10 Steps to Improve Your Productivity

Working Naked Day is tomorrow and whether you're working in your birthday suit, a business suit or in your jammies, being productive is important. While you bring out the party hats, balloons, champagne - a cup of coffee will work, too - to help you celebrate this home office holiday, consider the following 10 ways to improve your productivity:

1. Focus on what's important. Are you working on something you need to finish today or could you handle it another day? Throughout the day ask yourself if what you are doing is the best use of your time. You don't have to do a self-check more often than every three hours because, well, you'd be wasting time.

Related: The To-Do Lists That Don't Work

2. Determine your best time of day and schedule important task for that time. I used to say that I was a morning person, then I was an afternoon person, and now I'm a "work whenever I can" person. Between my sons' and my clients' schedules, I need to be flexible. Concentrate on important tasks during the time you feel more productive and leave the less important tasks for when your energy level is low.

2010_0629_iStock_manbed_working3. Understand that at times you need to work around your family's schedule. When my sons were little, I worked whenever they napped. Fortunately, not unlike their mom, they loved to sleep so I was able to get many things done every day. A friend of mine, who is a graphic designer, works when his sons go to sleep at 8 pm and finishes his "workday" at 4 a.m. during the week. He sleeps for a few hours, has breakfast with his kids, and then goes back to sleep until around 11 a.m. When his children came home from school, he's available to spend time with them.

4. Avoid multi-tasking and stay focused. It's easy to start one project and then bounce to another without finishing the first. I used to be the perfect example. At the end of the day I was exhausted, but I hadn't accomplished as much as I'd hoped I would. Finally I made myself focus, stay on task and accomplish a certain amount of tasks every day. Some days I'm more productive than others, but overall I'm more productive than I used to be.

Related: Chicken Soup for the Stressed-Out Soul

5. Use a list to track tasks. Why try to remember a task when you can enter it on a list and forget about it until the day you need to handle it? Whether you use a paper-based system, your Smartphone, or your computer to record tasks, keep your list in one place. Some people get in the habit of using scraps of paper or sticky notes to remind them of what they need to do, but that system has a few drawbacks. First of all, your mind will stop seeing the sticky notes or new notes will cover old notes. Secondly, notes are easy to lose, and the one task you need to handle by the end of the day may be on a note stuck to the bottom of your shoe.

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For more on genConnect:

• How to Be a Work-at-Home Mom (SLIDESHOW)
• 10 Home Office Must-Haves (SLIDESHOW)
• Combat Obesity: Don't Let Your Desk Weigh You Down

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