Lately, I have been re-evaluating my goals and thinking about my career path. While I had been setting sone goals and doing some planning, looking back I would have to be honest and admit that I hadn't been too productive. My goals are fairly realistic but I had been dilly-dallying, procrastinating and deterred by some unfortunate setbacks. Last night after reflecting on what I have been able to achieve so far, I'm not exactly happy, in fact I'm rather disappointed at myself. I haven't pushed myself far enough to bring out my full potential and I have been wasting the talents that God gave to me.
So today when I woke up I thought of becoming more productive and to work my way in achieving my goals further. Imagine my surprise this morning when I received an email (a thread email actually) from a Sr. colleague. The email contained some parts of an article about boosting one's productivity written by Steve Pavlina. Reading it I felt as if the universe sense the determination I felt when I woke up and decided to reinforce that by sending a silent message. Having a bit of eureka moment from the excerpt I decided to look for the whole article and share it here.
33 Rules to Boost Your Productivity
by Steve Pavlina, 2007
Heuristics don’t guarantee you’ll find the optimal solution,
nor do they generally guarantee a solution at all. But they do a good enough job of solving
certain types of problems to be useful.
Their strength is that they break the deadlock of indecision and get you
into action. As you take action you
begin to explore the solution space, which deepens your understanding of the
problem. As you gain knowledge about the
problem, you can make course corrections along the way, gradually improving
your chances of finding a solution. If
you try to solve a problem you don’t initially know how to solve, you’ll often
figure out a solution as you go, one you never could have imagined until you
started moving. This is especially true
with creative work such as software development. Often you don’t even know exactly what you’re
trying to build until you start building it.
Heuristics have many practical applications, and one of my
favorite areas of application is personal productivity. Productivity heuristics are behavioral rules
(some general, some situation-specific) that can help us get things done more
efficiently. Here are some of my
favorites:
Nuke it! The most
efficient way to get through a task is to delete it. If it doesn’t need to be done, get it off your
to do list.
Daily goals. Without
a clear focus, it’s too easy to succumb to distractions. Set targets for each day in advance. Decide what you’ll do; then do it.
Worst first. To
defeat procrastination learn to tackle your most unpleasant task first thing in
the morning instead of delaying it until later in the day. This small victory will set the tone for a
very productive day.
Peak times. Identify
your peak cycles of productivity, and schedule your most important tasks for
those times. Work on minor tasks during
your non-peak times.
No-comm zones.
Allocate uninterruptible blocks of time for solo work where you must
concentrate. Schedule light,
interruptible tasks for your open-comm periods and more challenging projects
for your no-comm periods.
Mini-milestones. When
you begin a task, identify the target you must reach before you can stop
working. For example, when working on a
book, you could decide not to get up until you’ve written at least 1000
words. Hit your target no matter what.
Timeboxing. Give
yourself a fixed time period, like 30 minutes, to make a dent in a task. Don’t worry about how far you get. Just put in the time. See Timeboxing for more.
Batching. Batch
similar tasks like phone calls or errands into a single chunk, and knock them
off in a single session.
Early bird. Get up
early in the morning, like at 5am, and go straight to work on your most
important task. You can often get more
done before 8am than most people do in a day.
Cone of silence. Take
a laptop with no network or WiFi access, and go to a place where you can work
flat out without distractions, such as a library, park, coffee house, or your
own backyard. Leave your comm gadgets
behind.
Tempo. Deliberately
pick up the pace, and try to move a little faster than usual. Speak faster.
Walk faster. Type faster. Read faster.
Go home sooner.
Relaxify. Reduce
stress by cultivating a relaxing, clutter-free workspace. See 10 Ways to Relaxify Your Workspace.
Agendas. Provide
clear written agendas to meeting participants in advance. This greatly improves meeting focus and
efficiency. You can use it for phone
calls too.
Pareto. The Pareto
principle is the 80-20 rule, which states that 80% of the value of a task comes
from 20% of the effort. Focus your
energy on that critical 20%, and don’t overengineer the non-critical 80%.
Ready-fire-aim. Bust
procrastination by taking action immediately after setting a goal, even if the
action isn’t perfectly planned. You can
always adjust course along the way.
Minuteman. Once you
have the information you need to make a decision, start a timer and give
yourself just 60 seconds to make the actual decision. Take a whole minute to vacillate and
second-guess yourself all you want, but come out the other end with a clear
choice. Once your decision is made, take
some kind of action to set it in motion.
Deadline. Set a
deadline for task completion, and use it as a focal point to stay on track.
Promise. Tell others
of your commitments, since they’ll help hold you accountable.
Punctuality. Whatever
it takes, show up on time. Arrive early.
Gap reading. Use
reading to fill in those odd periods like waiting for an appointment, standing
in line, or while the coffee is brewing.
If you’re a male, you can even read an article while shaving (preferably
with an electric razor). That’s 365
articles a year.
Resonance. Visualize
your goal as already accomplished. Put
yourself into a state of actually being there.
Make it real in your mind, and you’ll soon see it in your reality.
Glittering prizes.
Give yourself frequent rewards for achievement. See a movie, book a professional massage, or
spend a day at an amusement park.
Quad 2. Separate the
truly important tasks from the merely urgent.
Allocate blocks of time to work on the critical Quadrant 2 tasks, those
which are important but rarely urgent, such as physical exercise, writing a
book, and finding a relationship partner.
Continuum. At the end
of your workday, identify the first task you’ll work on the next day, and set
out the materials in advance. The next
day begin working on that task immediately.
Slice and dice. Break
complex projects into smaller, well-defined tasks. Focus on completing just one of those tasks.
Single-handling. Once
you begin a task, stick with it until it’s 100% complete. Don’t switch tasks in the middle. When distractions come up, jot them down to
be dealt with later.
Randomize. Pick a
totally random piece of a larger project, and complete it. Pay one random bill. Make one phone call. Write page 42 of your book.
Insanely bad. Defeat
perfectionism by completing your task in an intentionally terrible fashion,
knowing you need never share the results with anyone. Write a blog post about the taste of salt,
design a hideously dysfunctional web site, or create a business plan that
guarantees a first-year bankruptcy. With
a truly horrendous first draft, there’s nowhere to go but up.
30 days. Identify a
new habit you’d like to form, and commit to sticking with it for just 30
days. A temporary commitment is much
easier to keep than a permanent one.
Delegate. Convince
someone else to do it for you.
Cross-pollination.
Sign up for martial arts, start a blog, or join an improv group. You’ll often encounter ideas in one field
that can boost your performance in another.
Intuition. Go with
your gut instinct. It’s probably right.
Optimization.
Identify the processes you use most often, and write them down
step-by-step. Refactor them on paper for
greater efficiency. Then implement and
test your improved processes. Sometimes
we just can’t see what’s right in front of us until we examine it under a
microscope.
I'm not familiar with this guy and with his works, (I been reading Stephen Covey and trying to work on my leadership skills) but reading his article on boosting productivity, I found it to be helpful and practical. I actually know and did some of them already, but I guess I need someone (or some way) to remind me on what I have been neglecting to do. Hopefully, anyone who would come across this entry or this article would also find something substantial.
