Employee Health, Guest Post By Krista Krumina on March 4, 2019.

How bad sleep affects productivity

Most people are able to recognize the signs of a poor night’s sleep in themselves. A short-temper, stress, headaches and fatigue are all common side effects. Fewer might be able to see the signs that bad sleep is also affecting their work performance.

If you’re not getting a healthy amount of sleep every night, you can experience serious disruptions to both your workflow and productivity. It’s crucial to make sure you’re getting the sleep necessary to remain an effective and efficient employee.

How to keep your New Year’s resolutions in 2019

“New year, new me!” – proudly shouted a billion people all across the world, and then promptly kicked their New Year’s resolutions the next day.

But not you. Not today, not tomorrow. You will keep your New Year’s resolutions this year. You will hold yourself accountable. You will take full responsibility for your actions. You will make yourself proud. Read more 5 min

Productivity Tools By Nora Inveiss on January 2, 2019.

20 productivity tools for work and life

There are so many things we can optimize to become as productive as humanly possible – to-do lists, eating habits, sleep patterns, break times. And now, we have access to even more tools to help us get even more done.

Time is the most valuable resource, thus any gadget that helps you save it is certainly worth the money. Without further ado – here’s a list of 20 gadgets that will help you and your team boost productivity:

DeskTime year 2018 in review

2018 passed fast, but what a year it has been! We know just as well as you that productive time means time well spent, right?

Some time has passed since our previous look-back post in mid-2017. Since then the number of DeskTime users has grown from 100k to 144k users.

But can we – the DeskTime team – serve as a productivity example? Well…we don’t mean to brag, but our own productivity stats for the year are pretty amazing – an average 87% of productive time!

For that, we have you to thank – DeskTime users and fans! To show you exactly what we accomplished this year – and what’s in store for 2019 – let us take you behind the scenes of DeskTime.

The complete guide to productivity during the holiday season

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the office is so delightful. And since you have so much to do… Get it done! Get it done! Get it done!

While Christmas is the time of the year to be humble, peaceful and with your loved ones, it’s also the time of the year all hell breaks loose and the work-life balance just disappears.

Enter stress, anxiety, fussy co-workers, sleepless nights and frantic holiday shopping.

You’re expected to finish up all your work projects and meet last-minute deadlines, plan your family’s holiday party and buy gifts – all whilst staying a functional human being.

How is that even possible?

The only way you can manage to do all of this is by being productive. And the main areas you’ll be interested to tackle this holiday season are:
Read more 7 min

News, Original Study By Krista Krumina on November 28, 2018.

Employees spend 2.3x more time ”workshopping” on Cyber Monday than on regular workdays

People can’t resist Cyber Monday deals – that’s a fact.

Cyber Monday 2018 hit $7.9 billion in sales, becoming the biggest online shopping day in US history. And if you’re wondering when do people find the time to spend such amounts of money, the answer is – during working hours.

A new study by DeskTime found that on Cyber Monday 2018, office workers spent 2.3x more time ”workshopping” – shopping while on the clock – than on a regular working day.

How to write productive to-do lists

Writing to-do lists is a helpful way to keep yourself on track with everything you have to do that day, week, or month. From tasks at work to picking up groceries on the way home – lists provide a simple structure and help you to arrange the environment around you.

But there’s one trick – the effectiveness of a to-do list depends on how you write it.

There’s no use in writing a to-do list if you don’t actually check off any of the items you need to get done. It’s easy to overestimate what you can accomplish and to write down every little errand and thing you should do, instead of focusing on priorities.

5 business reasons to offer remote and flexible work options

Digital technologies continue to reshape the world and how we live in it. As a result, it should be no surprise that they are completely redefining how we understand work.

Specifically, the traditional 9-5, Monday-Friday job is beginning to slip away. More and more people are working remotely, and with the growth of the gig economy, we can only expect this to be a trend to continue.

As a result, to remain competitive in the labor market, more employers than ever are offering their employees the chance to work remotely.

By giving people the chance to integrate this perk into their life is about more than just recruiting and employee retention. It just makes good business sense.

Here’s why you should hire remote workers:

Time tracking integrations – what DeskTime integrates with and how to use that

Fully automatic, hassle-free time tracking is great.

But you know what’s even better?

The ability to connect your time tracking with other tools you use on a daily basis to effectively plan your workday, manage your team and projects.

For project managers, it’s important to see who is working on what, what time each employee has dedicated to specific tasks, how much time the team spends in meetings, etc.

DeskTime integrations are made to let managers see the whole picture – in one place, without manually copying and pasting the information from one software to another.

As a DeskTime user, here’s what’s available to you:

Project management integrations (Asana, Basecamp, Jira, Zapier)
Calendar integrations (Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar)

I used to spend hundreds of my working hours on Facebook, so here’s what I did

I never saw Facebook as a harm to my productivity. Until one month, after checking my time tracking data I realized that I had spent 13 hours and 21 minutes of my working hours on Facebook.

That’s more than 40 minutes every working day spent browsing the newsfeed, checking random profiles and giving thumbs up to every new status update that came up.

That was also the month I spent every second day working overtime and feeling burned-out. After my discovery, I blamed Facebook. So I did what everyone would’ve done in my place: I blocked the newsfeed.

DeskTime blog