.

One cup usually isn’t enough for a whole day though, and too much coffee can leave you feeling jittery and unable to focus.

It can be hard keeping up with your work when you’re feeling tired, and sugary foods and energy drinks just leave you feeling groggier when they wear off.

The best solution is to try some of the many natural, healthy ways to fight midday exhaustion. Click Here to Read Article …

KEYS to Time Management

We live in a busy society where everyone is on the go all the time – in the office, at home, and in school. More often than not, it seems like there just aren’t enough hours in the day.

For budding entrepreneurs and freelancers in particular, time may come at a premium as you work to balance your side gig with a regular nine-to-five, start and grow your business, and find time to eat!

One of the most important aptitudes for any individual with more tasks than time is time management. To reduce stress, increase productivity, and shorten the length of time between setting a goal and achieving it, use these KEYS to time management: Click Here to Read Article …

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5 Awesome Research Tools for Freelancers (and Everyone Else)

If you are anything like me, researching a topic can take much more time than actually writing about it. If you don’t have some kind of system when you are doing your research, you can spend entirely too much time sifting through articles and data, which can really take a bite out your overall productivity.

There are more tools available to you to accomplish this kind of efficiency than you could ever make the time to look through and evaluate, so it’s a good thing I’m here to help you move in the right direction, and it’s also a good thing I’m not charging you by the hour to do it – I could really rack up a padded time sheet if I went back and added it up.

Instead, I’m going to give you my top 5 tools for online researching for the low, low price of free. My only requirement is that if you are still using Internet Explorer as your browser, you have to download Chrome or Firefox – right now, go ahead, I’m waiting. Got it? Okay, now delete IE from your computer and swear that you will never again do anything so ridiculous. Then move forward with the article, knowing that most of these tools are Chrome extensions or at least have Chrome extensions in addition to the full apps. Click Here to Read Article …

How to Work Less While Producing More

Work Less

“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” ~ Michael Altshuler

When I was inching my way towards college graduation and anticipating what lies ahead, I wasn’t dreading stepping into the “real world” and getting a full time job, but I was dreading falling into the picture of what society tells us a full time job has to look like.

I didn’t want someone to tell me that I needed to sit in front of a computer between the hours of eight and five, with two fifteen minute breaks and one half and hour break if I’m lucky. I wanted to be productive, in a nontraditional way. Click Here to Read Article …

6 Ways to Get More Done

Most Mondays I stare at a list of tasks that grows longer throughout the week. Whether you run your own company, work as a freelancer or are just starting out as an intern, this is a reality that doesn’t go away.

Somehow, every Friday, I’ve found that I’ve completed almost every task on my list as well as a few extras for good measure. Over the years I’ve found a few tips that are more specific than the usual “Get organized” (although that can help). Here’s how my to-do list gets checked off every week. Click Here to Read Article …

How to Overcome Creative Writer’s Block

If you want to be successful in any writing career, the key is in writing every day, even when you aren’t feeling inspired. Every now and then we all feel creatively blocked, and it’s easy to believe you’re stuck waiting for that burst of inspiration to return so you can write.

More often than not, that feeling of creative block is just something you need to push past, and waiting won’t help. Time spent waiting is also time you can’t be working or improving your writing.

By teaching yourself that you can write despite feeling blocked, there’ll be nothing to hold you back. You can start to work on jumpstarting your creativity by doing a few small things. Click Here to Read Article …