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Free Ways to Boost Your Productivity

January 11, 2012 By

Looking for Ways to Boost Your Productivity?

I’ve said it a lot, but the average worker is distracted more than 2 hours every day.  I am still astounded  by this number, though I’m not sure why.  I work from home, which means I don;t have the usual office distractions {chatty co-workers, copy machines, water cooler gossip}, but I do my fair share of interruptions.  Part of working from home is that it’s difficult to separate work life and home life, especially when you use the same computer for business and pleasure.  It can be almost impossible to turn off the personal side, even when deadlines loom large.  I have been looking for ways to reduce distractions of every kind in order to boost productivity.  I am aware that I am not exactly a technology guru, but maybe you aren’t either.  If that’s the case, it’s possible some of these might be news to you as they were to me.  Check out these great finds for those of us legitimately looking to be more productive.

  • LeechBlock: a Firefox add-on that allows you to block sites so you can avoid their distraction.
  • Customize Google: CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox extension that enhance Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask.com, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam). All features are optional and easily configured.
  • FlashGot: Download all the links, movies and audio clips of a page at the maximum speed with a single click, using the most popular, lightweight and reliable external download managers.
  • StatusBar: View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar – without the download window getting in the way of your web browsing.
  • Flashblock: Flashblock is an extension for the Mozilla, Firefox, and Netscape browsers that takes a pessimistic approach to dealing with Macromedia Flash content on a webpage and blocks ALL Flash content from loading. It then leaves placeholders on the webpage that allow you to click to download and then view the Flash content.
  • URL fixer: URL Fixer is an extension for Mozilla Firefox that corrects typos in URLs that you enter in the address bar. For example, if you type google.con, it will correct it to google.com (asking first, if you enable confirmation).
  • Tab Mix Plus: Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox’s tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager.
  • ScrapBook: Helps you to save Web pages and organize the collection.

And, a final productivity booster for any browser:

Check out these free productivity add-ons and this free white noise generator to get a little boost at work.

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Why Sound Masking Works

December 19, 2011 By

The average worker loses two hours of productive work each day as a result of distractions.  That loss of productivity costs businesses around $600 billion a year.   due to distraction.   Thus, it’s no surprise that managers and company owners are looking for cost-effective ways to cut distraction and reclaim their portion of the loss.  A highly effective solution is a sound masking system.

What is a sound masking system?

In its simplest terms, sound masking is a system that employs white noise as a low-level background noise to cover ambient noise.  Since conversational distraction is one of the largest contributors to worker-cited distractions, covering those conversations by creating speech privacy is an innovative means of dealing with them. The white noise itself is not unlike an HVAC, except that it is much more consistent.

Adding noise to cover noise seems counter-intuitive at best.  Why is white noise is better than typical office noise?  An easy way to explain that is to imagine how irritating an oncoming car’s bright lights are when not turned off at night.  However, imagine those same lights on during the day- you may still notice them, but they certainly aren’t dazzling or blinding.  The same thing is true in the office.  Loud noises can be almost muted with the use of consistent sound (like bright lights losing their luster during the day).

Why use sound masking?

The main two reasons to use sound masking technology are to achieve speech privacy for the purpose of improving confidentiality and productivity.

  • Less distraction at work: By masking conversations and excess noise, the average worker can be up to 25% more productive with their work hours. Sound masking installed in the entire office space will benefit the entire office.
  • Improved privacy and confidentiality: Many office situations need confidentiality – human resources, government services, medical facilities, counseling, and many more. Sound masking significantly improves privacy and confidentiality throughout an entire office. It uses white noise to make human speech unintelligible to those beyond the immediate conversation.
  • Decreased stress for workers: Most of us are not aware of the stress we experience from trying to block excess noise around us. Think about trying to write an important email, or work through a complicated problem, all the while there is a noise, maybe a conversation or a horn honking, that is trying to gain your attention.  According to a study by the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), even a small acoustic treatment can reduce worker stress by more than 25%.

The appropriate use of white noise in a work place, even on an individual scale, can lower stress and increase concentration by masking background conversations and noise. Quality office-wide, sound masking provides effective privacy and confidentiality, while decreasing office distractions.

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Giving the Gift of Productivity with Sound Masking

December 5, 2011 By

Holiday Stress

The Christmas season is, unfortunately, is packed full of activities, services, and events that end up making the holiday season quite stressful.  Trying to get it all done, and done well, while still accomplishing all the normal daily stuff we have to do is pretty difficult.  That’s probably why many dread it and feel so distracted by all the hustle and bustle instead of focusing on time with family and friends.

Sound Masking

If you feel distracted, you can bet your employees are just distracted, too.  From shopping lists and grocery bills to child care and visiting family, your workers struggle to stay focused, which is hard to judge.  The bad news is that it’s not just the holidays that are distracting.  Even January to October, the average worker loses up to 2 hours every work day as a result of distraction.  Distractions aren’t always daydreaming or thinking of gift lists.  In fact, at work one of the main culprits is conversational distraction.  It may seem that conversations are almost impossible to avoid unless you ban any and all chatter, which is not only an unwise managerial move, it’s also impossible.  However, what you can do is reduce the effect of conversational and noise-related distractions by using sound masking.  Sound masking is the use of white noise to cover other noises, which may seem an odd choice.  Adding noise to cover noise may seem counter-intuitive, but white noise combines sounds from the entire spectrum so that the brain can tune out less consistent, more distracting noises.  It’s kind of like how the dinner conversation fades when you start to wash the dishes…not that dinner conversations are annoying, but they don’t stand a chance against the steady rush of water at the sink.

If distracted workers are an issue in your office, give sound masking a shot- a better, more productive work environment is the best gift you can give your employees this year.

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Getting Thoughtful after Turkey

November 23, 2011 By

Tomorrow you will have eaten your turkey and pumpkin pie and will be appropriately stuffed, or maybe inappropriately stuffed…that’s your business not ours.  Your mind might start to wander.  You might do the math and realize that it’s less than a month until Christmas.  Having Thanksgiving tomorrow and Christmas in 4 weeks might be completely exciting or it might bring on utter feelings of stress.

The holidays should be a time of thanksgiving, celebration, and joy.  Instead we often feel stressed because we’re looking for ways to improve our bottom lines in an improving, but still tough economy.  You might have fewer workers but the same, if not higher, expectations for a brighter new year. These expectations are understandably stressful because they’ll be hard to accomplish.

Sadly, you’re not alone in your stress.  Besides the inevitable tension a declining economy ushers in, your employees are also stressed.  Interestingly, it’s distracted workers who feel more stressed.  It’s easy to deduce that distracted workers are disengaged workers who are unfocused at work.  What you might not know is that:

  • the average worker is distracted more than 2 hours every day- note this is the average worker, not the worst of the lot.
  • most workers actually feel stress as a result of that distraction

In fact, these distracted, disengaged workers suffer from several angles.  They:

  • are 18% less productive
  • have 27% higher rates of absenteeism
  • are 20-40% more likely to seek employment elsewhere
  • make 40% fewer attempts at problem-solving
  • experience more stress-related injuries as a result of not making ergonomic adjustments

Your company cannot afford loss of productivity, in addition to high rates of turn-over.  On the other hand, you can afford an ideal solution.  Sound masking is the addition of low-level background sound to reduce the impact of ambient noise.  Employees in treated areas feel less stress and are noticably more engaged and thus more productive.  Tough times call for creative measures.  Give us a try.

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White Noise Restores Energy at Work

October 18, 2011 By

Do you often feel completely drained before you reach the end of the day and struggle to finish your work on time? While you should look into medical reasons for low energy, sometimes the culprit is hidden in plain sight. Try these tips to reduce the amount of energy that is wasted by normally office situations and recover some of your lost productivity.

Try Using White Noise – It takes a great deal of energy and effort to concentrate in the midst of distractions and noise.  Most people lose up to two hours a day from interruptions and distractions at work. But a personal sound machine can help by covering unrelated conversations and surrounding office noise. Better yet would be office-wide sound masking that would benefit everyone. This will allow you to work with focused energy.

Limit Your Energy-Draining Tasks. Are you aware of specific tasks or certain people who drain you of energy and motivation faster than your normal work? Be deliberate about how you approach these tasks or people in your work day. Find the least stressful time of day for you, when you are not hungry or especially tired, and spend only 10 or 15 minutes dealing with this work.

Upgrade to Ergonomic Tools.  Ergonomic products are specifically designed to encourage a natural,  ergonomic posture where your muscles are at their lowest strain and and work is minimized. Start with a supportive, ergonomic chair that helps maintain good posture for long periods of time. With any chair, make sure your back has good support;  try adding portable lumbar support if your chair doesn’t provide enough.

Drink More Water.  If you wait until you feel thirsty, you are already dehydrated. Because our bodies and brains are made up largely of water; even slight dehydration of less than 5% decreases our energy and productivity by more than 20%. A good place to start is with the general rule of daily drinking at least eight glasses of water.

Everyday we are bombarded with  distractions, interruptions and physical discomfort that quickly, and unnecessarily,  drains our energy and breaks our concentration. Consider using white noise to cover the office noise that continually interrupts you. And upgrade to a good ergonomic chair to improve your posture and relieve some of the energy-draining pain. Adjusting your office environment and habits can make a huge impact on your energy and productivity.

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Interruptions & How Sound Masking Reduces Their Cognitive Cost

September 27, 2011 By

I often write about how frequent distractions are, and sometimes I wonder if managers are aware of just how pervasive they really are.  Talking about distractions and interruptions can seem like a scape goat for loss of productivity.  However, they are real and time-consuming problems that every worker faces.  Some distractions interruptions are inevitable, and some are not.  It seems worth the time to discuss both.  Thus, here is an interesting study on office interruptions.  I will break down the findings in several sub-headings.

What caused them?

Not surprisingly, the study found that most people suffered from both internal and external interruptions.  However, it also found that most managers suffer from external interruptions, most workers distract him/herself almost as much as others do!

How many were there?

About every 3 minutes, the average worker faced some sort of interruption or distraction.

How long did it take to get back on task?

When you’re interrupted, you don’t immediately go back to the task you were doing before you were interrupted. There are about two intervening tasks before you go back to your original task, so it takes more effort to reorient back to the original task. Also, interruptions change the physical environment. For example, someone has asked you for information and you have opened new windows on your desktop, or people have given you papers that are now arranged on your desk. So often the physical layout of your environment has changed, and it’s harder to reconstruct where you were. So there’s a cognitive cost to an interruption.

Interruptions are sometimes necessary, but they always derail productivity for the interrupted party.

So, back to the matter at hand….Distractions and interruptions are abundant, and while many workers cause their own, this does not help determine how to deal with them.  As I previously mentioned, some distractions are necessary- email notices for meetings and the like.

It’s difficult to control for internal interruptions, but you can control for external interruptions.  It’s not inevitable that your employees have to be held captive by others and their noise.  A more recent development has been the use of sound masking.  Sound masking is low-level white noise to cover office noise (i.e. external interruptions and distractions).  Interestingly, sound masking can help workers tune out their distractions, too- they tend to focus on work instead of looking for other things to do. Thus,  the result is less distraction, more focus, fewer errors, and even lower stress levels.

An effective manager doesn’t micromanage every detail.  On the other hand, (s)he does provide a productivity-friendly environment.  You don’t need to worry about every moment lost to interruptions, but you can guard against unnecessary distraction.

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Sound Masking Ties Efficiency & Effectiveness Together

September 9, 2011 By

The economy seems to be getting better {right?},but that doesn’t mean that all companies are thriving as they could be.  In fact, some are still laying off employees, while others are looking for ways to better utilize the work force they have left.  The best way to do that is to prioritize efficiency since it’s usually efficient businesses that thrive.  Here is one way to look at being efficient as it interplays with being effective:

“Efficient” is defined as working without waste or using a minimum of time, effort and expense. But, the definition is silent about the goals of the operation. A person can be very efficient at what they are doing but still not get to where they want to be because they aren’t doing the right things. That’s where “effective” comes in. “Effective” means “having the desired result”. Once the desired overall result is defined, the tasks leading to the result can be isolated and these tasks can then be completed efficiently….

The main idea is that being efficient and being effective are not always the same thing and that they must work together to work well.  In terms of your business, your own specific goals will determine how to be effective.  Being efficient is a little more universal.  The sad truth of the matter is that the average worker wastes 2 or more hours  a day because he is distracted.  Distractions come in a  variety of forms, such as conversations, ringing and/or buzzing phones, the clickety clack of high heels down a long corridor, co-workers’  lunch orders, etc..  For any company, large or small, a loss of 2 hours per employee is not exactly efficient.

An excellent option for increasing efficiency, and therefore productivity, is sound masking.  Most people can’t work in ceaseless clamor, but at the same time, they can’t be productive in silence either.  Sound masking is like white noise in that it provides a low-level “hum” that can help workers to tune out irritating distractions that keep them from being productive.

Many companies and small businesses have found that plugging the leak of conversational distractions is more than worth the initial investment.

 

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Sound Masking Provides a Good Work Context

September 8, 2011 By

Providing the Right Context for Good Choices

As parents we often discuss and even discipline our children based on their choices, whether good or bad.  I like this technique because it keeps my kids aware of the fact that their behavior, whether good or bad, is the direct result of their choices, whether good or bad, and not, contrary to their opinion what fate forced upon them.  My husband and I believe that if we are to hold our children accountable for their choices then we must also provide the right context for good choices.

The right tools for success

Similarly, if you expect your employees to make good choices with their time, it’s on you to provide the right context for those choices.  And while you can’t make your workers more productive, you can give them the tools to succeed.  Complaining about worker productivity and then doing nothing about it is irresponsible management.  It’s your job to provide the right context and the best equipment for business achievement and success.

Entrepeneur lays out 5 specific principles for worker productivity, including clear expectations, regular feedback, and the best technology and tools.  I would argue that one of the best pieces of technology you can give your employees is sound masking.  Clear expectations and daily feedback are great, but aren’t worth much if your workers can’t concentrate on their tasks due to excessive office noise.  Sound masking emits low-level background noise (akin to an HVAC whoosh) to softly, but effectively cover ambient noise.  The results have been more than positive:

  • Focus: the ability of office workers to focus on their tasks improved by 48%
  • Distractions: “conversational distractions” decreased by 51%
  • Error-rates: performance of standard “information-worker” tasks (measured in terms of accuracy [error-rates] and short-term memory) improved by 10%
  • Stress: when measured in terms of the actual physical symptoms of stress, stress was reduced by 27%

Better focus and fewer distractions and errors always lend themselves to increased productivity.  Throw in happier, less stressed workers, and sound masking is the whole package.

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Sound Masking for Productivity

August 18, 2011 By

Google: How to be more productive

If you google “how to be more productive,” you’ll get about 14 million tips, pieces of advice, or suggestions for how to be more productive.  Evidently, 13, 999,999 other people are also struggling to be as productive as they can be, and so they find things like 14 tips to be more productive, including buzz words like:

Prioritize, Organize, De-clutter, Purge, Set Boundaries, Tidy Up, Throw Away, Stack, Turn on, Turn off, Line Up, Color-Code, Ask for, Say No , File, Highlight, Set Aside, Tune Out

As you might imagine there are literally thousands of tips for productivity.  There are so many tips not just because so many authors are writing them, but also because different things work for different people.  In addition, everyone has their own problem areas that keep them from achieving their personal best at work.  However, most workers have 1 thing in common- they all waste too much time at work.  And, whether they are aware of it or not, whether they follow Tip#2073 or not, you as the manager should be aware and should take action.

  • Encourage your workers to assess time-wastes in their offices or cubicles.
  • Encourage them to take a few of the tips seriously and get their work spaces in order.

Good to note is that you don’t need to micromanage and incur the wrath of resentful workers by banning personal cell phones or email.  Being Big Brother doesn’t win loyal devotion anyway- workers will just turn their attention elsewhere if they’re looking for a reason too.  What you can do is respond to an overly stimulating (aka noisy, distracting) work place by implementing a sound masking unit.  Many businesses like Boeing and even medical facilities and military/government agencies like the Air Force have installed sound masking units to cover intrusive speech and noises and to boost confidentiality.  For most businesses, sound masking just reduces noises so that the sales guy wouldn’t distract the writer next to him, etc.

Whether you set aside and manage  time for specific tasks for your employees or provide a quieter area in which to work with sound masking, bottom line it is your job to do just that-manage time better.

 

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Wirelessly Tethered {& How Sound Masking Can help}

June 16, 2011 By

Wirelessly Tethered

I recently read an article about the tech distractions so many of us experience at work- this writer concluded that we are “wirelessly tethered” by our own gadegtry.  The article talks about the frequency of managers checking their email via their phones during meetings, even though most surveyed people turn off their phones to go to the movies.  It’s an interesting phenomenon- we multi-task during work but not during our free time.  Why is that?

…68% of people always turn their phones off at the movies. Almost two-thirds will tune out of meetings to read e-mails, tweet or take mobile phone calls. Half leave devices on at least sometimes when they go to bed.

The article doesn’t really say, but I would guess it’s because we feel so much pressure at work to perform- missing an important call, text, or message can kill a deal and take us out of the game.  Thus, maybe we feel tense about being available at all times.

Reducing Distractions

Unfortunately that kind of open-door policy for technology has allowed distraction to achieve  all new heights.  The article cites a study that finds:

  • More than half of U.S. workers waste an hour or more a day on interruptions: 60% come from electronic devices and e-mails, while the other 40% come from traditional sources, such as phone calls or chats with colleagues.
  • 45% of workers say they can’t go more than 15 minutes, on average, without an interruption. The average worker wastes 2.5 hours a week looking for documents missing in poorly organized electronic files.

Actually, other studies show that it can as much as 2 hours that workers lose to distraction, including conversational distraction.  But most studies agree that once distracted, it takes a lot of time to refocus.  That time costs and adds to the overall price tag- around $600 billion a year nationwide, or another estimate:$10,790 a year per worker.

Either way, that’s a big price tag for any business to sign off on.  So, don’t.  An easy solution for many distractions is sound masking.  It doesn’t turn off gadgets, but a sound masking system does allow the brain to tune out unnecessary noises.  So when one worker turns off all his gadgets and everyone else is tied to theirs, that worker doesn’t have to be held captive to others.

Sound masking is an effective resource for reducing distarction and increasing productivity in the office.

 

 

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