Organize IT

View original image

Learning to be productive nowadays with our hectic lifestyles and demanding jobs is a tough prospect, made all the more difficult by the fact there is no one correct way of doing it. You have to learn as you go and falling off the wagon is a common problem. However, from reading about and listening to other people’s experiences, there are several common reasons why they fall down. In this post I want to address them and hopefully it will give any budding productivity fans a few different anges to focus on. As a bonus why not share your own experiences. What has caused your productivity to fall apart in the past? How did you resolve it?

I’m deviating from my usual posting schedule this week to mention the first release of the Productive Magazine. Not only is it free to download, I’m also in it! My post on how to deal with having one of those days has been included, as well as 16 other posts from top productivity bloggers. When I was originally asked to submit something I wasn’t sure what the end result would be but having seen the finished product I’m very pleased and proud to have been a part of it. The magazine has been done to a very high, professional standard (as you can probably see from the front cover) and even includes an exclusive interview with David Allen. Could we be seeing it on newstands in the near future? One can hope!

My GTD Dictionary series is one of the most popular on the site and over the last few weeks I’ve been expanding it. My intention has always been to cover as many productivity related words so that anybody who was confused about particular terms could quickly look them up, rather than having to browse around aimlessly for the information. Below is a summary of what I’ve covered so far.

Batching your work is one of the most common productivity tips out there. However, I’ve always had a little problem with it. Batching turns small, individual tasks into big, time consuming projects. Whenever I do any work I look to break it down so that I can do one individual element at a time, which makes it both comparatively easy and quick to do. Batching achieves the opposite.

For all the tips and advice on being productive that are out there, it’s all useless if you cant focus on what you’re doing. To be productive is to do your work as efficiently and in as stress-free a way as possible but you can’t do any of that if your mind keeps flicking to other things every five minutes. Having had my own struggles with focus recently (more on that later in the article) I thought I’d share my own tips on how I got back on track.