In the last decade, we've seen tremendous changes in our workforce. With all of the recent advancement in technologies, nearly three-quarters of employers give their employees the tools they need to work remotely, giving employees more freedom to pick the hours they work.
Instead of designating the first hour of work to answer emails, the next hour to beating through phone calls, and the hours after to facilitating endless meetings due to protocol -- people now have the luxury of being able to complete their work at any point in time. But anyone who works remotely can tell you that even when the corporate structure is stripped away, being productive can still be a challenge.
"Telecommuting", as a recent article on Yahoo's decision to ban working beyond its walls calls it, has its fair share of disadvantages too. Ironically enough, in exchange for working remotely, most employees choose to work until later at night. Approximately 80 percent think it's okay to make a work-related call at night. As a result of these later hours, the work sometimes seeps into "off" hours, which can obviously take away time from your family and make it difficult to maintain a consistent social life.
With three million people working from home at least half the time, and 90 percent of them believing the flexibility of telecommuting improves their daily lives, it's no wonder people are looking for ways to become more productive at home.
How can you boost productivity so that you can maximize on your time? And at what point does all of this technology just get in the way of our work? 68 percent of women say technologies have not made them any more productive.
My newest blog in Fortune, "How to heal our smartphone-addled, overworked brains", answers this question. The biggest casualty of everyone being so connected is productivity. No one is getting much done at the office. In this blog, I go into the deeper science behind the "Healthy Mind Platter" that UCLA psychiatrist Dan Siegel and I launched in 2011. And this "platter" outlines seven types of mental activities the brain needs for optimal healthy functioning and I give a few tips you can maintain a healthy brain at work.
See more on the platter in the recent NeuroLeadership Journal.
See more on productivity in "How to heal our smartphone-addled, overworked brains".
The 2013 NeuroLeadership Summit is going local with three days of events in three different locations. Click here for more information.