Staying Productive During Outages

Being productive is difficult when everything is going well and in place for you to succeed. When something you rely on heavily like the internet or the power goes out it is all too easy to fall into the trap of assuming you can’t get anything done. There are a lot of things that you can do when faced with an outage that will help you remain productive or even improve your productivity. Not everything you do in your day to day work moves the needle forward. Some things like unit testing, refactoring, etc are more to prevent productivity from being reduced. Other things that you do such as organization of your workspace help to improve your ability to be productive while not exactly productive themselves. When faced with an unexpected power or internet outage if you are prepared there are many things you can do to maintain or even improve your productivity. Being productive takes effort and willpower to keep going when there are other things that are vying for your attention. The case is even more so when you are lacking essentials like power or internet. Staying productive during an outage requires you to have a plan in place well before the outage occurs. Then you have to trust in that plan and follow it. The tips here are not an exhaustive list of the things that you can do in an outage to remain productive. Use them as a guide to help you in creating your own plan for how you will remain productive when everyone else is at a loss because of an outage. Episode Breakdown No Power Possible disruptions to your power supply. A blackout happens when there is no power at all coming in. It is a total disruption of the power in a specific area. This can happen due to damage to power lines or transformers either from accidents or nature. They have little to no warning. A brownout is when the voltage is reduced causing a partial outage of power. With these you may still have some power to run basic electronics but your high consumption devices will not work. These are typically planned by the power company and have some warning. After a blackout the power may come back stronger than normal in what is known as a surge. This is a sudden increase in the voltage above what is normally expected. Sensitive electronics should be unplugged during a blackout or plugged into a surge protector to keep them from being damaged. Use an alternative power supply. Each of your computers should be hooked up to an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). Don’t expect to be able to keep working while using one of these, but they will allow you time to finish up what you are doing and save any work so that you don’t lose it. If it is just the power that is out then you may be able to power a modem for several hours with one dedicated to just the modem and router. Laptops are great because they are portable and they have batteries. Keep your laptop plugged in so that when the power goes out you can keep working using battery power. Make sure you have settings for battery mode and turn off nonessential apps to extend your productive time. If possible you may consider adding solar panels to your house. Living in an area that gets a lot of sun will allow you to keep working even when the power coming into the house stops. Generators may be noisy and expensive but they can keep you running for a day or so during an emergency. If you live farther out from civilization it could take a while for your power to come back on. Finally, go somewhere else that has power. If you are at home try going into the office if it’s close. If you are at the office you may see if you can work from home, assuming you have power at home. Have a plan in place before the power outage. Make sure you have the necessary supplies you’ll need to keep working while you are waiting on the power to return.