The CMT/Motorola Productivity Guide for Working Parents Series: 5 great productivity tips
We are so excited that Cool Mom Tech is partnering with Motorola this month, makers of the new Motorola Elite Sliver Bluetooth Headset , to provide tips to help make the lives easier for all you busy working parents. Now that we've tackl…
March 12, 2012•5 min read
We are so excited that Cool Mom Tech is partnering with Motorola this month, makers of the new Motorola Elite Sliver Bluetooth Headset, to provide tips to help make the lives easier for all you busy working parents.
Now that we've tackled home office organization, increasing productivity is probably the greatest bane of our existence. At parents, let's just say we have a pretty big incentive (or a lot of little ones) to get our work done quickly and efficiently.
Here are our 5 really easy suggestions to help you make the best use of your time and energy, so we can do what we love most: Enjoying our families.
[After the jump, find 5 great productivity tips AND another chance to enter to win our fabulous Working Mom's Lifesaver basket valued at more than $750!]
1. Turn off your digital distractions
As much as we love social media, and value their role in our work lives, when it's time to get work done, they can easily become a distraction. The best remedy is to close your Facebook window and log out of Tweetdeck so you can completely tune out the chatter and updates.
If you're like us, it's easy to get sucked into conversations or following links and suddenly an hour has flown by.
2. Manage your alerts and notifications.
These days, you can be pinged and dinged for everything, whether it's an unimportant tweet or an urgent text from your babysitter. Be picky about your alerts. Set up your smart phone so only the important messages get through. If you're having to check your phone every few minutes to see someone's comment on a Facebook post about a funny YouTube video, you're wasting precious time.
Besides, research has shown that it takes significantly longer to get your head back into a task, even if you've just taken a 5 second status update break.
3. Be the boss of your email (and not the other way around)
It's amazing how easy it can be to get sucked into managing an overflowing email box, just to end up in the black hole of replies and never make it out. If you do need to keep your email open, we suggest adjusting settings so that the inbox only refreshes every 10 minutes--or even longer if you need a dedicated time to concentrate. The more time you have to complete a task uninterrupted, the more you'll be able to get done. And really, if someone really needs to get a hold of you, they can use the phone. (Remember the phone? Thing that rings sometimes with an actual voice on the other end?)
We've even seen email auto-replies that read, "To increase productivity, I'm now checking email only two times a day and will get back to you when I can." That's commitment.
4. Don't disturb the working mom!
Whether you work outside the home, or your office is a desk in your bedroom, you'll never get anything done if you keep getting visits from co-workers or your kids. Shut a door or put a polite sign up on your door so that people know that you're in the middle of working, or snag a "Do Not Disturb" sign the next time you're at a hotel.
teaching clock from learning resources
The same goes for your kids if you work at home. They don't always understand that a parent in the house might not be completely available to them. Create a sign or signal that alerts them you're busy. Or get a teaching clock, and move the hands to a particular hour so they'll know just when you're back on parenting duty and ready to help them find that soccer uniform.
5. Multi-task when you can--or for goodness sakes, get a Bluetooth headset!
We can't tell you how much more we are able to get done with the help of Bluetooth headsets. It's like having that extra hand parents are always joking that they need. What really sets the Motorola Elite Sliver Bluetooth Headset apart are the amazing features that truly let you be hands-free, so you can talk while you tweak that spreadsheet, or take that conference call while you make the bed (ha, we've done that).
Not only can you use the voice controls to initiate a call, but the free My MotoSpeak app for your Android 2.2+ phone is pretty sweet, allowing you to start a text, hear an incoming text, and reply, all with your voice -- no need to touch your phone at all.
And the fact that you can be up to 300 feet away from your phone and not have to carry it around with you? We like that a whole lot.
EXTRA-COOL: WIN IT! We're so excited to give away a Working Mom's Life Saver gift basket to one lucky CMT reader!
In it, you'll get two (whoo!) Motorola Elite Sliver headsets and more to help keep you going--like a beautiful leather laptop satchel, "Inspire" aromatherapy drops, an eco bamboo calculator, a pound of coffee plus a stylish Jonathan Adler on-the-go mug, a desk planner, and (whoo again!) a $200 gift card to Bliss towards whatever creams or lotions or pampering you deserve.
TO ENTER: Leave a comment on this post telling us your biggest productivity pitfall AND let us know which feature of the Motorola Elite Sliver seems most cool to you (psst...check their site for more information). You can earn a second entry by leaving a comment on our Home Office Organizational Tips post as well (see rules there) if you haven't yet done so. Good luck!.
Congratulations to Jennifer S! She won the Motorola's Working Mom's Life Saver gift basket.
Read more: https://coolmomtech.com/2012/03/productivity_guide_for_working_parents.php#ixzz1relxoztb
To learn more about our partner the Motorola Elite Sliver, you can like Motorola on Facebook and follow @Motorola on Twitter plus see this amazing headset in action on their YouTube channel.
Now that we've tackled home office organization, increasing productivity is probably the greatest bane of our existence. At parents, let's just say we have a pretty big incentive (or a lot of little ones) to get our work done quickly and efficiently.
Here are our 5 really easy suggestions to help you make the best use of your time and energy, so we can do what we love most: Enjoying our families.
[After the jump, find 5 great productivity tips AND another chance to enter to win our fabulous Working Mom's Lifesaver basket valued at more than $750!]
1. Turn off your digital distractions
As much as we love social media, and value their role in our work lives, when it's time to get work done, they can easily become a distraction. The best remedy is to close your Facebook window and log out of Tweetdeck so you can completely tune out the chatter and updates.
If you're like us, it's easy to get sucked into conversations or following links and suddenly an hour has flown by.
2. Manage your alerts and notifications.
These days, you can be pinged and dinged for everything, whether it's an unimportant tweet or an urgent text from your babysitter. Be picky about your alerts. Set up your smart phone so only the important messages get through. If you're having to check your phone every few minutes to see someone's comment on a Facebook post about a funny YouTube video, you're wasting precious time.
Besides, research has shown that it takes significantly longer to get your head back into a task, even if you've just taken a 5 second status update break.
3. Be the boss of your email (and not the other way around)
It's amazing how easy it can be to get sucked into managing an overflowing email box, just to end up in the black hole of replies and never make it out. If you do need to keep your email open, we suggest adjusting settings so that the inbox only refreshes every 10 minutes--or even longer if you need a dedicated time to concentrate. The more time you have to complete a task uninterrupted, the more you'll be able to get done. And really, if someone really needs to get a hold of you, they can use the phone. (Remember the phone? Thing that rings sometimes with an actual voice on the other end?)
We've even seen email auto-replies that read, "To increase productivity, I'm now checking email only two times a day and will get back to you when I can." That's commitment.
4. Don't disturb the working mom!
Whether you work outside the home, or your office is a desk in your bedroom, you'll never get anything done if you keep getting visits from co-workers or your kids. Shut a door or put a polite sign up on your door so that people know that you're in the middle of working, or snag a "Do Not Disturb" sign the next time you're at a hotel.
teaching clock from learning resources
The same goes for your kids if you work at home. They don't always understand that a parent in the house might not be completely available to them. Create a sign or signal that alerts them you're busy. Or get a teaching clock, and move the hands to a particular hour so they'll know just when you're back on parenting duty and ready to help them find that soccer uniform.
5. Multi-task when you can--or for goodness sakes, get a Bluetooth headset!
We can't tell you how much more we are able to get done with the help of Bluetooth headsets. It's like having that extra hand parents are always joking that they need. What really sets the Motorola Elite Sliver Bluetooth Headset apart are the amazing features that truly let you be hands-free, so you can talk while you tweak that spreadsheet, or take that conference call while you make the bed (ha, we've done that).
Not only can you use the voice controls to initiate a call, but the free My MotoSpeak app for your Android 2.2+ phone is pretty sweet, allowing you to start a text, hear an incoming text, and reply, all with your voice -- no need to touch your phone at all.
And the fact that you can be up to 300 feet away from your phone and not have to carry it around with you? We like that a whole lot.
EXTRA-COOL: WIN IT! We're so excited to give away a Working Mom's Life Saver gift basket to one lucky CMT reader!
In it, you'll get two (whoo!) Motorola Elite Sliver headsets and more to help keep you going--like a beautiful leather laptop satchel, "Inspire" aromatherapy drops, an eco bamboo calculator, a pound of coffee plus a stylish Jonathan Adler on-the-go mug, a desk planner, and (whoo again!) a $200 gift card to Bliss towards whatever creams or lotions or pampering you deserve.
TO ENTER: Leave a comment on this post telling us your biggest productivity pitfall AND let us know which feature of the Motorola Elite Sliver seems most cool to you (psst...check their site for more information). You can earn a second entry by leaving a comment on our Home Office Organizational Tips post as well (see rules there) if you haven't yet done so. Good luck!.
Congratulations to Jennifer S! She won the Motorola's Working Mom's Life Saver gift basket.
Read more: https://coolmomtech.com/2012/03/productivity_guide_for_working_parents.php#ixzz1relxoztb
To learn more about our partner the Motorola Elite Sliver, you can like Motorola on Facebook and follow @Motorola on Twitter plus see this amazing headset in action on their YouTube channel.
Note: This is imported sample content. Original source.
