3 Ways to be Productive During Quarantine

When 2020 began, few could have predicted that only three months into the year, a global pandemic would sweep across our nations, and consequentially, create long periods of self-quarantine. While not the ideal situation, there are many positive ways this period of time can be used to grow and gain new skills or experiences, all while helping ease your mind of stress during isolation. Below are just a few of the many ways you can positively use your newly discovered time. 

Learn a New Skill

Whether it’s learning a new language, cooking different styles of food, painting, or any other skill you haven’t had the time to perfect in the past, now is the time to expand your expertise. Whatever the subject area may be, there is a rapidly increasing number of digital courses or other educational videos available online to aid in your growth and development. Diving into that new field now could offer great benefits for the future.  

Work on Your Passion Project

Are you a writer that has put off finishing your book? Do you love design, but haven’t found the time to finish your own pieces? If you have a skill already that you have always wanted to put to use, this time can be greatly beneficial to push your projects into motion. Start by creating a step-by-step plan tailored to your project and then manage your time around meeting the steps you have outlined. Blocking out just a little bit of time each day to work on personal ventures can go a long way towards your ultimate goals. Making and hitting realistic milestones will offer a true sense of achievement and positivity to your life. 

Reconnect With Others 

It’s very easy to become disconnected from friends and family over time, especially with distance. It seems you often look up and realize you haven’t talked to a particular person in months or years. With most people now spending much more time at home and inside, this could serve as an ideal time to reconnect with loved ones. It could be a video chat or a simple phone call that may not only help re-establish a relationship but also make quarantine feel a little less isolating.

 Whatever your situation is, there are plenty of options to help make the year better, more productive, and healthier. Taking the time to find something that fits your goals and personality can make all the difference!

2 Ways To Increase Your Company's Productivity and Performance

Medium-sized companies have a hard niche to work within many American markets, but the right performance plan can not only help companies like yours thrive, but it can also take them to the next level, allowing them to become major national brands. The biggest part of the challenge is that businesses in this class are large enough they no longer qualify for the perks and preferential terms found in programs for small businesses, but they also tend to lack the deep reserves of assets and additional income streams that provide economic power for major national corporations. The solution to this dilemma is simple, though. It's about adopting the right tools.

Efficient operations without a lot of extra fat in the budget have the ability to scale up more quickly by building reserves and funding growth with the money they aren't spending on redundant services or legacy processes. If you haven't provided your team with the next-generation technological tools to elevate their performance, you're not going to reduce redundancies and really see a return. Here are three of the most important things to keep up to date as you grow your business.

1. Your ERP Suite

Working with a cloud-based, flexible enterprise resource planning solution like Microsoft Dynamics ERP can save you a lot of money over older systems, especially if your current ERP has to be run on an in-house server. Adding server hardware and infrastructure maintenance to your IT expenses means more labor for their upkeep, as well as higher utility costs related to running those resources, security costs to prevent fraud or intrusion, and many other additional expenses and investments. When you contract with a cloud provider who can build you a custom ERP on a common framework, you get efficient operations and support without the need for all the extra equipment, which can help you streamline your operation now and keep costs down into the future.

2. Your L&D Program

If you aren't investing in professional development, you aren't cultivating your next round of leadership from within your corporate culture. That makes long-term growth and organization-wide adoption of your mission goals harder to achieve, and it also means settling for a less skilled and productive workforce than you could have. If you haven't invested in any additional training, now is the time because online learning tools have made it easier than ever to make those resources available to workers at an efficient price point. If you currently have an L&D program but it's not online, consider what adding a digital component could do to up your institutional participation.

Build Your Company's Future From Within

Providing your team with the tools they need to grow is the key to making your whole business growth. It's just as true when it comes to training as it is when it comes to efficiently manage resources to push out customer orders, and it's the key to reaching the next level for many companies.