We’ve heard plenty of pros and cons when it comes to retiring to a home office over the past few years, and based on how things are looking at the moment, this independent business trend won’t go anywhere anytime soon. If anything changes at all in the near future, it will certainly be in favor of those fatigued and dispirited by cubicle restrictions and hungry for less formal and more inspiring workplaces.
As technology becomes even smarter and smaller, millions of dedicated workers have a chance to replace their white collars for their thinking caps and leverage some of the many perks of a digitalized society. Soon enough, our bedrooms will be an environment just as fruitful for running a business as any other, and software developers will devise more effective solutions to overcome our collaboration, management and productivity obstacles. Here are a few things to include in your home office kit.
1. Collaborative Brainstorming
A number of cleverly designed collaboration apps has been available online ever since the home office trend began, and the best of them will actually enable you to work as effectively as if you were surrounded by your co-workers or seated in your client’s office. These highly interactive, real-time collaboration tools come with an intuitive and easy to use interface, and they connect remote jobbers from around the world in the blink of an eye.
If managing a team whose members work remotely, or, like yourself, from the comfort of their homes, these apps will certainly help you land on the same page, all while staying productive and organized.
Try Slack or Wedoist for smooth project development, Screenhero when you want to share a screen with your co-workers, and Sketchboard, MindMeister or Google Keep if you want to mind-map and plan together with your team or simply share valuable lists and ideas.
So far, Trello has been keeping the title of the best free of charge shared project management tool available online, closely followed by BinFire, Basecamp and Proofhub. Use Scribblar, ConceptBoard and IdeaFlip for real-time collaborative brainstorming, or simply join your distant colleagues in appear.in for a half an hour of video conversation.
2. Efficient Management
Working from home is nowhere near possible without flawless organization. Time scheduling, bookkeeping, and team management are three of the majorly significant aspects of any business, and their importance is even greater in the unconventional workplace such as yours. If you are struggling to manage all of your accounts at once and need a joint platform you can access from different devices, then these time and finance managing apps will make your daily tasks unexpectedly easier.
To keep track of your time and gain deeper insight into how to most efficiently organize it, seek Toggl. Rescue Time is perfect for procrastinators, since it tracks the time you spend on various websites. ClearFocus, focus booster and Pomodoro Technique, on the other hand, are designed to remind you to take a break every once in awhile and to help you find your most productive work routine, all of which makes them brilliant for workaholics. If charging by the hour, HoursTracker will precisely calculate how many hours you’ve spent working on a daily basis.
Among personal finance apps, Wally, Mint, Wallaby, Digit, and Acorns are simply unparalleled. They can all be linked to the rest of your accounts, diligent enough to keep track of your credit card spending, and clever enough to notify you when you’re spending too much of your hard-earned money.
3. Keeping Sharp
The single most aggravating drawback of working from a home office is the frequent loss of focus. Even if you do function better in a relaxing environment, you have certainly already experienced some fluctuations in productivity that are much more difficult to solve when there’s no one around to remind you of your assignments. Luckily, the app market is flooded with productivity tools to streamline your workflow and optimize your performance.
If you’re busy parallax scrolling your Facebook News Feed and your previously planned tasks simply have to wait until you’ve reached the lowest point of a bottomless pit that is the internet, BetterBuzzer will remain quite loud and stubborn in its determination to remind you to acknowledge the scheduled assignment. Although pricey, Clear will certainly motivate you to clear your task list and Evernote will allow you to keep it nice and tidy, no matter how little time for organizing you’ve got.
However overwhelmed or lazy, these self-managing tools are all equally superb in making the best of your working hours. Taken together, collaborative, managing and productivity apps can replace even the best of personal assistants, help you achieve the work-life balance you’ve been so eagerly searching for and make you just as efficient as if you were right there, at the office.
The author is highly qualified and writes blog posts weekly.
