4 Useful Tips to Improve Productivity with Software

Productivity is important to any business, but it is often an area that could use a lot of improvement.

Over the years statistics have shown just that:

• Employee productivity is declining overall according to the US Bureau of Labor.
• Engaged employees are 38% more productive as found by the Workplace Research foundation but about 70% of US workers feel disengaged according to Gallup.

Although that doesn’t really paint a rosy picture, it does mean that there is a lot of potential to improve productivity – and one way that can be done is by taking advantage of the software that are available nowadays.

Get Into the Habit of Taking Notes

Note-taking is a great habit, and one that will help you improve productivity by leaps and bounds.

If you get into the habit of jotting down notes, you’ll waste less time trying to remember things – as you can always refer to them. On top of that it will help to declutter your brain and let you focus on tasks more easily.

Nowadays there are a lot of convenient software that can help you to take notes and sync them across all your devices. Some of the more popular options include Google Keep, Evernote, and Zoho Notebook.

In a workplace encouraging the habit of taking notes is a good start – and sharing notes can be a valuable tool for collaboration.

Avoid Unnecessary Meetings

Meetings are one of the biggest reasons behind time being wasted in workplaces and a lot of the time is unproductive. Instead of booking meetings, waiting for everyone to get there, and going through the motions – there are lots of ways software can help.

For starters software like Trello can help to manage projects more efficiently and make it easier to collaborate – taking away the need for many meetings to report progress in the first place.

Instant messaging software can enable discussions between team members to be held on a more continuous basis. On top of that video conferencing platforms such as Skype and Google Hangouts can allow for meetings to be held conveniently and with less time wasted overall.

At times meetings may still be necessary, but using software to minimize the number of meetings that you hold should significantly boost overall productivity.

Track the Time Spent on Tasks

One of the best ways to start being more productive is to begin tracking the time that is spent on tasks. If you want you could use a simple tool such as Toggl to time how long you’re taking to perform a task, or a more comprehensive software such as Rescue Time that will give you a lot more insight.

By tracking the time that you spend, you’ll have actual cold hard data to measure your productivity. It will let you identify areas that you can improve, and help you to see how time may be wasted.

If you’re in a management position and want to improve workplace productivity, employee monitoring software can help do the same. However it is important that you are upfront about any monitoring, explain it, and take care not to intrude on the privacy of employees.

Use Quick Ways to Save Information

A significant amount of time is often wasted because you either don’t have access to information that you need, or because you are trying to take down information that you may need later.

Both of those areas can be simplified immensely using software to provide you with a quick way to save information, such as:

• Bookmarking tools such as Pocket will let you quickly store online articles and blog posts for reference.
• Password managers such as LastPass can help you to quickly generate and store passwords safely so you don’t waste time trying to remember them.
• Screenshot tools such as ShareX will let you quickly capture, save, and share images of your screen’s contents.

Another noteworthy way to save information is by using screen recording to capture videos of your screen. It will let you save a wider range of content than a screenshot, and can even be useful if you run into technical difficulties as you can ‘show’ the issue more effectively.

If you do want to use screen recorder you should try the Screen Recorder for Mac by Movavi. It is extremely easy to use, and let you capture video from any part of your screen, adjust the audio settings, and even trim out unwanted footage after you’re done.

Conclusion

As you can see the tips listed above will help you to improve your productivity by cutting down on time wasted on unproductive tasks, and making important changes to improve overall efficiency.

By starting to take advantage of some of the software options that are described, you could improve your own productivity alongside the productivity of your business. It is best to make changes gradually however, and carefully consider the impact that it will have.

Ultimately your goal should be to simplify key areas, and help employees to waste less time and benefit more from the time that they do spend working.