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How To Be More Productive
It's the weekend and for many this is the start of Fall. The birds are singing, the leaves are showing the first signs of change and many of us are finally going back to work, school or whatever else. One of the biggest questions that you might be asking is how to get more things done this year than you did during the last. To help get you started, I have put together How To Split An Atom's guide to productivity.
Lets start from the top down, with your Memory.
Memory
OK, now pay attention for a moment. I'm about to teach you how to memorize vast amounts of information effortlessly (insert big, used car salesmen grin). Fine, it will take practice but this really does help. It's called the Journey method.
Lets say, for example, you had to memorize a great big list of Web 2.0 names. For the sake of the example — Flickr, Twitter, Jaiku, Squidoo, and del.ici.ous. One way would be to call up each of these companies and tell them to change their names to something that is actually relevant to human beings, the other would be to take a journey.
Imagine walking through your house, and the first thing you notice is that the lamp bulb in your room is flickering. You decide to go out to the store, and on the way to your car you hear a bird twittering away. It's 1AM and when you arrive at the store, some random bohemian types are sitting around spouting off haiku's about some giant squid. You go inside to get the light bulbs, but on your way out you pick up a delicious Snickers bar.
The trick here is that the story gives your mind an anchor, remember when you were a little kid and you had to learn the state capitals or some-such using mnemonics? Think of this as the Web 2.0 version of that. You peg a memory to somewhere familiar. Since the story is kind of silly, it's much easier to recall than the random list of words. The contents of the story has the information you're trying to remember inside of it. Neat, huh?
Now that you have the perfect memory, or at least perfect if all you ever have to remember are long lists of unsorted information, it's time to start getting your To-Dos in order. Sometimes the best way to get a handle on your goals is to start with something as simple as a calender.
Create A Goal Calendar
This system works best with one of those large desk calendars, but will work just fine with any calendaring system with editable boxes. For each of the days of the week, write your goals in the calender boxes. Using this system, my calender for Wednesday might look something like this.
<--Leave Space Here -->
Edit Productivity Post
Write Two Blog Posts
Make Conference Call
Create A List Of Ten Ways To Drive Traffic To Clients Site
Be sure to leave some space in each of the boxes, above the beginning of the list. As you go through the day, cross off each item in the box as it is completed. If, for some reason, you do not finish the list by the end of the day, cross it off anyway and transcribe it to the top of the next days box. Lets assume that I forgot about my conference call — Thursday's list would look like this:
<--Leave Space Here-->
Make Conference Call
Write Three New Blog Posts
Edit Financial Data For Project
Generate Methodology Document For Clients Web Marketing Plan
If by the end of the week you still have left over items, it's time to evaluate how you have been using your time. Do you notice that you continue to "put off" certain tasks, or is it that you are not using your time efficiently? Could it be that you are simply over scheduled?
Regardless of the cause, use the end of the week as a time to reflect on what you have been unable to accomplish. If you find that you are consistently falling behind on the same tasks, it might be time to reevaluate your work flow.
Once you have your calendar in place, lets address the problem of fatigue — mental and physical.
Productivity Dash
43 Folders introduced this concept and I'll expand upon it a bit. Generally, we are most productive if we give ourselves a mental "change of scenery" every so often. Thus, after a period of work you should take a small break and let your mind think about something else. It will help keep you fresh, and reduce the burnout that leads to procrastination.
- Start working for 20 minutes.
- Take a 5 minute break to do anything else but what you were working on.
- Return to work.
- Repeat
As for physical fatigue, it might be time to start establishing a better diet. Here are a few ways to go about doing so.
Iron
The very, very brief biology lesson goes like this: Iron is what carries oxygen to the brain and it is a vital component in our brain̢۪s messaging system, neurotransmitters. The most important functions that Iron is responsible for are regulating those neurotransmitters that are responsible for our ability to pay attention.
A low Iron count means that 20 minutes into your next strategy meeting you̢۪ll be ruminating on how you̢۪re going to level up your Cleric in WoW later that night. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but I am certain your employers would appreciate a bit more focus.
Good sources of Iron include lean beef, whole grains and bran. Adding vitamin C to the mix has been shown to improve the absorption of Iron into the blood stream.
Fish
Omega-3 Fatty acids, which are found in high doses within Fish are critical for completing the Brain’s communication chain. Without these acids, the Brain cannot properly develop. If you’re like me, your Mother probably force fed you some cocktail of Fish oils as a child (well, probably not) but assuming that she did â€" this is why.
Lets assume for a moment that you hate Fish, and the thought of another teaspoon of Cod Liver Oil makes you welcome dementia. You can also pick up your daily dose of Omega-3 from Walnuts and Canola Oil. I̢۪m certain you can find something interesting to make from one of those.
There are plenty of other things that you should be eating to keep yourself focused and ensure you're firing on all cylinders. If you really are interested in hearing more, I suggest contacting a nutritionist. Now that we have your body out of the way, it's time to get your online identity streamlined. Lets start with the trickiest thing for most people, email.
Catch All Clarity
I have about five different email address', mostly because an address a day keeps the spammers away. If I had to waste time going through each of these mailboxes in search of useful information, I'd drive myself up the wall. Luckily, almost all mail clients have some sort of forwarding feature.
The trick is to forward all of your messages to a single location. That way, you can prioritize when you need to, and when you have time you can efficiently go through the slush pile. I usually start the day by checking my catch all box, afterwards I leave the catch all alone and concentrate on messages based on the context. At work, I look at my work email; when working on the blog, I search through that box etc…
When I find that I am on top of a particular context, I go back to the catch all and wade through a few more messages.
26 Second Rule
You should spend no more than 26 seconds on any particular message. In twenty-six seconds you can take in a huge amount of information, enough information to determine whether the email is spam (in which case delete it), requires a short reply (then do it), or requires more thought (set it aside). If you find yourself spending minutes paging through long, unwieldy emails take a step back and realize that most emails are structured like this: introduction, fluff, fluff, call to action. The only part that counts is the call to action. Skip over the rest, and live a happier life.
Why 26 seconds?
Well, it was going to be a 30 second rule but I figured the last four seconds would be spent trying to figure out if Princess Xajibari really does need your help to smuggle money out of her country.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
Once you finish going through your mailboxes, delete everything that you have acted upon. That way, you don't have to waste time wondering whether you have replied to a particular piece of mail. If it's not in the inbox, then it's no longer on your mind. At this point, the only thing that should be left are those messages that require in-depth responses. For them, I suggest responding in the order they are received and then deleting them. I try to minimize the latency between receiving an email and responding to it.
I have found that not only do people appreciate a prompt reply, but it makes sure that you are giving crisp responses. The less time you spend dwelling on something, the more likely it will be that you'll answer the question instead of writing your biography.
Clean House
By the end of the day, your mail box should be basically empty. If it's not, either you tend to get a flood of emails at the end of the day, or you haven't been paying attention! Either way, take a few moments before you go to bed to clean house. If possible, reply to as many emails as you have the energy too, but if not set them aside to be picked up the next morning.
There is nothing quite as satisfying as an empty email box.
Web 2.0 Roundup
A Better Feed Reader
For all of you connoisseurs of information out there, it might be time to get your RSS feeds in order. For those of you who don't know what RSS is, you should. A lot of people would suggest Google Reader to solve your RSS problems and mind you, the integration with iGoogle is useful but if I were going to give you the hands down best RSS reader I have ever come across it would be News Hutch. News Hutch makes reading RSS feeds fun again, it's filled with AJAX goodies, a news paper style interface, and easy feed import through OPML.
Why I like this reader is that it lets you move through your feeds in a more casual fashion than Google's solution. When you're finished with one set of stories it disappears from your list, giving you a real sense of accomplishment. It's organized, clean and best of all free.
Follow The Meme
You probably read too many sites, in general. A secret to Web 2.0 is that it should more aptly be called the Repetition Web. Chances are, any story that you are currently reading has been written twelve times before with slightly different spins. Don't get buried in the slush, let someone else do it for you.
If you are a technology junkie like me, instead of searching aimlessly for the most "accurate" version of today's hot stories, visit a site like Techmeme. Techmeme scours the web for the most talked about stories and presents the headlines, along with all the major blogs that have written about it. One flaw with Techmeme is that it excludes smaller sites that might provide valuable insights that the larger media sources have left out. Even so, Techmeme is a far more efficient way to quickly find information than anything else that I have stumbled across.
Integrate
The first page you see when you open your browser should be your window to the world. At a glance, it will be where you discover the very latest in relevant content. Whether that is a newly posted Flickr image or just your email, being able to scan the world from the safety of your homepage will save you a ton of time.
If you are going customize your homepage, might I suggest either NetVibes or iGoogle. Since the vast majority of my email is forwarded to my gmail account, I just find iGoogle to be the more convenient portal. I have some of my favorite RSS feeds in the feed Reader widget, I have my email, movie times and all sorts of other errata taking up the remaining slots. Netvibes lets you do a similar trick, allowing you to generate a useful homepage for component parts.
There are hundreds of other ways to get a few more precious seconds in your day, but the amount of time you would spend finding and implementing most of these methods would negate the savings. When putting together your productivity strategy be sure to remember that almost always, simplicity is the key to success. Find something that you are actually excited to do and stick to it, the benefits from this relatively simple piece of advice are enormous.
Jillur Rahman
I'm Jillur Rahman. A full time web designer. I enjoy to make modern template. I love create blogger template and write about web design, blogger. Now I'm working with Themeforest. You can buy our templates from Themeforest.
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