The 5 Essential “Tech” Tools for Your Home Office
Gear not to be overlooked in the quest for more productivity
If you had to pick five essential tech tools for working from home, what would you choose?
Consider all the “tech” around you; everything is fair game.
Do you have your list?
The question I keep asking myself is:
What would cause the most stress if I didn’t have access to it?
Mark Ellis and I recently discussed these five essential tools on his YouTube channel.
This article is a companion piece to the video.
1. Flow, hacking your brain
The first item is possibly the ultimate life hack.
It’s the concept of flow.
How often have you got ready to work, sat down at your computer, and your mind wasn’t in it? You stare at the blank page, and the words aren’t coming, or if they are, it’s like pulling teeth to get them to form cohesive sentences.
Many of you may relate to this struggle with writing.
I don’t recall when exactly I ran across this TED talk titled: Flow, the secret to happiness by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist, introduced the concept of flow. Flow is the mental state in which you perform an activity fully immersed in it. It’s a state where time doesn’t pass for you…It passes around you.
Knowing there is a state your brain can enter that puts you in the optimal condition to work is fantastic.
The first stage of flow is “struggle,” and that may be the hardest stage to learn to overcome. We have a natural tendency to procrastinate, and learning to push through is key to quickly moving to the next phase.
How many of us have cleaned our desks or watch one last YouTube video. Putting off work we know needs to be done.
I don’t want to make this article all about flow; many writers have touched on it in detail.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Tim Denning.
2. Brain.fm, your mind on music
Brain.fm is an app that uses music to induce your brain’s neural paths to synchronize and engage. This neural oscillation is mostly in the beta wavelengths, which is a key driver of flow.
In simple terms, Brain.fm utilizes music to create a specific reaction in your mind. That reaction helps you concentrate. Their studies have shown an increase of time on task by 39%.
An almost 40% increase in the time you stay working. If you typically work on a project for an hour, it would add an extra 24 minutes to your work time.
If you want to geek out, you can read Brain.fm’s latest research paper.
3. Noice canceling headphones, avoiding distractions
Utilizing noise-canceling headphones to block out distractions can extend these flow states to keep you focused for extended periods.
The headphones do an excellent job of keeping the world at bay and you in the zone. It may never be more apparent than living in lockdown with so many distractions around us.
Studies show it can take 20–25 minutes to get back into flow after a distraction. Image your productivity if you can keep distractions to a minimum.
4. Standing desk, stretch your legs
When these first came out, I wasn’t a fan. The idea of doing work while standing was so foreign it just seemed like a fad.
When lockdown happened, my desk was the first thing I updated in my home office. It is nice to be able to sit for a period and then stand for another.
While they might not be the bee’s knees of tech, the idea of standing during the day is here to stay. Science tells us it may not have as many benefits as once thought. But the act of moving during the day can help fight obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and many other ailments we associate with sitting for long periods.
Bonus — balance board
Had a balance board not come with my desk, I’m not sure I would have bought one. They look like a skateboard deck with a two-inch by ten-inch disk attached to the bottom. Once placed on the floor, you balance two inches off the ground. Similar to a small tetter totter.
You can rock side to side or back and forth. It may look like a novelty item. But I find it makes standing more enjoyable, and after adjusting to it for a few days, moving on the board while working is natural for me.
5. Grammarly, writing by AI
This site uses a combination of machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing to provide feedback on your writing. You can either draft documents on the site or paste them from other sources.
The system will then process your writing, looking for grammar, spelling, and context mistakes. It’s not perfect by any means, but the exciting thing is it is continuously getting better. Will it someday write articles for you? Maybe?
But for right now, it does an excellent job of alerting you of spelling and grammar mistakes. You will need to review all the alerts it finds and use your judgment if the change it recommends makes sense.
Wrap up
Thank you for letting me take a few liberties with my “tech” selections. Your list won’t be the same as mine, I’m sure. What is crucial for one person may not be for another.
If I had to pick one item from above that I couldn’t do without, it would be flow. It’s the area that I see the most significant increase in productivity. If you’re not utilizing flow, I recommend taking a look at adding it to your toolbox.
Please feel free to share your essential “tech” pieces in the comments.
