The culture of 9-5 working hours was so well ingrained in us. Very few worked beyond this 8-hour schedule. Some who did found success greet them, quite accidentally!
Of course, we also then belonged to a manufacturing-dependent economy where factory ‘shifts’ played a role. The Industrial Revolution was certainly the trigger. Those days people were required to work more — around 10-16 hours — to maximise production. You can Google & see for yourself the genesis of this 8 hour system! Some companies now encourage people to work from home but the benefits & disadvantages of this are still being debated.
Your office is shifting (all the time): Your mobile device is your office and an efficient one at that. With 4G network and fast computing you now hold the most advanced office in your palm. Dictate notes, respond to emails, update your worksheet, sharpen your presentation deck, monitor your project, assign tasks to your colleagues and review them on their performance.
Your documents travel with you as well courtesy cloud storage tools like Box, Dropbox, Google Drive. Wonderful Project Management apps like Asana, Basecamp allow you to be on top of your project all the time. Your beloved Word, Excel and PowerPoint now have a lighter mobile-friendly avatar. Whatsapp, Skype, WeChat are great voice & video tools that makes remote discussions a breeze.
Do look up Trello that challenges your ’emailing’ habit and Slack that is rethinking group messaging and collaboration. You also can save your passwords in virtual vaults like LastPass. Evernote is another biggie that lets you take notes, share pics, collaborate, scan, record & share audio messages and more. Apps like Feedly, Flipboard, Pocket help you read interesting industry news conveniently. Did I mention, you can use your mobile to make phone calls as well on the go?
There’s lot more that you can do on your mobile device and be lot more productive. So why go to the office? Hmmm, the ‘watercooler gossip’ is not an app yet!
