5 Tips For Boosting Up Productivity or: How Cheezburgers Killed The Productivity Star

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 today tomorrow, I am limiting my hours and planning my time as I see fit. Earlier this year, I did an experiment: using Google's SMS service, I configured Google Calendar to txt me every day at 7pm a single sentence: "Shut down the computer". I have to admit that it worked pretty well. My life evolves around computers. I've been sitting in front of a crt since the age of 6. Forcing myself to not use a computer (not even for watching movies) made other activities more available. Watch a movie with friends, read a book, spend hours on the guitar, learn a new language, or the best of all: go to sleep early!

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