Distractions are a constant thing in life, with the culture that we have today where there are a lot of things being pushed to consumers that may not even be that useful for us in our daily lives. They can especially be detrimental to your work life as these distractions can cause less productivity in general and lower your work output in general which may lead to problems with your management and company. Here are some of the 5 distractions that we have identified with some of the workers who work here at From Here Cebu and how to potentially eliminate them.
The first one is social media which we are familiar with, everyone nowadays has social media and we constantly find ourselves aimlessly scrolling through social media just trying to keep up to date with what our friends and families are up to. This can take up so much time of the day when this time could be used to do work instead, a way to eliminate this is by installing apps that help us manage our time better and not having social media on our work devices.
The second distraction we tend to notice is that of noise around the workplace, with the advent of working remotely a lot of workers have opted to work in coffee shops which tend to be noisy and hectic with the number of customers that these coffee shops tend to be very noisy and tend to add distractions when it comes to working. The best solution for this is to find a space where making noise is not allowed like a co-working space such as From Here Cebu.
The third distraction we have identified is the people that you work with on a daily basis, your co-workers. Your co-workers tend to be chatty sometimes and that leads to you being distracted during work hours, Productivity tends to dip by up to 66 percent if you can hear someone talking while reading or writing, according to a TED blog post, so with office chatter being of the things adding to the noise, we need to learn to cut down on noise and focus on productivity more. A way to do this is to separate ourselves from our co-workers or work in common places perhaps like a co-working space where we would be affecting other people’s work if we continue to chat with our co-workers for none work-related stuff.
The fourth distraction we have identified is that of unnecessary meetings. There are lots of meetings that happen in a workplace that are actually unnecessary, where there is no output or action points for the meeting and it just ends up going around in circles. A lot of organizations are guilty of this and companies need to implement better guidelines when it comes to meetings. An immediate solution to this would be to limit the use of meeting rooms and the like, like the meeting room we have at our co-working space at From Here, where the use is only limited to the availability of the meeting room.
The fifth and final distraction distraction which has been a distraction for ages, is a cluttered work space. Having a cluttered workspace distracts your focus from the task at hand as your focus is directed to the items in your workspace or even your computer. The solution to this is always simple, decluttering and keeping only what you need in the space that you work in.
Pros and Cons of working in a co-working space
Co-working spaces have increased in popularity in recent years due to more companies switching from a physical workspace to a remote work space. More people are able to just work from home or a co-working space like From Here Cebu, where they don’t need to brace through traffic especially here in the Philippines just to get to the office every day. There are many different co-working spaces to choose from and the way you should go about choosing the right co-working space is based on your needs as well as your geography. In this article, we will elaborate on the pros and cons of working in a co-working space.
Pros
– Different Options – Co-working spaces offer flexible rental options based on what an employee needs may it be: day, weekly, or monthly passes. If for example, a graphic designer for your company only comes in once a week every month to attend to his deliverables then you can just give him a weekly pass to do this. Eliminating the need to dedicate a workspace for him that may not be used for the rest of the month if it was in a traditional workspace.
– Amenities – Co-working or shared spaces mostly have the different amenities that you need for work like internet access, printer, fax machines, backup generators, etc. This allows you to save on buying equipment in the office that may just be used a few times and wouldn’t really justify the cost of buying that equipment. For example, at From Here Cebu, we have a printer for your printing needs, two Fiber internet access points, and meeting rooms for when you need to use them and they are available to use based on your membership.
– Events, Network, and Community – Co-working spaces usually have events that happen on a weekly basis allowing you to build your network and a community that could surely benefit your business. You could meet potential new partners or clients just off these events. Just like at From Here Cebu, we have different events from different industries like music, gaming, start-ups, and other forms of arts that happen regularly.
Cons
Privacy – It’s a shared workspace, where you have to share the space with other people that will be doing other work or maybe in the same industry as you. They may be able to look at the work that you are doing and perhaps get inspiration or business practices that are confidential to your job and company.
Limited Customization – Since a co-working space is already pre-built, it would be hard to customize the workspace to you however you like. You will have to work around what is already there to create the workspace that you would like when you get a longer membership with a co-working space. At From Here Cebu, we allow long-term members to customize their workspace with the number of monitors as they have their own spaces, and we also provide a locker to keep the items secure along with the security personnel that we have in place.
Distraction – Co-working spaces or shared spaces tend to get crowded, with some of these clients doing voice accounts and even how hard they try to lower their voices, their voices can still distract us at times. At From Here, we try our best to mitigate this con by letting our clients do voice accounts only when they have a specific Jabra headset that captures the voice of the speaker the best without having to shout or so.
How to use AI to boost your productivity
AI has become a significant part of our world today and how we work, many of the things that have become routine to us in the past have now been automated by things like AI. Things like data entry and customer service have been automated by many AI platforms thus making our lives easier as they handle routine-based tasks allowing us to focus more on non-routine tasks that require more critical thinking. With the recent innovation of AI, it has now been able to assist us in completing these more critical thinking-based tasks. So here are a few tips from us on how to fully utilize AI to help increase your productivity.
First of all, learn to automate repetitive tasks. Putting time into routine or repetitive tasks can be seen as a waste of time in this day of age, we have systems and software that can automate these different things. For example, instead of having an executive assistant sort out data or do data entry, you can use AI such as data.ai and axiom ai which allows you to automate tasks like data entry for your business. Aside from that, you can also use AI that can automatically transcribe voice notes into text which can save time from having to transcribe meetings.
The second tip is to use AI to help boost tasks that require critical thinking, these are tasks like creating an article or perhaps editing a video. For example, you can use ChatGpt to help create your article but not necessarily create the article itself, it helps you create the idea of the article and get inspired by what you are trying to write about which helps you create an article much quicker. Aside from that there is also AI which helps video or photo editors like what Adobe and Filmora are launching to help boost their users’ productivity.
The final tip that we can give to help you start on your AI journey, is that it helps you to communicate. Communication is part of our work whatever form it could be, may it be communicating with businesses that could be our clients, workmates or general customer service, we need to effectively communicate to be able to be effective at our work. There are AI tools that can help us in being productive, for example, Grammarly allows us to write faster by correcting our grammar as we go about writing an email for example. There are also AI tools that can help you automate customer service, allowing you to create a bot which answers FAQ and filter out the enquires to only allow the one the needs attention to come through to the customer service team.
