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How to share slides as a virtual background in Zoom:
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360046912351-Sharing-slides-as-a-Virtual-Background
Kudos to Tracey Rob Perera for presenting the show!
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Thank you for the conversation sharing ideas, insights, encouragement and sharing slides on a virtual backgrounds. No excuse now to record my virtual content. Will test it out on TPC friends soon. Thank you
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Following on Laura Thomas’s question about #productivity software tools, I’d like to share an experiment I did some time ago to, amongst other reasons, increase my performance, in case someone finds it interesting.
My hypothesis was that, although I thought I was making a good use of my time overall, by understanding how was I exactly allocating it I’d be able to identify a number of adjustments I could perform to make myself more efficient and aligned with my goals.
What I did:
– Wrote down the buckets in which I was investing my time (research, network, sales, producing deliverables, family, friends, cultural activities, reading, sleeping, etc). Wrote down, for each bucket, 1) what percentage of time I’d like to invest, and 2) what percentage of time I thought I was already investing.
– Over period of a couple weeks I used Toggle to track EVERYTHING I was doing. Using, both, the desktop and the mobile app to make it easi…
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Understand if it’s private, but I would love to know where the over and under-investing was occurring!! I might have to try this myself. Maybe we could run it as a TPC community challenge one week!
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Good question, an interesting one is that I was over-investing in commute and under-investing in sports, so one of the changes I made was to expand the radious of my cycling area; reducing my commute investment in the same amount it increased my investment in sports.
Another surpsing one was shopping, which consumed just 0.04% of my time. This was due to a combination of reasons: me buying exclusively online, having a polished shopping cart saved and, probably, that for some reason I didnR…
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This sounds like a great experiment! The one I got back to again and again is the 80:20 principle – it’s a book that a previous manager gave to me, and although I can go off target, it is a good way to reassess!
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As portfolio professionals sometimes we might feel the need to multitask in order to ”increase” our performance and produce more work. This, however, can become a thread to our productivity due to the switching costs it involves for mind and brain.
This article published by the American Psychological Association reviews related research to help us understand how switching costs work: https://www.apa.org/research/action/multitask
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My most productive time is early morning when there are no calls or emails coming in, and I ’batch process’ tasks for efficiency
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Opened to read later – in some attempt not to multi-task as much
– love learning more about improving productivity! -
Interesting post Jesus Iniesta, thanks for sharing. I think there are times where multi-tasking can increase my productivity and times where my work quality suffers. This week I learned about diffused vs focussed thinking thanks to Paul Tiller and I think this has helped me understand when I am best to just step away and re focus so that I can increase my productivity.
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A very thought provoking article Jesus Iniesta and this carries on from the session that I ran for the team his week and that Fiona Chorlton-Voong was referencing. Interestingly, the next module in my series of ”Learning how to Learn” topics squarely tackles this area as I discuss and reveal the distractions that can cost us up to 23 minutes in lost productivity each time we lose focus!
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Ever wondered how listening to music whilst working affects productivity? Found a really interesting article about the topic: https://elemental.medium.com/do-productivity-playlists-actually-work-6d362bd23bf7
TL;DR:
– Maria A.G. Witek, a professor in the Department of Music at Birmingham University: “A lot of research seems to suggest that it’s best not to use any background music when studying,” Witek says. “The argument is that music will always reduce the amount of available attentional space, taking attentional resources away from the task at hand.”
– Witek speculates that it’s simply more fun and therefore more motivating, “even if concentration may be jeopardized.” If people are in a good mood while working, their performance might also be better, she says.
– Tram Nguyen, a member of the Cambridge Brain Sciences Team, recently found some evidence that low-tempo songs may benefit the regions of the brain responsible for memory and comp…
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I used to have background music when working but now prefer silence – for intense concentration. My wife says I look scary when I am in intense concentration mode ….
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I believe her!
More often than not I find that I also prefer silence (for which I use ANC headphones), but there are occasions when I feel listening to music boosts my productivity. Although I haven’t found what pattern works best for me, I feel it depends on my mood, the type of music and, more importantly, the type of work that I’m doing.
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I agree with both your points here Ben Legg and Jesus Iniesta, when I need to do deep work – I prefer silence but when I’m doing more creative work, I like to play a home spa playlist – it relaxes me 😬
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I’m kind of the opposite – when I’m doing creative things I often need silence, repetitive tasks/non-content tasks I’ll have an audio book or a film in the background, but when I need to get my head into a project I find music that’s familiar helpful but tends to be instrumental – my current go to is Einaudi’s Elements album.
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Ooh so interesting. I really need music. I use classical easy listening for focus stuff and then good stuff I like for admin easy stuff. But I associate it with more focus than silence now. I also sleep to white noise every night – blast the sea waves into my ears!!
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It was great to explore some technical ways to win! Looking forward to exploring more ways to help our community next week.