Ask The Readers: What Are Your Productivity Tips?
Last week was a special week dedicated to my productivity tips series. In case you missed it I covered how to deal with obstacles in your path, define what ‘done’ actually means, reward yourself when you get things done and make time to relax and recharge. I hope you enjoyed the change of focus. I will be doing more of these in the future to break up the normal routine. However for this week I’m putting the emphasis on you! What are your productivity tips? They can be small or large, simple or complex, minor or life-changing. Whatever tip you have, don’t keep it to yourself. Share it with us in the comments! I hope to collate answers from other productivity bloggers too and will post a massive compilation of everyones answers in the next few weeks. Now, over to you…
8 Comments
My favorite ones are from Brian Tracy’s Eat that Frog! with twenty one practical, simple tips that I summarized on my blog. But, if I had to pick just one, I’d say do the most important, most dreaded task first and with a singularity of purpose until it is complete, then relax and enjoy the amazing feeling of success.
I think the biggest productivity tip I could offer is to organize your inbox. I only check in at certain times throughout the day and have many filters, away messages, signatures, etc. Also, I follow the FAT system which means for all emails you either file it, act on it, or toss it. Nothing in between.
My best one (already mentioned it) is to chop things into smaller pieces. You can’t eat the whole cake at once, but after a week you will notice it is gone nonetheless. If “now” is not possible or just too much to handle, deal with the individual bites first – it will lessen the workload and the whole cake becomes much more easy to digest.
If you’re going to eat a frog you might as well put some spice on it! Experiment with ways to make annoying tasks more pleasurable. The expectation of dessert after the frog is good, but why not making the frog itself taste better?
I would say batch similar tasks to save time. I’m often guilty of checking IM and email as it comes in. However, on days when I’m careful and set times to check it, I can get more uninterrupted focus on the project at hand.
Mine would simply be this – simplify first, systematize later.
Hi James. I would say the best productivity advice is to prioritize. I think Stephen Covey’s story about putting big rocks and small rocks in the jar sums it up well. I read different versions of the story, but I like the version by Leo at Zen Habits.
Thanks for the comments so far, great tips!