How to be more productive
<p>The great thing about being a freelancer is that no one will criticize you for spending three hours watching cat videos. The bad thing about it is that you most likely do not have three hours to spend on this. When your salary directly depends on your productivity, and you are solely responsible for meeting deadlines for your clients, it becomes critical to take advantage of your office hours to bill the most hours possible. To make your life easier, we have concocted a small guide to improving your productivity!</p>
<p><strong>Improve your work environment</strong></p>
<p>The work environment likely represents the most significant factor influencing your performance. Make sure you are in the ideal conditions for productivity. Isolate yourself from all distractions, both visual and auditory. To achieve this, establish your office in a place reserved for work: a separate room in the house, a coworking space or the local coffee shop if necessary. (Your kitchen table with a roommate listening to Netflix and another making dinner is more or less ideal as an office.) Then, block out any unnecessary distractions. Specifically, turn off the notifications of your cell and computer, clean out your work surface of any unnecessary papers or wear headphones if necessary. All these ways are good not to be disturbed during a period of work. </p>
<p><strong>Make lists</strong></p>
<p>Planning, planning, and planning is the key to success. The time taken to plan your day will never be lost, and making lists is the best way to visualize the work to be done. If possible, each morning, make a list of the work to be achieved during the day and establish your game plan. Plan time for each task and try to follow it as much as possible. Also, define the most important or complicated tasks to perform and get to them when you are most focused.</p>
<p>A good idea to take advantage of your less productive moments is to make a second list of things to do. This one only contains items that take 5 minutes or less to do: reply to emails, bill a customer, water the plants, etc. Then, when you feel the motivation is going down, take your list and do one or two tasks. That way, you'll remain productive (even in downtimes), and have the feeling of accomplishing your tasks.</p>
<p><strong>Delegate</strong></p>
<p>Clearly, we can not be the best in everything (although we’re sure you are). It is, therefore, unnecessary to waste time performing tasks that are outside your field of expertise. Delegate the task to someone more experienced than you, they will certainly do the job faster and easier than you. And for your part, you can keep your time to the tasks that you like and in which you excel.</p>
<p><strong>Use the right tools</strong></p>
<p>Online, there are thousands of tools at your disposal to improve your productivity. Of course, Momenteo is one of them. But, there is not only your billing that you can optimize. You can try project management applications like <a href="http://trello.com" target="_blank">Trello</a> to help you visualize what you have to do and the work you have done. Also, the <a href="https://gsuite.google.com/" target="_blank">G Suite</a> is remarkably effective at optimizing your time. For example, manage your schedule with the Google Calendar app and have all your events synced across all your devices.</p>
<p><strong>Focus on one task</strong></p>
<p>It can be tempting to try to do multiple tasks at once in order to be more productive. Obviously, when you work this way, productivity is just a feeling. It's proven, to be efficient, you have to work on one task at a time. So try to focus on the same task for short blocks of time of about 90 minutes and take breaks between these blocks. Working this way, in small intervals, will allow you to have the maximum productivity.</p>
<p>Now that we have revealed all of our productivity secrets, you have all the tools at your disposal to be more efficient in your work. So, you can optimize your office hours and accumulate billable hours! Happy billing!</p>