Welcome to the First Column IT Tech Blog

HomeBlog
The Productivity You Seek is Indeed Within Reach, with the Right Habits

The Productivity You Seek is Indeed Within Reach, with the Right Habits

June 27, 2025

Productivity is an essential metric in modern life, and while it can often feel impossible to achieve, there are ways to overcome the anti-productivity malaise. Here are three habits that are likely to help you in your search for both organizational and personal productivity.

Limit Your Notifications

Notifications are a necessary, yet bothersome thing to keep track of, and it’s largely because they’re so intrusive when we don’t want them to be.

It’s difficult to refocus on a task when your attention is constantly being pulled away from it. You can and should limit your notifications either by turning them off completely or limiting them to a specific time of day. Windows and macOS have options that make this process easy, and many applications allow you to customize notification rules accordingly.

The same goes for your mobile device apps, too.

Take Advantage of Automation

Every job has repetitive tasks that eat up a lot of the worker’s day without offering value in return.

Some examples of jobs that don’t present an immediate return on the time investment include reorganizing files or repeatedly typing out the same message. They’re necessary, but not great for getting work done. You can use automation to eliminate some of the waste and ensure processes are carried out in a more efficient way. For example, you can configure inboxes to sort messages into specific folders or use templates to streamline certain types of content creation.

Microsoft Power Automate and various other tools let you get even more specific with workflows; you might be surprised by how much time you can save.

Keep Yourself Organized

Switching between applications and open windows can take up time, especially if you’re not very organized with them.

There are many ways to organize your digital workspace, including virtual desktops that can be used to keep certain processes separate from others. All you have to do is snap from one desktop to another using the window snapping features. It’s easy enough and keeps you organized.

Oh, right; the shortcut for that is the Windows + Arrow keys.

Achieve Maximum Productivity with Proactive IT

Many businesses make the most of their productivity through technology, which is exactly what we at First Column IT do for SMBs in Northern Virginia. Through our proactive solutions, you can stay focused on your duties without getting pulled away by random security issues or problems with your technology.

To get started, call us today at (571) 470-5594.

‍

Previous Post
September 10, 2025
Don't Let AI Tank Your Customer Relationships
AI is a game-changer, there's no doubt about it. From the value your business gets from streamlining operations to its powerful information retrieval, it’s changed, in a very short amount of time, how knowledge-based businesses operate. If you're thinking of handing over your entire customer support operation to an AI, however, you need to pump the brakes a bit. While AI offers incredible efficiencies, completely removing the human element could be a problem for your business.
September 8, 2025
3 Ways You Can Use Excel Effectively
Some of the most versatile and useful technology out there might already be installed on your infrastructure. One such tool is Microsoft Excel, Microsoft 365’s spreadsheet building platform. You might be surprised to find out that Excel can be used in some interesting ways—including these three uses.
September 5, 2025
Tip of the Week: How to Boot Your PC In Safe Mode
Diagnosing issues with your PC can be challenging, and that’s because an operating system is inherently a complicated piece of technology. If you’re looking for a way to isolate the problem and diagnose it, we typically recommend you work with a managed service provider (like us) to make it happen. If you’d like to try things out for yourself, however, you can use Safe Mode to examine your PC in its base form to see if you can find the root cause of the issue.

Have a project in mind?

Start with our free consultation. We will provide a detailed proposal and firm quote based on your specific IT support needs. All at a predictable monthly cost per seat.
Free Consultation - Sign Up Here