Teach an Old Dog New Tricks: How to Break Bad Work Habits. Last year, I attended a professional workshop where the instructor asked us to write out our worst habit. Unfortunately, more than one answer flooded my brain, and I had to seriously consider which to choose. In the end, I decided that my most unabashed, shameless and ubiquitous bad habit is impatience. My impatience invades every aspect of my personal and professional life. For instance, I constantly find myself wondering, “Why do these people take so long in line at the grocery store?” In terms of how it’s affected my productivity at work, I’m embarrassed to say that my impatience has led to countless instances of emails sent in a hurry, which only needed to be retracted or clarified latter; decisions made on quick assumptions — that turned out to be wrong — and occasional crankiness with those around me who are not moving fast enough.
Having pulled back the curtain on my own worst habit in the workshop, I decided to do something about it. Step 2: Create alternative actions. Time Management, Simplified: How to Be Productive With No Worrie. This guest post was written by Leo Babauta of the Zen Habits blog. I’m a big fan of Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen, and adopted the system wholeheartedly a year and a half ago. This year, I’ve written a number of posts on GTD, but one of my habits is to take whatever I do and try to simplify it. Slowly, I’ve been reducing my time management system (based on GTD) to its barest minimum. And you know what? It’s not only simpler, I’ve found that it’s so much more productive, less hassle, and more stress-free than the official GTD system, or even other time-management systems I’ve tried.
Before I get into simplification, let’s look at the main elements of GTD: Those are the basics — there are other stuff, but I think I’ve outlined the system fairly well. Simplifying the System As you can see, GTD is a lot of things to implement and keep track of, which is why the Weekly Review is so necessary. Reduce your tasks. That’s it. Some notes on my simple system: Tools. Outlaw Coach » Blog Archive » Five Secrets to Getting Started. How to Build Decent Productivity Software (Aaron Swartz's R. These days it seems like everyone is making productivity software — software that helps you manage all the the things you need to get done. Yet all of them seem to be missing some basic pieces. A productivity application has two jobs: remembering everything you need to do and getting you to do it.
The second is necessary because without it, you’ll put all your tasks in the application and then never do them. The first is necessary because otherwise the application will have no idea what to tell you to do. I think the ideal piece of productivity software would be like having a great assistant or a campaign manager: someone who intimately knows all aspects of your life’s todo lists and schedules and wasn’t afraid of saying you had to wrap this meeting up because you promised the kids you’d be home at 5 to take them to the game. Judged against this standard, present productivity software is woefully lacking — it’s usually not much more than a glorified todo list. How does it do this? Hello, How to Complete Things on Time. Remember The Milk. Listible! Quick way to get resource. Oh, dont forget... Organize Your Work and Life.