10X Your Productivity for Online & Remote Work

1. The first change is the mindset change

2. It is less about the strategy and more about how you think about a “workplace”

   Mindset hacks

   1. Have a separate space to work in your house or apartment where you would only work

   2. Have a routine and schedule it on your calendar so you still have your work timings otherwise work tends to creep up on your entire day (and night when it can)

• When you dive deep, you really experience life

• The concept is the same for deep work as it is for deep sleep or deep concentration or deep yoga or deep conversations or deep diving. It’s giving your 100% into what you’re doing. It’s also a slight test of skill that pushes your level slightly but is not beyond your capacity.

• This gets you in a state of flow where you lose the sense of time.

• This is also a better reason to live than just chasing happiness.

  
  

  Deep work hacks:

  • Schedule deep work slots

  • Flight mode on the phone

  • Limit the number of tabs (Use xTab or 3 tabs only)

  • Schedule distractions on your calendar

  • Pre-define meeting windows

  • Pre-define conversations time (Deep work is mostly done alone)

While Working Online (Extensions to fuel your willpower):

• Limit the number of tabs as explained earlier (3 tabs only or xtab)

• Install any web activity time tracker (top 3 most productive URLs and the top 3 least productive URLs)

• Use the focus plugin to block websites you’re wasting time on (focus extension)

Assignment: Install and setup these 3 apps for browser productivity

While Working online from the Phone:

• Remove all social media apps from your phone (except if you work in that space) and check them only from your laptop during the scheduled distraction time

• Switch to a minimalist launcher (I use a decluttered launcher) - For Android users, Sorry iPhone users.

• Keep only the very important accounts and apps on the phone

• Switch off almost all notifications except any 3 apps that you can choose

Assignment: Choose your 3 apps and switch off all other notifications

While Working with Email - How to Manage your Inbox & Always have INBOX ZERO:

• Choose any 5 labels

• Everything that comes in the inbox goes into one of the labels if not acted on immediately

• Archive everything else

Assignment: Choose your 5 labels and set up your inbox with these labels.

Other apps or tools you might need:

• Calendly to manage your meeting windows

• Google Calendar to schedule your days

• Trello to manage projects

• Slack or some other team conversation app

• Wave Apps for accounting

Other mental models to help you be productivity:

• Outsource what is not worth your time

• 80/20 your projects, clients as well as team members

• Take less work & do it better

• Document your learnings

Assignment: Assign a $ value to your time and 80/20 your work.

Don't forget to Calendar everything and keep documenting your learnings :)