Unlike in an office where the boss is usually sitting on your head, a web worker has nobody looking over their shoulder and dictating the terms of their day. This liberty is one of the primary reasons behind taking the plunge and web working full time.However one soon realizes that working from home is no less stressful and the lack of fixed working hours often results in unproductive days where you put in more hours to accomplish less work.
Being productive is undoubtedly the largest challenge for a web worker. The Internet unending in usefulness and distraction and as such, there is so much to do in the limited time period of 24 hours. Hence it's important to utilize those 24 hours efficiently and get more work done without jeopardizing the more important things in your life, like your health and family.
Here are some tips which could prove to be helpful in your endeavor to become a more productive web worker.
- Manage Your Email
No matter what work you do on the web, email is usually your primary source of communication. And if you spend the entire day checking emails, replying to them or just looking at your emails, then you are really not getting any important work done. You need to accept the fact that it's just fine to have some unread emails in your inbox and you can deal with them later.
For more email management tips, read my previous post where I talked about 7 Ways To Manage Your Email Like An Expert. - Make Your To-do List Doable
Most of the web workers are in the habit of making long to-do lists and end up accomplishing not even half of those tasks. They even tend to try out each and every to-do list application available thinking that the app would help them complete those tasks.
No matter how many schedules or to-do lists you make, you are the one who has to complete the tasks. If you procrastinate or just overload yourself with a long to-do list then not only does it leave you with more tasks for the next day but also adds to the stress factor. Hence it's important to do a ruthless analysis of your capabilities and limitations and assign yourself tasks which you can actually complete in the day.
My suggestion - just open a notepad and write 3-4 main tasks and save it with the name ' Today ' or go with a dead simple to-do list like Now Do This. - Health is Wealth
It's true and it becomes more important when you are working long hours, sitting on your chair with your eyes fixed at your computer screen and without any access to the fresh air outside. There are no two opinions on the fact that web working, if not done properly, could result in some serious health issues. And if you're in bad shape, you cannot expect to be productive at your work. So take care of your health. Go out, get some fresh air, take a walk, exercise, hit the gym, do yoga or just do anything to compensate for the loss in movement of your body parts since you quit your day job. - Identify The Right Tools
Since you are a web worker, you should definitely be one of the advanced users of the internet who knows the tools which will help you in your job and make your work easier. However, the Internet is an ocean of web apps and just like there are thousands of apps which help you make to-do lists, there are hundreds if not thousands of apps for every single task you aim to accomplish. Hence it's important to identify which of them are the right ones for you and will make you more productive. You should do some initial research and also take advice from experienced web workers in your field to know which are the best tools for the trade. - Manage Time Wasters
As I mentioned earlier, the internet is unending and sooner or later you will fall in the trap and spend your day playing online games, participating in social networking or just spending time on twitter. It's not that these things are useless but getting addicted to them will suck your time like anything. Hence the idea is to manage these time wasters effectively and get the most out of them in a fixed interval of time.
Cheers,
Abhijeet
