By Jeffrey Strain
When it comes to personal finances, most people concentrate on saving and investing money. This can be a problem because issues that may not first appear to have much to do with personal finances can often have a dramatic affect on them. Productivity is just one of these.
The more productive you are, the more that you can accomplish in a day. Increasing...
eh eh – I appreciate and resemble quite a few of your suggestions. Currently I am one of those authors who writes *and* has a “dayjob,” but I also have numerous friends who are full time writers. It brings with it an interesting set of challenges – and many of those challenges are quite applicable to numerous other professions where “sitting in front of a computer” [trying to be productive] is the major portion of one’s job.
For myself, my “thinking time” is often done on my motorcycle – when the weather is good, I commute on it to the dayjob (50 miles from home) to save on gasoline. I *could* rig up something so I could listen to the news or music, but I prefer not to. The hum of the engine and quiet time is great for mentally working out problems, strategies – or mentally blocking out a scene…
I really agree with you about taking a walk to work out problems. I don’t know why, but that really works to clear my mind and I always come up with ways to solve my problems.
Great list!
I follow a number of these
the walk
limit caffeine – one cup before 10am
baths
lunch away from the computer
limit multi-tasking
no cell phone
turning off Outlook completely (turns off the instant messaging “feature”)
being punctual
However, I still have a bad TV habit and I need to figure out how to work around un-productive friends who aren’t punctual, have cell phones and multitask.
good one. disagree though with the coffee habit; since i make my own and don’t buy it from cafes except when i meet with someone…
one thing i do to start my day right is either a short prayer or for the non-religous, some form of meditation. it sets the mood right and/or generates positive energy somehow for me…read that some of the most productive people do some form of contemplation at dawn or after waking up…
Great list with a number of things that I need to add to my routine. I need to especially work on getting to bed at a decent hour. I am always waking up tired and I know this ruins the work for the day…
I follow a number of items on your list. Stopping TV has been a real time generator.
I fail on caffeine though. Drinking too much coffee. Must make an effort to cut down.
It’s not bad being lazy as long as you aren’t lazy too much. I love being lazy and If I could, I’d spend a lot more time being lazy
It would have been a lot more productive for me if you had condensed this list down so it wasn’t so long.
It would have been a lot more productive for me if you had condensed this list down so it wasn
That’s a very interesting list. I have followed some of that advice in the past and it has worked for me quite well. I have also stopped following some of it and seen my productivity drop.
I had some thoughts that I would like to add:
If you use TiVo or something similar, you can still watch TV but avoid the ads. You can roughly halve the amount of time you spend sitting in front of the box without missing any of your favourite shows. Be careful though, because TiVo will record new shows based on what you watch and you may just end up watching more TV.
Stumbleupon is a big time waster. That’s how I found this site and now that I look back at today, I realise that I’ve barely achieved anything other than reading a bunch of websites. This is much like your “Limit time reading the news” item. You must consciously make a decision about how much time you will spend doing this and stick to that time.
Not everyone likes carrying a notepad around with them but nearly everyone has a mobile phone. Most newer mobile phones have the ability to store notes. You can use this feature to record your good ideas when you are not near your computer. I also rip corners off newspapers to jot notes on with the pen I always carry with me.
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