Productivity is the name of the game and I am losing. Back in the day, when I started Dumpr, I recall developing the habit of OCD by "tail -f"'ing my access log and just waiting for a visitor to come by. If you build it, they will come. Fast-forward a couple of years: I check icanhasdoublecheezburger.com for new lolcats 27 times a day, refresh my inbox 53 times an hour and just hang around tweetdeck, flickr, mobwars and youtube enough to rebuild the pyramids myself.No more!
Starting
This post is turning into a Seinfeld's Post About Nothing kind of deal. So I'll make it educational. Here are 5 tips guaranteed to increase your productivity. Learned the hard way:
* Define Productivity - what is that you want to achieve? YouTubing 18 hours a day is considered productive if your goal is to watch each and every movie on the internets. My goals in life are learning Japanese and practicing guitar enough to be able to perform in front of friends.
* Make Daily Timetables. Each morning, sit down for 5-10 minutes and write your schedule for today. I find it very difficult to plan a whole week ahead, so I'm always planning the night before. Allocate in granularity of 30-minutes, to allow tasks to be executed in a worry-free zone. In other words: when you know you have 30 minutes to complete a task, there is nothing to worry about missing other opportunities; don't waste brain cycles worries, you have planned your day already.
* Leave Meetups For After Work - business at day, pleasure at night. Fun is harder to cap in hours. What if your breakfast buddy is very interesting today, will you part early or postpone all the other tasks? Plan meetups, dinners, beers after workhours.
* Cheezburgers Before The Zone - getting into the productivity zone is difficult. There are plenty of interruptions: blogs, emails, twitter. Part of my day includes a visit to I Can Has Double Cheezburger for some lolcats to brighten my day. I won't fight this, so I might as well accept it. If I finish my emails/funny-cats early, then I don't need to stop my work later to check up on them. Pleasure before business, I always say.
* Make Daily/Weekly Audits - check up on yourself, sit for a few minutes to review how your week worked out. What did you do right, what would you like to improve? Don't punish yourself and feel down if something is out of order. Just be honest with yourself.
Got tips that work for you? Care to share?
I murdered the Fail Whale! by nickbilton
4 comments:
There is a problem with postponing the 'breakfast with friends' to after work hours. We on't get Shakshuka at night. The Shakshuka Maestro makes it only in the morning!
Now seriously, I just love this post. If only I could follow these rules, my productivity would be 10 times than it is now. I think I need a little easier version. Productivity Lite 0.9 (beta).
A real point that I would add to your list is this:
6. When you start the move to productivity, set a reminder that will get you write every 2 hours what exactly did you do for the last time frame. That will help you plan your next day better.
Come home Shakshuka!
I think that for some activities half an hour it's not enough. Creative tasks have to reside in time slots of some hours at least, without interruptions; they are a bit difficult to plan.
Great post, thanks! Here are a two things that have helped me:
* Turn off notifications for your buddy list, email, twitter, etc. If each alert distracts you for only 2 seconds and you get, let's say 50 alerts a day (it's probably a lot more), that's 10 HOURS per year you spend looking at useless notifications! If you include the time it takes to switch context and regain focus after being distracted by an alert, the wasted time is considerably more.
* Most of the population consumes. A few create. We need more creators. If what you're consuming isn't going to help you create, reconsider consuming it.
@Raam_Dev: I totally agree, the context switching is what hurts most. I, for one, can't watch tv and code. Moving my head back and forth just gets me off track. Spending brain cycles on IM/Twitter/Email is even worse. I end up spending(?) most of my day just trying to get back into the zone.
Thanks for your comments ;)
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