Best Productivity Ideas for Home and Business During Quarantine

[Owen Dashner]

Best ideas to stay productive and sane during the 2020 Corona Smackdown:

Home:
1. Declutter! Go through closets, wardrobes, toys, garages, etc. and make piles of trash, donate, keep. Shelters and families can use your unwanted clothing and toys now more than ever.
2. Knock out some honey-do lists. I have several I need to take care of. Paint that room, build that table (I won't be doing that), do that yard work.
3. Get some Vitamin D! Go for a walk, bike ride, do some yard work - whatever. Just get outside and improve your mood (unless, of course, you can't leave your home).
4. Work on a family puzzle. We just finished a 1000 piece puzzle from Puzzleyou.com - you can upload a picture and they will turn it into a puzzle and mail it to you. Really cool. It took like a month to finish though, and our cat kept stealing the pieces and chewing on them. Literally had the last piece missing for 2 weeks at the end, until we found it (slightly chewed).
5. Check on your elderly neighbors to see how they are doing and if they need any food or errands run.
6. Use social media to check on your friends that own businesses and shop local. They need us now more than ever.
7. Get takeout from local restaurants. They are hurting. Make sure to call them directly instead of using a delivery service like Grubhub or Doordash (which takes up to 40% profit). Lots of restaurant employees and owners are even doing deliveries themselves.

Business:
1. Read those productivity/personal development books you've been thinking about. I mean, has there ever been a better time?
2. Go paperless with receipts and bookkeeping! Not to brag or anything, but this has been the first year ever that I am paperless, and I have actually stuck with it. Huge deal for record keeping in a small business! I just mentally feel better too when walking into my home office and not seeing a stack of paper. Believe me, I have always struggled with organization, filing, etc. If I can do it, you can too.
3. Optimize your business website, social media presence, processes and systems. This. This is something that I know I need to stay on top of, but just can't ever seem to make time for it. This week we pulled the plug on our old website and are switching to a new vendor, as well as optimizing SEO with a consultant. Should be a long term game changer with marketing!
4. Follow up with old leads/customers to see how they are doing and if anything has changed in their lives that you can help with. It is a different world out there and you never know who now needs your products or services after telling you "no" in the past.
5. Use tech to collaborate and network with partners and vendors. Don't let social distancing hinder your networking abilities! I am joining a collaboration session today using Zoom (never used it before, but heard good things). I was on a Google Meets video call this week and it worked really well (and can be recorded).
6. Seek out local Facebook and LinkedIn groups that are relevant to your areas of business. Great ideas are shared on some of these sites - get some!
7. Create a Google Business page and start posting some content relevant to your customers. This helps a lot with improving your search rankings.

These are just some random ideas - what are some of yours?