- Hey guys, by the end of this video, you're going to
have a tonne of tips, tricks, and productivity
hacks to increase productivity while working from home.
- [Andrew] Whether you always work from home,
or lock down has forced you to change where you work.
Keep watching this video to become more productive
more efficient, get more done and finish early for once.
- Sounds good to me pal. Let's do this.
(upbeat music)
Hey guys, Andrew and Pete
Founders of atomic here.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Now up until 2020, we always had an office to work from
but I like a lot of people,
we were forced to work from home
- And you know what?
We never thought we'd say this, but we actually
really love working from home.
We both have our own home offices
and Andrew often comes round
to mine because I can't keep him away.
I mean, because we're really good friends
and we always want to be around each other.
(heart beating)
Got away with that.
- Now when we first started working from home
we were actually quite nervous.
We thought it was going to decrease our productivity
but actually what happened was the opposite.
We found actually we became more productive.
We found that working
from home could actually give us less distractions
more time saved on things like the commute.
And, it's actually enjoyable.
- But, you need to set yourself up
for success because otherwise you'll just end
up spending all day lying on the sofa.
- Schitt's Creek is too good.
- And then you got to do the dishes
and the washing and the laundry, and then take another nap.
So here's five things you can do to
increase your productivity.
Working from home that we do now every day without fail.
Thanks for being my hand model.
- There we go.
- Number one is to set up your workspace
and then protect it and guard it with your life.
Whether you have a dedicated room for your home office
or you're just working in the spare bedroom or
off the kitchen table, you need to claim that working space.
That is your working space.
This is all about setting those boundaries
between work life and home life.
You don't want the two mixing
and this dedication to this boundary
of your workspace sets up that subconsciously
in your head to get you in the right frame of mind
if you are working from your kitchen table
then make sure you clear away your laptop
and note pad and all that stuff at the end of the day
and have a clear set up in the morning as well.
More on that in a minute.
- And then at number two,
plan tomorrow today, the coma is important.
This is by far our biggest productivity hack
and you know what?
We've always known
it works, but this year we've, set ourselves the challenge
of doing it every single day.
And this dedication has been transformational.
And it's simple.
Before we switch up for the day
we always just plan our agenda for the next day.
- And we do call it an agenda,
not a to-do list because we map
out every single minute by minute task by task
for the whole day.
This allows those to start in the morning, get on
with the very first tasks we know what we're doing.
We can just hit the ground running.
And then we know that we've got time to do everything else
in the day because it's all been scheduled
into a specific time slot.
And it's really important to have contingency time booked
in every day as well because what's the alternative Andrew?
- Well, the alternative Pete is pretty crappy
the alternative is starting the day
with a rough to do list spending the first 10 to 20 minutes
trying to like decide, okay, what am I going to do?
What am I going to do first?
I'm feeling overwhelmed and just unsure
that it's all going to get done.
That sucks.
So plan your agenda
not your to do a list first and then you can do point 3.
- Which is to have a clocking off time.
Yes. A clocking off time.
Why does that sound weird?
- I don't know why it was how you said it.
- You can try to make the time that you finish each day
consistent, but let's face it.
Life sometimes gets in the way.
However, if at the start of the day, you already
know what time you're going to finish
that clocking off time.
Then you all of a sudden have this goal.
You feel that a little bit more motivated to
make sure you do everything so that you can finish on time.
So you can go home with the rest of your day.
And if you have something fun,
booked in for after you finish
then you definitely are going to work harder
during the day to make sure that you finish on time to
make sure that you can go do that fun thing
or not let other people down that you've promised to do
- Part 4 is to have a morning routine.
Now, there are some crazy people out there.
And they are crazy because they profess
to leaving the house and re-entering it or doing
like a walk around the block to mimic your walk, to work.
We aren't on two of those people.
However, we do have a strict morning routine
that we do every single working day
from when the alarm goes off.
Things like walking, the dog, doing a bit of exercise
doing some meditation, getting showered, that kind of thing.
- Is showering part of your morning routine?
- Yeah. Not yours?
- No
- Good tell.
But then also when we first sit down to work
we have the very first 45 minutes planned
out of our working day.
That's always the same.
We hop on zoom or we say, hello, we catch up.
And then we check and reply
to any emails we need to do what we go into our
atomic members group
and answer any questions that's happened in there.
We hop into our team slot to answer any questions
that have been asked in there.
And then we always start the first agenda item
of work at 9:00 AM sharp.
- Having this routine is really good for productivity.
It allows you to take that into that
"at work" mindset instantly
and get you ready to rock the day with a good start
because you've done this a bijillion times
every single day, you're in that routine, you know
what's going on and you can just get going with it.
Before we go on to
the fifth tip that has actually completely
transformed our productivity
and a cheeky little bonus tip at the end, too.
If you haven't already, we'd love it.
If you could give this video a like a share
and a little subscribe too.
It'd make us feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside.
And don't you want that?
- Pete's feeling extra fuzzy actually.
Cause he hasn't showered.
Okay. Let's talk the biggest productivity killer
and how to slay it.
Two words.
Zoom. Calls.
Zoom. Calls
- Zoom meetings.
- It's calls.
- Okay.
- Don't, don't ruin the vibe.
Zoom calls that go on too long.
Have no agenda, have no stopping time.
Have no point in existing are going to suck away
your home work productivity.
And here's how you simply fix it.
- Tip five is to take your zoom calls out of your most
productive working times.
When are you most productive?
For us, it's between nine and 1:00 PM.
That's our sweet spot.
And for that reason, we hardly ever
take any meetings, any calls
during that time, it's like no distraction, deep focus time.
If we need to do a call, we will fit it in between one
and 3:00 PM.
This is when our energy is flagging a little bit
and actually speaking to someone rejuvenates us,
and almost forces us to put a smile on our face and be
in the moment.
- And to make this even more effective.
That bonus tip is to schedule back to back zoom calls.
Our default zoom meeting length is 30 minutes
and we'll schedule the on the hour and half past the hour
back to back. This keeps the meeting focused.
It keeps the meeting productive, and if it's running on
and you can see that you have another meeting starting
in say five minutes time, you can politely and honestly say
"Hey, my next meeting has
just popped into the waiting room."
And it works like a charm
for just keeping them focused and on track.
- We'd love to know your working from home productivity
hacks in the comments below.
And while you're down there,
make sure you hit that subscribe button to
make us feel all nice and warm and fuzzy.
Here's been Andrew.
- I've been Andrew.
See you next time guys.
(upbeat music)