The internet offers many opportunities. It offers opportunities to be productive and opportunities to goof off.
You can easily spend your day on reading every piece of junk and other frivolous email, hanging out on Facebook and Twitter or playing online games. These tendencies crop up and can take hold of you dwindling away your day.
I'm sure that you would agree that you would get more done if these diversions did not exist, but they do. Our job is to function and stay productive despite their lures.
The following paragraphs list five secrets to staying more productive while you are online.
One way to be more productive online is to set up obstacles that help to deter you from sites that distract you. It is easy to access a website that causes you to spend time frivolously. For some of us it is almost second nature to periodically pull up a social media sites during our working hours. You can easily make it more difficult to visit these sites while you are working by signing out of the sites when you are done with them. This forces you to have to log in each time you consider using the site. Having to login again can serve as a reminder that you really are not supposed to be visiting that site during working hours. You can also invest time into getting plug-ins that block distracting sites.
A second way to be more productive while online is to set your timed goals reasonably. The best way to do this would be to estimate how much time it would normally take you to complete a task and then set your goal to about 20% shy of that time. Once you set the time that you are allotting to complete a task stick to it. Do things that will give you the feeling of a deadline. For instance, if you have given yourself two hours to complete a task then start working on that task two hours before the kids or your significant other comes home. You could also use a timer or an alarm clock.
A third way to be more productive while online is to know what you spend time online doing. Take a survey of your web browser. Find out what's been going on in your browsing history. You will probably find that you spend way too much time visiting websites that distract you from your work. Take note of the sites that are a distraction and determine within yourself that you will only visit these sites during the times that you have not scheduled yourself to work.
A fourth way to find more productivity online is to have a handle on how much free space you have on your hard drive and email storage. Don't let maxed out space set you behind in your day. Prepare for this potential catastrophe ahead of time. Have an external drive available. Make sure that it has enough space to store all of your old files. Also, try using outlook for your email because it allows you to store your email on an external drive. Another email company that provides for the possibility of needing more storage space is Gmail. Gmail allows you to buy extra storage space. Hardware decisions, other than adding an external drive, that would increase productivity include, using a large CRT, using a second CRT, learning keyboard shortcuts, and using a wireless mouse if you use a laptop.
A fifth way to be more productive while you are working online is to swear off multi-tasking. It seems reasonable that being able to do more than one task at a time saves time. Actually, it would save time if we as human beings were actually able to effectively do two or more things at one time. Studies show that people who switch back and forth between two or more tasks make more errors and take more time to complete these tasks than people who focus on one task at a time. There are times, however, when multi-tasking can lead to productivity. If you are working on one task and begin to get brain locked you could switch to a second task that uses different skills and abilities for about twenty minutes to give yourself a break and to be able to return to the first task with a fresh pair of eyes.
You can easily spend your day on reading every piece of junk and other frivolous email, hanging out on Facebook and Twitter or playing online games. These tendencies crop up and can take hold of you dwindling away your day.
I'm sure that you would agree that you would get more done if these diversions did not exist, but they do. Our job is to function and stay productive despite their lures.
The following paragraphs list five secrets to staying more productive while you are online.
One way to be more productive online is to set up obstacles that help to deter you from sites that distract you. It is easy to access a website that causes you to spend time frivolously. For some of us it is almost second nature to periodically pull up a social media sites during our working hours. You can easily make it more difficult to visit these sites while you are working by signing out of the sites when you are done with them. This forces you to have to log in each time you consider using the site. Having to login again can serve as a reminder that you really are not supposed to be visiting that site during working hours. You can also invest time into getting plug-ins that block distracting sites.
A second way to be more productive while online is to set your timed goals reasonably. The best way to do this would be to estimate how much time it would normally take you to complete a task and then set your goal to about 20% shy of that time. Once you set the time that you are allotting to complete a task stick to it. Do things that will give you the feeling of a deadline. For instance, if you have given yourself two hours to complete a task then start working on that task two hours before the kids or your significant other comes home. You could also use a timer or an alarm clock.
A third way to be more productive while online is to know what you spend time online doing. Take a survey of your web browser. Find out what's been going on in your browsing history. You will probably find that you spend way too much time visiting websites that distract you from your work. Take note of the sites that are a distraction and determine within yourself that you will only visit these sites during the times that you have not scheduled yourself to work.
A fourth way to find more productivity online is to have a handle on how much free space you have on your hard drive and email storage. Don't let maxed out space set you behind in your day. Prepare for this potential catastrophe ahead of time. Have an external drive available. Make sure that it has enough space to store all of your old files. Also, try using outlook for your email because it allows you to store your email on an external drive. Another email company that provides for the possibility of needing more storage space is Gmail. Gmail allows you to buy extra storage space. Hardware decisions, other than adding an external drive, that would increase productivity include, using a large CRT, using a second CRT, learning keyboard shortcuts, and using a wireless mouse if you use a laptop.
A fifth way to be more productive while you are working online is to swear off multi-tasking. It seems reasonable that being able to do more than one task at a time saves time. Actually, it would save time if we as human beings were actually able to effectively do two or more things at one time. Studies show that people who switch back and forth between two or more tasks make more errors and take more time to complete these tasks than people who focus on one task at a time. There are times, however, when multi-tasking can lead to productivity. If you are working on one task and begin to get brain locked you could switch to a second task that uses different skills and abilities for about twenty minutes to give yourself a break and to be able to return to the first task with a fresh pair of eyes.
