With so many more people working from home, working efficiently on your laptop has never been more vital. If you’re finding it difficult to optimize your productivity on your laptop, follow these five great tips, and you’ll be working in an organized and efficient manner in no time!
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Invest in a Laptop Stand
When working from home every day, you want to make sure that you are optimizing your home office to be as ergonomic as possible. A great way to do this is to invest in a laptop stand. Without a laptop stand, you will likely be craning your neck to stare down at your laptop screen.
While this is fine once in a while, sitting at the same couch, chair, desk or wherever you call your home office every day in this position is likely to cause a repetitive strain injury.
If you find yourself with a sore neck and can’t pinpoint why – this is likely the culprit. A laptop stand brings the laptop up off the surface and closer to eye level, ensuring you aren’t craning your neck down to get a good view of the screen.
Purchasing a laptop stand simply to take your laptop to a few inches above desk or lap height might not sound worth it, but don’t underestimate the power of cultivating your home office space to be as ergonomic as possible. You’ll avoid repetitive strain injuries, which may need costly physiotherapy to overcome.
Suggested reading: Benefits of Improving Posture When Working From Home
Track Your Time
There are many options for software or apps that you can buy, which not only track your screen time but track where you are spending your hours on your laptop.
For example, you might think that you are being productive because you’ve been seated in front of your laptop for eight hours, but your tracker might tell you that three of those eight hours were spent on social media sites (which is ok if it’s part of your job, but not ok if you’re surfing friends’ vacation photos) or online shopping!
With a time tracker that tracks your screen time as well as where you are spending those all-important productive hours, you’ll be able to see if you are really making the best use of your time sitting at your desk.
If your tracker tells you that you are spending a lot of your designated work hours online shopping or doing a similar time-wasting activity, then consider taking more frequent short breaks. Taking 20-minute breaks will ensure that you don’t lose focus and drift off into a social media bubble or online shopping spree!
Realizing that you perhaps aren’t using your time as productively as you hoped can be a hard pill to swallow, but it’s better to track your online habits before they get out of hand. Once you are aware of where you might be wasting time, you can implement structure in order to change that habit.
Use Virtual Assistants
We all know how Siri works on your iPhone – you simply say ‘Hey Siri’ followed by an instruction, and the virtual assistant will carry out the task for you.
Virtual assistants are a great way of saving time and they let you multi-task, as you can speak commands to your device while working on something else with your hands, like typing of a report or replying to emails.
Did you know that you can also use virtual assistants on laptops?
Many people don’t realize that Siri isn’t something exclusively reserved for phones. If you’re interested in how to use Siri on Mac, then look no further than Setapp.
The Setapp blog offers helpful tips when navigating things such as setting up Siri for mac, how to make the best slideshows, or how to set up time-saving keyboard shortcuts.
Setapp also offers an app subscription service, which lets you access a carefully curated selection of top-notch productivity apps.
Use The Nightshift Mode
If you’re not familiar with the nightshift mode on desktops, then you are missing out!
The nightshift mode cancels out the blue light emitted from your screen and replaces it with warmer, yellow light. Blue light is known to be damaging to your sleep schedule and staring at a laptop screen emitting blue light right before bed can mean that you’ll find it harder to get to sleep.
Test this out for yourself – next time you are using your laptop in the evening, turn on nightshift mode and you should notice your eyes noticeably relax as no more blue light is emitted from the screen. See if you notice a difference in how easy you find it to get to sleep!
Using the nightshift mode is especially helpful if you are a night owl and prefer to work late into the night. Some people prefer to have nightshift mode on all day as they simply prefer the warmer light it emits and find their eyes to be less strained at the end of a working day.
Keep Your Desktop organized
A tidy desktop is absolutely key to working efficiently on your laptop. A tidy desktop will save you time when you need to access specific files – there’s nothing worse than a cluttered desktop where nothing is labeled or color-coded!
If your desktop looks like this (see below), you need to read this section twice!
A great way to organize your desktop is to have five to ten folders, each containing broad categories in which you’d like your documents to be filed. For example, personal documents, work, useful applications, and photos.
Within each of these folders, you can subdivide further, creating folders for specific photo albums or work projects. If you want to be extra organized, you could consider making some sort of color-coded filing system to really stay on top of things!
Having a tidy desktop is essential to feel on top of things, especially when working from home and using your personal laptop for both personal activities as well as work or business. You can use your personal filing system to create folders that clearly separate your personal life from your work life.
Conclusion
If you’re struggling to stay on top of things when working from home, consider implementing any of these five tips into your routine to increase productivity.
There are tons of little tweaks that you can make, like purchasing a laptop stand or making use of a virtual assistant that, over time, are great investments and will really save you time and energy!
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All good tips. Tracking time is huge with me because I think, feel and act effectively if I limit time spent online to a certain point. I spend hours offline daily meditating, doing various forms of yoga and exercising not only to strengthen my mind but to also subtract those hours from my blogging day. Currently, I spend 1 hour meditating, 90 minutes doing yin yoga, 10 minutes doing Kriya yoga and 90 minutes (or more) exercising. I keep my energy flowing with this regimen but also know I will be effective with my time online, because I cannot afford to do otherwise with that tight energy management schedule.
You’re right. Sometimes, especially when working from home, it can be difficult to stay on track and stay focused. Tracking your time can be very effective. Mediation is a powerful tool as well. Being centered, relaxed, and focused is so important!