5 Simple Steps To Greater Productivity

I wrote this post for excellent design and life tips blog LifeClever a few weeks back. Thought I’d spread the ‘wisdom’ and cross post here.

1. Set Times & Plan Your Day

Not many people are going to work well without some structure. Waking up in the morning without any sense of direction for what needs to be done, or what you’re going to do that day is a recipe for disaster.

Start scheduling or setting daily milestones. If you don’t work best on a “hour based plan’�such as writing a guest article from 1PM to 2PM, set milestones for the day—one guest blog post, two blog posts on my personal site, complete client design, etc.

2. Keep An Organized To-Do List

When you’re juggling half a dozen projects at once, you’re just asking for trouble by keeping a to-do list in your head. Don’t you want to be able to sit down in the evening and have a few worry-free hours from your workload? If you’re not keeping a to-do list somewhere other than in your head, you’ll be heading straight for burnout.

The solution is simple. Buy a moleskin notebook or pop open TextEdit on your computer, then spurt out all the tasks and actions you need to achieve. Don’t worry about the order, just pump out everything that needs doing. Once these are on paper, focus on organizing them. It’ll feel much better having a visual action list you can look at to see what needs to be done.

3. Set Goals & Milestones

In addition to your newly developed to-do list, start setting goals and milestones. For instance, if you have a blog, a goal might be publishing 5 entries per week for four weeks straight, while a milestone might be hitting 2,000 readers via your RSS feed.

Goals are very important, not enough people set them. I for one have set goals to keep me focused, to keep me looking straight and ahead, and they are perfect to use as motivation for something to work toward.

4. Disconnect Yourself From The Outside World

This falls under focusing on a single task. When you’re writing, the last thing you need is to be distracted by Twitter messages, or emails. It disrupts your overall flow and makes starting your piece again hard to do. On occasion, one simple email can ruin hours of your work day.

You don’t have to close your email program, practice ignoring notifications. If you hear the new email sound ignore it, keep working, and keep in the flow.

5. Focus On A Single Task

Multi-tasking can be fun, and can be rewarding. You think you’re getting a lot done at once, killing two birds with one stone when all you’re really doing is dragging out both tasks longer. Spend some time on a single task or project and focus. Don’t try to write an article while also dealing with marketing related emails. Keep them separate. When you’re doing one, ignore the other - allowing you to work more quickly and efficiently in the long run.

Comments

  1. #1

    Jonathan → www.techgeeklife.com

    Great article Glenn! You’ve been churning out some real top notch stuff. Ever since I first read this article on LifeClever I’ve been following a schedule and it has really improved what I can do in a day.

    Thanks, Jonathan

  2. #2

    rmaspero → www.rmaspero.com

    thanks Glenn for the Tips another great post

  3. #3

    steve → steve.paperpieces.org

    Great Post. Some really helpful tips here, I might have to give them a go. I must admit, I’m certainly not very organized.

  4. #4

    Mike → www.luminancedesign.co.uk

    Great article! Just added the RSS feed and now going to shedule in time to check out older archives on this site - looking forward to seen a point of view from someone younger than I!

    Also, I find ‘Check Off’ a great app to log my lists of ‘to do’ items. It sits discreetly in the menu bar when not in use:

    http://carpeaqua.com/software/checkoff

    Cheers,

    Mike

  5. #5

    Craigeth → craigeth.blogspot.com

    I totally agree.

    However, in certain areas it is possible and sometimes necessary to multi-task to a certain extent.

    For example, when I’m editing video at work, I often have something rendering or converting on one computer while I’m editing something else on another computer.

    One way to be extremely efficient is to get things running in the background.

    I would even recommend using Automator to create actions to do things in the background while you work on something else.

  6. #6

    Saint Jay → www.myspace.com/kreia

    Never get the urge to just go with the flow, Glenn?

  7. #7

    Saint Jay → www.myspace.com/kreia

    (I bet you’re an Aquarius).

  8. #8

    Ruan Ellis

    I completely agree with Craigeth - if I am doing a long 3D Render for a piece of work, then I can set the affinity of the Render Process to one Core of the processor, and leave the other core available to the OS and what I am doing, and the other computers in the Render Cluster are then able to do the rest of the work, while my main PC still has one core free available to do work on, such as finish off emails, finish off a Project I am doing, although once you are writing, even if something crops up, as Glenn said, don’t let it distract you!

  9. #9

    Michael from Pro Blog Design → www.problogdesign.com

    Good advice. I’d be lost without my to-do lists. Without a good plan, you spend more time thinking about what to do, than actually doing it.

  10. #10

    Lennart → kreideraub.blogspot.com

    Oh god.
    I hoped that the day would come that some kid turned up and told the world how productivity can be achieved.

    [Read the following with a scottish accent]
    Are you serious?!

  11. #11

    Glenn Wolsey → www.glennwolsey.com

    Oh god.
    I hoped that the day would come that some kid turned up and told the world how productivity can be achieved.

    [Read the following with a scottish accent]
    Are you serious?!

    Yes “mate.” I am serious. Would you like to be constructive with your criticism - if not, don’t bother commenting again?

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