Secrets to Productivity
Published May 4th, 2007 in Tips & Tools.Ben Yoskovitz wants to know our secrets to productivity. He is sponsoring a group writing project called The Ultimate Guide to Productivity and my friend Char at Essential Keystrokes tagged me to participate. This is a topic that interests me and I’ve been reading other entries hoping to get some tips, as I never have enough time in the day to do all that I want to do. Here is how I approach my work:
- Break tasks down into small bits. I rarely complete anything in one sitting. Many times, I’ll pass by the computer when I have two minutes as my son is finishing his lunch and continue on with something I’ve left halfway done. I might only get one small step towards completion, but at least it’s movement. When I do have a block of time, I try to choose one task and turn everything else off, e-mail, feed reader, etc. If I have several small bits to work on that are all related, I try to wait until I have a block of time when I can knock them all out at once. I often create the posts for my two monetized sites for the week in one larger block of time, and use the timestamp feature in WP to space them out through the week.
- Choose tasks to accomplish in order of priority. Finishing projects when I said I would is of the utmost importance to me, so that’s a key factor as I prioritize. Besides deadlines, I prioritize by considering my long-term goals and by what is going to give me the best monetary return on my time investment.
- The feed reader and stats analysis can be big time suckers. I find that I have to weed things out of my reader regularly and I try to choose which feeds I will keep wisely, keeping only the most valuable.
- I do the icky stuff first if I can, so I can look forward to the fun stuff. Procrastination is from the Devil.
- There is no dead time, unless I just need some time to zone out. When I’m standing in line somewhere I’m thinking about blog posts. When I’m a passenger in a car I’m imagining logo design possibilities, etc.
- Make it as easy to work as possible. I have a computer in two main areas in our house, so that if I start a blog post on one, I can finish it on the other. I use gmail, so I can easily manage my e-mail from either computer. I try to keep things as organized and as easy to find as possible.
I usually cop out on tagging people, I confess, but this time I’m going to tag a couple:
Brian Gardner - because I can’t believe how much he has going on, and I’m always wondering how he gets it all accomplished.
Cory Miller - also seems to have many projects going on at once and always with high quality results.
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17 Responses to “Secrets to Productivity”
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More great tips Randa! I am the queen of walking by the computer and doing something real quick. My office is in the center of the house which makes it awfully hard to stay away.
Randa, thanks for the compliment … Brian is the best at juggling … I am OK … although I drop things.
Randa, great tips that I’ll definitely add to my productivity tool box!
I so badly need to prioritize better! Sometimes I get stubborn and spend too much time finishing what I’m working on even when there’s something more important I could do.
ha ha, productivity? what is that? most say in order to be productive, you need to spend less time online, but then again, there are so many great articles online (like this one), that teaches you how to be productive. Great article!
The breaking things into small pieces is the best thing I’ve found to prevent myself from getting overwhelmed with a large task. Then it doesn’t seem so impossible.
I also have the problem of starting many tasks simultaneously and not taking up one first and complete it before starting another. In fact, when I take up one task, some unforeseen connected issues arise, which also need to be examined first for completing the task. But still I am of the view that one should take up and complete one task. If it is possible to fix priorities, it may be done, otherwise, take up the first one and do it. Once you complete one task, you feel like lightened to some extent. That gives energy and vigor to take up another task in your list.