Today’s Worth Workin4 Wednesday installment is all about how having a simple whiteboard around your workstation can be beneficial for managing your work routine and productivity.

This is an age where all kinds of digital apps and tools are at our fingers’ tip! I recently decided to place a simple whiteboard near my work desk at home, although all of the work I do is online. Let me tell you why I did that!

Physical Productivity Tools V.S. Digital Productivity Tools

Basic and simple productivity tools like whiteboards, post-its, etc, seem so outdated in an age of digital gadgets and apps. But sometimes, the simple and basic is the best and most effective thing. Why? It’s an analogue productivity mean and method. A whiteboard in my case is something real and tangible, something in front of me, in front of my eyes! It is there all the time!

Here are a few benefits of using whiteboard as a productivity tool:

More Visual Engagement and Less Distraction

 When my to-do list was in a digital format, it was buried deep inside my phone. Consequently, whenever I would try to check something, I would get distracted by social media apps like Facebook and Watsapp and would forget what I was doing! Earlier than that, I was using a physical diary to create my to-do lists and work notes. Since the diary wouldn’t be in front of me all the time, I would struggle with active task accomplishment as a result.

In contrast, keeping my whiteboard in a place where I spend a significant amount of time, right in front of my eyes, helps me stay in touch with all that needs to be accomplished in a day and week, without getting distracted by other things.

Organizing My Day

My white board carries all the details of the assignments, tasks, deadlines and ideas that pop into my head from time to time. Having my to-do task list in black and white in front of me means I exactly know what needs to be done and how urgent it is. It helps me set a productive routine in place and cope with emergencies and detours. How you list down your day on your whiteboard is up to you. You can use productivity methods like Eisenhower urgency-importance matrix to organize your day or urgency. Or you can go for a simple and basic to do-list. Personally, I do the latter. It is simpler and more functional. I like writing down lengthier goals at times and so I feel that boxes constrain me.

Check Out: This video by Eisenhower’s channel explains the Eisenhower urgency-importance matrix well.

Keeping My Goals in Sight

Putting things in black and white, as opposed to the digital data form, helps me ensure that I don’t lose sight of my personal goals in the hum and drum of daily life. Even if I am able to manage to meet three out of five goals on my list in a day, I consider it an accomplishment.

 I get a real kick out of ticking off things from my list of the day/week and erasing them. Needless to say, keeping my personal and professional goals in sight helps me maintain some life and work balance.

Creating a Brain Dump

There are eureka moments in a day when great ideas, happy thoughts, and intuitions just show up. Often enough, they get lost in the practicalities and urgencies of the day, never to resurface again. There are times when I am browsing around and get inspired with something and want to work on it in the future. But then I browse away from that page and often forget about that stroke of inspiration. The digital distractions are real!

Most of us know that these ideas with potential can lead us somewhere professionally and personally. But we just don’t know how to hang on to them in the heat of the moment. So when you are jotting down the to-dos on your whiteboard, dedicate a small corner to your idea hub, and list down your ideas and inspirations there. Make sure that this corner doesn’t get erased. You can move the listed ideas to something more permanent like in a physical or digital diary, but then make sure to review it regularly, so as not to lose sight of them.

Reducing Mental Stress

As busy women multitasking among responsibilities, we always have a lot going on, a lot weighing in on our minds and souls.

We keep thinking, “we must do this, we must do that, this needs to get out of the way, that needs to be done, it’s good if we could do that as well.”

 These thoughts create a lot of mental stress because we are trying to keep track of everything in our heads. Thus, creating a physical and more accessible and visible to-do list takes off the load from our minds and make things more tangible for us to execute and follow through!

Physical Productivity Tools Work for Me…

A real question is that how productive, how much accomplished and happier we are in reality in this digital age where everything is online in form of data? For me, I struggle with so much! There are so many productivity and fitness apps that I have tried and liked. But I am not very sure how productive they have made me in actuality.

That’s why I am more in favor of placing productive routines and positive habits in place rather than relying merely on apps. Getting back to the basics, using a simple whiteboard in the physical form is something that is working for me, at least for now!

Share a Productivity Too/Hack/Tip

If there are certain productivity tools and hacks that are working for you, do share them with us at WW4Society.