Photo courtesy Luxafor.com
Millennials are beginning to dominate the workplace, and they are flexing their design muscles to help themselves become more productive. It’s no secret that this hyper connected, multitasking generation needs some help to stay focused on the job, especially in an open design office where there are no doors to close for privacy or quiet.
I write recently in my column about do not disturb signs for computers. A company called Luxafor, a company based in Latvia, reached out with information about their LED signal for your workstation that offers digital features an analog sign doesn’t.
In their own words, “Luxafor is a productivity gadget that lets you stay focused on your tasks. With the help of built-in LEDs, it uses light to show your colleagues when you’re hard at work and can’t be disturbed, provides alerts about all manner of notifications at the speed of light, helps you effectively plan your day with features like the timer or Pomodoro, and even lets you track the quality of your work with productivity app integrations.”
Luxafor cites studies that say workers lose an average of 86 minutes a day of productivity due to office distractions. Luxafor offers both an attached signal flag model and a detached standalone Bluetooth model that offers green and red signals to indicate whether you’re open to being approached or busy on an important project. You can also customize color signals for any other message you’d like to indicate. The detached
bluetooth model can be used for other purposes as well – outside a meeting room to indicate whether it’s vacant or in use, for example. The software can also alert you to emails, meeting invitations, and other incoming notices.
The tools work with free downloadable software that is open source so you can integrate it with other productivity apps. It already offers Pomodoro productivity features and ways to schedule work and break periods to fit your own preferred working modes. The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. These intervals are named pomodoros, the plural in English of the Italian word pomodoro (tomato), after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer that Cirillo used as a university student.
At less than $30 (the company will also quote on bulk orders), the Luxafor signals are a cost-effective way to increase your personal productivity. Find more at Luxafor.com.
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