Many individuals are now working from home because of the pandemic. While it can be difficult to maintain the same level of productivity you usually have in an office environment at home, there are tools you can use to help you focus and minimize distractions. In a recent interview in The Michael Peres Podcast, tech entrepreneur Paulius Gedrikas shared eight of his favorite productivity tools that you can try to maximize your productivity no matter what work environment you are in.
Born and raised in Montreal, Canada, Gedrikas is the current CTO of Canadian telecom service provider VoxSun and the Chief Gorilla of Web and Cloud Hosting company GorillaNerd.
Here are the eight tools shared by Gedrikas.
With the threat of the pandemic, Gedrikas said it’s not only important “that we are keeping ourselves safe by staying at home but you also have to keep yourself safe online.” He also warned that “websites are being hacked and exploited every day” and the best way to protect yourself is to a unique password for each of your accounts. To manage all of your passwords, Gedrikas recommends LastPass, which offers strong data encryption to protect users from man-in-the-middle attacks.
Tomighty is a desktop timer based on the Pomodoro Technique, a time management trick where an individual works for 25 minutes straight and then takes a break for 5 minutes before going back to work. It has been proven to help people keep their focus on tasks that require long periods of concentration. Podcast host Mikey Peres said that the technique helps him to get some exercise even on days when he doesn’t feel like working out. “For me, I use apps like this where every twenty minutes I’ll go ahead and do twenty to twenty-five pushups, and then I’ll get my quota of push-ups,” he shared.
To save and manage time, it is important to know how we are spending it in the first place. This is where RescueTme can help. It’s an app that can keep track of your activities online and gives you useful information such as which websites you spend the most time with and how much screen time you spend per website or app. RescueTime helps you to focus on what matters most by giving you the power to turn off your worst distractions. “This app really helps you dig in and find out where you can improve and optimize,” Gedrikas said.
One of the challenges of working from home is dealing with different kinds of distracting noises. Since you can’t turn off the noises around you the best thing to do is to mask it with noise you enjoy. Gedrilkas uses MyNoise, which offers different soundscapes that can help you relax and put you in the mood. The soundscapes include the sound of rain, waterfall, or even the sound of a cafe. “The attention to detail is incredible,” according to Gedrikas. But one of the best things about MyNoise is that it is free.
A good communication system is essential, according to Gedrikas, especially if you are working from home. For this he recommends VoxSun. The cloud-based solution offers telephone systems and lines for businesses, mobile professionals and individuals. It allows you to be reached anywhere in the world, even without a physical phone. “VoxSun also offers during this pandemic a free video-conferencing service,” Gedrikas added.
Made for G Suite users, Kiwi helps people who receive hundreds of emails per day to avoid being overburdened. “I have lots of tabs open on my computer, on the web browser,” Gedrikas admitted. “This helps me organize.” Since it is separate from your web browser, the app makes it easy to deal with your emails.
aText is a text expander tool that speeds up your typing replacing abbreviations with pre-defined phrases and lines so you won’t have to type the same thing over and over again. “I love doing this for my email signature for example,” Gedrikas said. “Instead of every single time typing out ‘Sincerely Paulius, I just use SSPA that automatically expands to that.”
“I’m encouraging everyone to use any kind of backup tool or sync tool,” urged Gedrikas so you won’t lose precious data in case your laptop gets stolen, for example. He prefers Sync over Google Drive or Dropbox because it features end-to-end encryption. So even if Sync.com crashes, you can rest assured that your files are still safe.
Click here to access the full podcast on Michael Peres’ show.
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