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The Best Online Cloud Backup Service

The four other online backup services that made my cut based on price and must-have features are all reasonably good but lacking in one or more ways that Backblaze and IDrive are not.

Service Acronis True Image 2018 Backblaze ElephantDrive IDrive Online Backup Carbonite Zoolz Cloud Archive for Home
Price for one year $100 $50 $120 $70* $60 $70*
Storage at above price 1 TB Unlimited 1 TB 2 TB Unlimited 1 TB*
Computers covered at above price 1 1 Unlimited Unlimited 1 5*
Cost for 1 TB per month $8 $4 $10 $6 $5 $6
Family/group plan cost $150/year (3 computers) or $160/year (5 computers) N/A See note N/A N/A $250*
Family/group plan storage 1 TB N/A See note N/A N/A 4 TB*
Family/group plan computers covered 3 or 5 N/A See note N/A N/A 5
Versioning 20 versions Unlimited Unlimited 10 versions Windows only Unlimited
Encryption AES-256 AES-128 + public/private key AES-256 AES-256 128-bit Blowfish AES-256
External drive as source Yes Yes Yes Yes Windows HomePlus plan ($80/year) or better only Yes
Network drive/NAS as source Mapped network volumes only No NAS devices only Yes No Yes
External drive as destination Yes No No Yes Windows HomePlus plan ($80/year) or better only Yes*
Personal encryption key Yes Yes Yes Yes Windows Only Yes
Folder syncing Windows only No Yes Yes* Yes No
File sharing No No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Retention of deleted files/old versions Indefinite (user preference) 4 weeks Indefinite (user preference) Indefinite* 30 days Indefinite
Deduplication No Client-side, block-level Client-side, file-level No No Client-side, block-level
Seeding No No No Yes No Yes
In-place restoration Yes No No Manual Yes Yes
Physical restore media No Yes Yes Yes Available only with Prime plan for Windows ($150/year), and costs $120 No
Continuous backups No Sorta Yes Yes, for files under 500 MB No No
Scheduling interval Minimum once per hour Automatic on file change, once per day, or manual Automatic on file change, once per day, once per week, or once per month Automatic on file change or minimum once per day Minimum once per day Minimum once per 12 hours
Throughput (default settings, Mbps) 25.35 19.58 18.87 27.1 4.64 16.83
Throughput (customized settings, Mbps) 19.82* 22.4 18.87 27.1 — 16.83
Native Mac/Windows apps Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Notes Premium subscription details shown here. One-time purchase, no storage: $50. One-year Advanced subscription, 250 GB: $50.*Default = Optimal setting; customized = Maximum setting. Oddly, Maximum was much slower than Optimal in my tests. — Paid accounts permit you to back up an unlimited number of devices and also set up three sub-accounts.ElephantDrive uses a Java app. *Price: Discount offered for first year. IDrive also offers a $100 per year, 5 TB plan.*Sync: Uses separate storage space.*Retention: User-specified pruning is optional. Claims upload speeds of up to 10 Mbps. *Price and storage: $70 per year for Family plan (1 TB); $250 per year for Heavy plan (4 TB). Promotional prices are currently $40 and $100, respectively.*External drive: Local storage can be used only in addition to cloud backup.

 

Acronis True Image 2018 offers a one-year subscription with 1 TB of storage for $100; you can also choose a less-expensive plan with only 250 GB of storage. True Image selects the whole drive by default, backing up every single file on your disk, so you could restore your entire drive if you wish—but that’s a process I wouldn’t attempt while using a broadband connection with a data cap. (I recommend clicking Change Source to manually choose what to back up.) Oddly, encryption is not enabled by default, but you can easily turn it on before starting a backup. True Image offers a personal encryption key, versioning (up to 20 versions), indefinite retention (user-configurable), delta updates, and in-place restoration, all of which are good things. It also lets you select external drives, including mapped network drives, as either the source or the destination.

In my tests, with True Image’s default network settings, throughput was a speedy 25.35 Mbps—the second-fastest result after IDrive. But when I changed the data-upload speed from Optimal to Maximum, throughput inexplicably dropped to only 19.82 Mbps. I repeated the test several times to confirm this finding, and the Maximum setting was always slower for me.

However, True Image runs only on a schedule, not automatically when files change, with a maximum frequency of once per hour (and a default of once per day). It does not perform deduplication, which means you may waste time and storage space backing up identical or near-identical files. And the service offers no option to seed a backup by sending in a hard drive, or to receive backed-up files on physical media. Folder syncing across devices is an option, but only for Windows users.

The Windows version of Carbonite ranks far ahead of the Mac version. Windows users get versioning and a personal-key option; they can also choose higher-priced Plus and Prime plans with more features, such as the options to back up external hard drives and receive restored files on physical media. But those higher-priced plans make Carbonite considerably more expensive than Backblaze, and Carbonite still provides only 30-day file retention, a maximum backup frequency of once per day, and no seeding option. You must also manually select all the files and folders to back up. And although the company says that it no longer throttles the connection after backups reach a certain total size, and that it offers “upload speeds of up to 10 Mbps” (which is to say, the speed is artificially restricted on the server side), the maximum throughput I saw in my tests was only half that, at 4.64 Mbps.

A screenshot of the Windows version of Carbonite.
The Windows version of Carbonite lets you use a personal encryption key; you can select the option during setup or after the fact (as shown here). Mac users don’t have this option.

ElephantDrive recently increased its storage-space options such that you can now get 1 TB of storage for $10 per month (previously, $10 per month got you only 100 GB), and it offers both versioning and a personal-key option, so I tested the service for the June 2017 update to this guide. ElephantDrive requires Java, so you see a prompt to install Java if it’s not already present on your computer. Unfortunately, like many Java apps, ElephantDrive has an awkward interface, and because ElephantDrive requires a standard Java installation, it subjects your computer to unnecessary security risks. ElephantDrive backs up your Desktop, Music, and Pictures folders by default (not your entire Home folder), but you can make changes to the selection before the backup runs.

Finally, two other issues make this service far less attractive than Backblaze or IDrive. First, ElephantDrive offers deduplication but not delta updates—make even a tiny change to a file, and it uploads the whole thing again, wasting time, bandwidth, and storage space. Second, although the app offers versioning, the interface makes seeing and restoring older file versions unnecessarily cumbersome. On the plus side, in my tests its measured throughput was a healthy 18.87 Mbps, at which rate you could back up about 212 GB per day; the company also has a version of ElephantDrive that runs on many NAS devices, giving you a good way to back them up to the cloud.

I had a hard time getting past the awkward and unintuitive interface of Zoolz Cloud Archive for Home. Once I figured it out and manually added the folders I wanted to back up, I tested throughput at a respectable 16.83 Mbps. However, none of the settings I tried that were supposed to improve throughput—including Turbo mode and multi-threaded uploads—improved that figure. Zoolz backs up your files a maximum of once every 12 hours, which is far too infrequent. And the restoration process is by far the most confusing I’ve ever seen: You have to launch a separate app to restore files, and although you can restore them in place, finding the ones you want is unreasonably hard. The display doesn’t even distinguish files from folders except by color, and it doesn’t offer a hierarchical or tree display—you must double-click folders endlessly to drill down to the file you want, and repeat for each additional thing you want to restore. Zoolz offers 1 TB of storage for $10 per month, though multiple computers can share that space.

We also tested SOS Online Backup for a previous update to this guide; at the time, it met our criteria for inclusion. Since then, the company has changed its pricing, and the service no longer comes close to offering at least 1 terabyte of storage for less than $10 per month. We tested it only as a Windows option, as the service has no personal-key option for Mac.

Finally, a few words about some well-known online backup services I didn’t test because they failed to make my cut for one reason or another:

  • Depositit: Prices start at £10 (about $16) per month for 3 GB.
  • DollyDrive: This service starts at $5 per month for 500 GB and offers 1 TB for $10 per month (the company also offers a plan with unlimited storage for a single computer for $6 per month), but it’s Mac-only.
  • IBackup: When I initially researched the field of services, I dismissed IBackup because it offered only 10 GB of storage for $10 per month, well below my requirement of 1 TB; in addition, I came across a good number of terrible customer reviews. The company later increased storage to 1 TB for the same $10 per month, bringing it in line with the other services in my final list, and I made a note to investigate it further. On my most recent examination, however, the company was back to charging $10 per month for only 10 GB, with a “limited-time” promotion of $10 per month for 500 GB or $20 per month for 1,000 GB. With or without the promotion, it didn’t meet my price cutoff.
  • JustCloud: The last service I cut from contention, JustCloud charged almost $260 for two years (just over $10 per month) for 1 TB of storage at the time of my research, but it didn’t offer a personal-key option.
  • Livedrive: Although the price—$8 per month for unlimited backups from one computer—isn’t too bad, neither the site nor its software makes any mention of a personal-key option. And all the servers appear to be located in the UK, which is likely to mean slower performance for people in North America.
  • Memopal: A price of €79 per year (about $90) gets you only 500 GB of storage.
  • MozyHome: Mozy charges $6 per month for just 50 GB of storage from one computer, or $10 per month for 125 GB of storage from up to three computers.
  • Norton Online Backup: A fee of $50 per year gets you 25 GB of storage for up to five computers.
  • Rhinoback: This service offers 20 GB for $50 per month; 1 TB costs an astonishing $1,300 per month.
  • SpiderOak One: Although I like everything about SpiderOak One’s security and privacy offerings—private keys are the only option—this service is just outside my price-range cutoff, at $12 per month for 1 TB. It offers syncing across devices but otherwise has little to recommend it over Backblaze.
  • SugarSync: Just 250 GB of storage costs $10 per month.

via The Wirecutter
The Best Online Cloud Backup Service

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Building a Gigantic Blender Is the Best Use For an Unwanted Lawnmower

GIF

What do you do when you move into a house without a lawn and no longer have any need for your electric mower? That’s easy, you strip it down and use its spinning blade to build an over-sized blender that can slice and dice much more than just chunks of ice.

Giaco Whatever’s latest experiment easily makes the list of things you definitely shouldn’t build at home—unless you’ve got a super high-speed camera and can capture fascinating footage of soda cans and ping-pong balls getting shredded to bits. In addition to processing decidedly non-food objects with ease, we bet this monstrous blender could whip up a bathtub full of margaritas faster than you can say Jimmy Buffet.

[YouTube]

via Gizmodo
Building a Gigantic Blender Is the Best Use For an Unwanted Lawnmower

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Ring launches its own DIY home security system

Ring may be best known for its video doorbells, but they’ve been branching out into a fully fledged home security solution. Today, Ring announced the Ring Protect, a DIY security system that brings together all of the company’s products in one seamless system.

The base Ring Protect bundle starts at $199 and includes a base station, keypad, a contact sensor (for a window or a door), a motion detector and a range extender. Presumably, you will be able to buy more sensors and keypads to add onto your system, but Ring doesn’t have them available for preorder on an individual basis yet.

The Ring Protect is designed to work with existing Ring video doorbells and security cameras for a seamless home security experience. It’s $10 per month (or $100 per year) for cloud video storage for an unlimited number of Ring devices plus 24/7 professional monitoring and cellular backup (if you have the Protect base station). That’s not a bad deal at all, especially if you already own Ring devices.

The Ring Protect bundle is available for preorder today at Ring.com, BestBuy.com and HomeDepot.com. It will be available for purchase in Home Depot and Best Buy physical locations later in October.

via Engadget
Ring launches its own DIY home security system

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Building a Series A SaaS valuation estimator (2017 edition)

Alex Rosen is managing director at Ridge Ventures.

More posts by this contributor:

I have financed nearly 50 early-stage companies and the question of proper valuation comes up in every financing. There is the obvious tension: Generally speaking, the existing shareholders would like the highest valuation possible, while the new investors would prefer the lowest valuation. For founders, understanding how VCs will look at valuation is critical for a successful fundraising process.

For an investor, initial valuation is one of two determinants of eventual return. The other is the size of outcome. As an investor, you’re willing to pay a higher valuation if you think the outcome is going to be great (both in terms of size and probability). There are several factors that influence, for the investor, the probability of the company achieving the great outcome: experience of the management team, size of the market, attractiveness of the market, early customer proof points and initial traction.

How much weight the investor gives each of these factors changes over time. The largest swing is where we are in the market cycle. Right now, we remain in the second-longest bull market in equities of all time, so investors are generally feeling more optimistic. So I plan on updating this estimator when there is a major market shift (or when I get more data).

These ranges also vary quite a bit by individual VC. For instance, I personally tend to value the founding team above all else, as long as the market is attractive and I find the product compelling. So I will pay a higher valuation when I have great confidence in the founding team. Other firms may value the market opportunity higher though, for example.

To help SaaS founders get a more accurate sense of valuation for their Series A funding, I’ve set out to create a funding estimator that lays out the major variables that affect valuation amounts. The estimator can result in a fairly wide range, but at the very least serves as a guidepost.

A couple of caveats before we get into it: Numbers for each major section are cumulative. Pick the right number of “points” for management, market, traction, location and add together. Also, these numbers are most suitable for enterprise SaaS companies dealing with larger customers. While the variables are always important, the value attributed to them changes over time. And lastly, the competitive dynamic (number of firms that want to invest in your company) can make a big difference.

With these disclaimers, here are the variables, and how much “value” you can expect will be attributed to it:

Variable

Valuation

Notes

1. Team

 

Relevant prior experience but not as CEO

+$5M

Founder contributed to the success of a prior venture, in a related market.

Repeat successful founder

+$10-20M

Founder built prior business to a reasonable revenue level and/or achieved a good outcome for investors. 

2. Market

Hot space (AI, Big Data, AR/VR, Etc.)

+$5-20M

Really big range. Large new market opportunity is one of the biggest drivers in a VC decision. If it’s not a big market, you probably can’t get it funded. Period.

3. Traction

Do you have a few customers?

+$5M

Once you’ve moved past development stage, you are creating value

Do you have $1M-$2M ARR?

+$10M

$1M ARR is a “magic” threshold for a lot of investors to create the next level of value

Do you have $2M-$5M ARR?

+$25-35M

Over $2M in ARR puts you above most Series A-stage companies.

4. Silicon Valley location

+$5-10M

Just having a Silicon Valley location is not enough, so you need some combination of the prior attributes, but generally Bay Area companies end up raising money at a premium.

 

Here are a few examples:

  • Example 1: Repeat CEO (10-20), interesting but not “hot” space, pre-revenue, Silicon Valley (5-10). Valuation range $15 million-$30 million.
  • Example 2: First-time founders without a ton of prior experience, located outside the Bay Area, a “boring industry,” and a $2-5M ARR (25-35). Valuation range $25 million-$35 million.
  • Example 3: Repeat CEO (10-20), hot space (5-15), based in Silicon Valley (5-10), with a few customers that can be referenced (5). Valuation range $25 million-$50 million.

Of course, this a fairly broad estimator and it won’t be tough to find outliers that break the formula — but, in general, it should lead to generating valuation ranges that could help SaaS founders wrap their heads around what is possible and what they should aim for with their first round of venture capital funding.

Featured Image: Bryce Durbin

via TechCrunch
Building a Series A SaaS valuation estimator (2017 edition)

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Officials Investigating Hugh Hefner’s Death Suspect Foreplay

LOS ANGELES—Citing the overwhelming amount of physical evidence present at the scene, Los Angeles Police Department officials announced Thursday that they now suspect foreplay may have been involved in the recent death of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. “Upon entering Mr. Hefner’s bedroom, there were clear indications that his death was not platonic in nature,” said LAPD detective Marcus Rosetti, adding that the presence of feather ticklers and recently lit scented candles suggested that Hefner was getting worked up at the time of his passing. “However, forensics will still have to test several samples of massage oils found in proximity to Mr. Hefner before we can make any conclusive determination.” Rosetti went on to say that, at present, police believed the perpetrators of Hefner’s death were six or seven individuals working in concert.

via The Onion
Officials Investigating Hugh Hefner’s Death Suspect Foreplay

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How to Optimize Your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System

How to Optimize Your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System

Your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is one of the most vital components of your organization’s operations.

For one thing, it tracks customer information and provides reports on historical performances. Additionally, it provides valuable insights into a business’s departmental interactions. This information allows you to strategically position your business for the future.

It’s comes as no surprise that CRM systems have evolved from being simple sales tools to something more. Where once they were used only for capturing customer and prospect data, nowadays smart businesses use them as vital tools to improve interdepartmental operations.

Here is a list of some of the areas where you can optimize the capabilities and features of your CRM system to boost overall productivity.

 

RELATED ARTICLE: BIG DATA AND ANALYTICS ARE NECESSITIES FOR MODERN BUSINESSES

 

Automation of Data

In today’s fast-paced world, it’s not prudent to stick to the traditional methods of collecting and analyzing data. Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, and paper forms are no longer sufficient to the task. Furthermore, you need to be sure that the data stored in your system is up to date. The two most important places to start with in your CRM definition are:

Sales

Salespeople spend a lot of time logging customer information from their daily business interactions. The right CRM sales automation tools will free up your sales team, giving them time to concentrate on other core aspects of the business. Moreover, the tools will automatically update the data from time to time.

Marketing

For greater efficiency, use marketing forms that sync information automatically to your CRM database. Also, avoid feeding your CRM system any unnecessary data by always mapping the correct fields and following all duplication rules.

 

Stale Records

Over time, some records on your CRM system will become inactive or redundant and hence useless to your marketing campaigns. When they do, label such records as inactive so that your employees can focus on accounts with possibility.

On the other hand, stale records can be great business opportunities right under your nose. That’s because some of these records are of prospects that your sales team reached out to in the past but never closed on. Most likely, the timing wasn’t right, so they were basically forgotten.

To mine these records, run reports of prospects’ records that haven’t been communicated with for a long time. Gain further insights by layering relationship data. The relationship mapping will help you determine whether any of your employees know the customers. It’s likely that you’ll be able to jump-start stale conversations and turn them into business opportunities.

 

 

Stale Fields

Your business’s needs change daily. Therefore, customize your CRM’s features to match the dynamics of your business. Do this by carefully creating new fields on your records without polluting or cluttering your stored data.

You’ll find that it’s easy to edit and delete obsolete custom fields periodically from your CRM system. Doing so will enable it to function optimally. Every six months or so, edit or delete historic fields from your system and keep it up to date.

 

Outdated Third Party Providers

Your business needs third-party service providers to help boost your sales, marketing, and support efforts. However, you should revisit all your third-party CRM tools annually. Delete the ones that are no longer relevant to your expanding business.

Among all of the ever-evolving tech-based business solutions, it’s CRM systems that best allow you to stay ahead of the competition. Optimize yours now for top performance.

The post How to Optimize Your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System appeared first on Business Opportunities.


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How to Optimize Your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System

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Being a jerk at work doesn’t pay off for long

Bosses who are jerks to their employees may improve their well-being, but only for a little while, new research suggests.

Bullying and belittling employees starts to take its toll on a supervisor’s mental state after about a week, according to the study in the Academy of Management Journal.

“The moral of the story is that although abuse may be helpful and even mentally restorative for supervisors in the short-term, over the long haul it will come back to haunt them,” says coauthor Russell Johnson, associate professor of management at Michigan State University and an expert on workplace psychology.

While numerous studies have documented the negative effects of abusive supervision, some bosses still act like jerks, meaning there must be some sort of benefit or reinforcement for them, Johnson says.

Indeed, the researchers found that supervisors who were abusive felt a sense of recovery because their boorish behavior helped replenish their mental energy and resources. Johnson says it requires mental effort to suppress abusive behavior—which can lead to mental fatigue—but supervisors who act on that impulse “save” the mental energy that would otherwise have been depleted by refraining from abuse.

Johnson and colleagues conducted multiple field experiments on abusive bosses in the United States and China, verifying the results were not culture-specific. They collected daily survey data over a four-week period and studied workers and supervisors in a variety of industries including manufacturing, service, and education.

The benefits of abusive supervision appeared to be short-lived, lasting a week or less. After that, abusive supervisors started to experience decreased trust, support, and productivity from employees—and these are critical resources for the bosses’ recovery and engagement.

How abusive bosses make themselves miserable

According to the study, although workers may not immediately confront their bosses following abusive behavior, over time they react in negative ways, such as engaging in counterproductive and aggressive behaviors and even quitting.

To prevent abusive behavior, the researchers suggest supervisors take well-timed breaks, reduce their workloads, and communicate more with their employees. Communicating with workers may help supervisors by releasing negative emotions through sharing, receiving social support, and gaining relational energy from their coworkers.

Coauthors are from the University of International Business and Economics; Peking University; and Communication University of China.

Source: Michigan State University

The post Being a jerk at work doesn’t pay off for long appeared first on Futurity.

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Being a jerk at work doesn’t pay off for long

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Disney Releases Vintage EPCOT Video From Before the Park Opened in 1982

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I’ve seen a lot of EPCOT concept art in my day. But a new video released by Disney has some behind-the-scenes shots that I’ve never seen before, including scale models of everything from the Horizons attraction (RIP) to the countries of the World Showcase. It’s all pretty cool.

The video, titled “The Dream Called EPCOT,” ran on a loop at the “EPCOT Preview Center” in the Magic Kingdom during the late 1970s. And since I wasn’t born until 1983, so much of the video’s models and concept art are brand new to me.

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The Disney Parks blog posted the 15-minute video in its entirety to YouTube, and it’s pretty fascinating for any EPCOT-nerd to watch all the way through. Not only do you see rare concept art, but you also get a look at some of the preparations necessary for opening rides like World of Motion and Food Rocks at the Land Pavilion.

Take, for instance, this awesome/horrifying shot of an audio-animatronic figure from Food Rocks without its skin. They appear to be wrapping it in some kind of blanket, probably to be moved somewhere else.

GIF

From the Disney Parks blog:

The purpose of the film was to introduce a new kind of Disney theme park to guests, showcasing exciting experiences they could have in the park’s Future World and World Showcase areas. The film offered sneak peaks at attraction models, renderings and animation for The Living Seas, Horizons, World of Motion, CommuniCore and Spaceship Earth, as well as early construction footage. It also offered a first-listen to some of the fun music composed for this new park, including songs like “It’s Fun to Be Free,” “Universe of Energy” and “Listen to the Land.”

As we’ve established before, that music from Listen to the Land is one of my favorites.

It’s a fascinating look at the park before it opened in October of 1982. Especially if you long for the days when Future World had some of the coolest dark rides in all of Disney World.

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Do you spot anything in the video that you’ve never seen before? Or, at least, never seen in its infancy?

[Disney Parks]

via Gizmodo
Disney Releases Vintage EPCOT Video From Before the Park Opened in 1982

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10 Working From Home Tips That Are Guaranteed To Make You Extra Productive

Have you ever had one of those days when you wake up promising yourself that you’ll have a successfully productive day…but you end up sitting in front of the television all day instead?

This used to happen to me quite a lot when I first started working from home. I’d lounge around in my pajamas all morning, trying to find the motivation to do something. And, well, I never found it.

Then, one morning, I decided that enough was enough! I needed to change my routine. Otherwise, I’d end up being a lazy, unsuccessful and miserable woman- and that doesn’t sound appealing to anyone.

Here’s my list of 10 working from home tips that can make your day more productive than ever.

Get dressed

As much as I love being in my pajamas, I never ever get anything done in them. It’s just a fact for me now. Pajamas were invented to wear to bed or to watch TV in. So, get out of them now and throw on a nice (and clean) outfit and get to work. You’ll feel much better.

Make a list

This is one of my favorite things to do before I begin a productive day. Setting goals and writing them down makes me feel much more organized and I’m sure it’ll help you, too. Once you’ve completed a task from your list, you’ll get that great satisfaction of crossing the task off of your list and starting your next chore.

Clear distractions

working at home tips

Now, everyone has different distractions. These can be social media, your phone or the television.

You’ll never get anything done if you give in to these distractions all day. After all, they are just that, distractions. So, get rid of them! Hide your phone, throw away the biscuits, turn off the television and focus on the things you need to be concentrating on.

Don’t multitask

Not only does multitasking stress your brain out, it also stops you from giving your 100% concentration on your tasks. It’s much better to focus on one task at a time and complete it successfully rather than rush a bunch of tasks at once.

See Also: 7 Unhealthy Behaviors That Affect Your Mental Health

Eat healthier

This one may sound a bit weird. How will eating healthy make you more productive?

Well, it’s a fact that junk food can make you put on weight and make you mentally slower and less motivated, too. Try snacking on walnuts as they are a powerful weapon against binge eating and depression.

Take regular breaks

You don’t want to burn all your energy out by trying to take on too much at once. Set your alarm at regular intervals throughout the day and allow yourself some time to relax in-between tasks.

Go for a walk

walking exercise

For this one, you’re going to have to actually step outside your house. But, trust me, it’ll be worth it.

Just a 15-minute walk will help clear your mind and you’ll be feeling much more productive when you get back. After all, research shows that regular exercise can make you feel happier, smarter and more energetic. This walk can be included in one of your regular breaks.

Reward yourself

Now, this one I love! I mean, who doesn’t like rewards?

Refer back to your list and promise yourself that after completing 3 tasks, you’ll reward yourself with a little something. It can be a 5-minute Facebook break or one piece of chocolate. Whatever floats your boat.

Write tomorrow’s to-do list tonight

By this point, you’ve hopefully had an extra productive day, but you don’t want this to just be a one-off. So, write a list of all the things you want to achieve tomorrow. This will make your morning easier and you’ll wake up knowing exactly what you need to do. It also crosses one task off your list before the day’s even started.

Get an early night

Did you know that 1 in 5 adults don’t get enough sleep? Don’t let that 1 in 5 be you!

Lack of sleep can affect your alertness, productivity, stress levels and problem-solving skills. So, give yourself a regular bedtime schedule and try your hardest to get enough sleep. You’ll thank yourself in the morning.

See Also: Five Ways of Overcoming the Problem of Getting Sleep

And there we have it, my 10 working from home tips that are guaranteed to make your day more productive. They might not work for everyone, but they certainly worked for me. What’s the harm in giving them a try?

 

The post 10 Working From Home Tips That Are Guaranteed To Make You Extra Productive appeared first on Dumb Little Man.


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10 Working From Home Tips That Are Guaranteed To Make You Extra Productive