Guide to Personal Productivity Productivity porn (or, for those really in the know, "productivity pr0n") consists of techniques, tactics, and tricks for maximizing personal productivity -- or, as they say, "getting things done". The techniques that follow work together as an integrated set for me, but they probably won't for you. Maybe you'll get one or two ideas -- probably out of the ideas I stole from other people. Let's start with a bang: don't keep a schedule. And that's it. Please feel free to nominate additions to the list! Turns out Robert Benchley wrote about structured procrastination back in 1949. The sharpest reaction has been to my theory of not keeping a schedule. First, it is certainly true that many people have jobs and responsibilities where they can't do that. But if your reaction is, "boy, I wish I could do that", then it may well be worth rethinking your approach to your career. Second, I do not recommend pursuing this approach in one's personal life :-).
The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time - Tony Schwartz by Tony Schwartz | 8:53 AM March 14, 2012 Why is it that between 25% and 50% of people report feeling overwhelmed or burned out at work? It’s not just the number of hours we’re working, but also the fact that we spend too many continuous hours juggling too many things at the same time. What we’ve lost, above all, are stopping points, finish lines and boundaries. Technology has blurred them beyond recognition. Wherever we go, our work follows us, on our digital devices, ever insistent and intrusive. Tell the truth: Do you answer email during conference calls (and sometimes even during calls with one other person)? The biggest cost — assuming you don’t crash — is to your productivity. But most insidiously, it’s because if you’re always doing something, you’re relentlessly burning down your available reservoir of energy over the course of every day, so you have less available with every passing hour. I know this from my own experience. 1. 2. 3. 1. 2. 3.
Blog Cyber-defense What Hiring Managers Actually Want to Know About You How companies are using LEGOs to unlock talent employees didn’t know they had This summer, Cambridge University announced a search for a “LEGO Professor of Play, Education, and Learning.” With the support of £4 million ($6.1 million) from the LEGO Foundation, the new professor would lead an entire research department dedicated to examining play. This is an endeavor that Robert Rasmussen knows all about. In the late ‘90s, he was asked by then-LEGO Group CEO, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, to explore how LEGO bricks could help a company improve its strategic planning, communication, and creative thinking. Rasmussen, a former math teacher and school principal, was already part of the LEGO family, leading product development for LEGO’s education division, which focused solely on children. “It’s an engine. Sessions can start off with a question such as, “Name one challenge that is preventing growth in your company and build your answer with LEGOs. If LEGO is about anything, it’s the use of one’s hands while the mind is in an unplugged state. Think about one of your passwords.
10 Laws of Productivity You might think that creatives as diverse as Internet entrepreneur Jack Dorsey, industrial design firm Studio 7.5, and bestselling Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami would have little in common. In fact, the tenets that guide how they – and exceptionally productive creatives across the board – make ideas happen are incredibly similar. Here are 10 laws of productivity we’ve consistently observed among serial idea executors: 1. Break the seal of hesitation. A bias toward action is the most common trait we’ve found across the hundreds of creative professionals and entrepreneurs we’ve interviewed. 2. When our ideas are still in our head, we tend to think big, blue sky concepts. 3. Trial and error is an essential part of any creative’s life. To avoid ‘blue sky paralysis,’ pare your idea down to a small, immediately executable concept. 4. When working on in-depth projects, we generate lots of new ideas along the way. 5. 6. 7. 8. Few activities are more of a productivity drain than meetings. 9.
My 23 Go-To Productivity Tools for Remote Work At Todoist, we know the right tool can mean the difference between frantically struggling to keep all of the balls in the air at once and feeling calm and in control of everything you need to get done. That’s why we reached out to the impressively productive writer and business consultant Zachary Sexton to ask him about the tools he uses to stay sane as a remote worker. He put together this incredibly comprehensive list of his go-to productivity tools AND explain exactly how they fit into his streamlined workflow. You’re sure to find some fantastic ideas for saving time, stress, and effort on a daily basis. Hey there. I love it. Fortunately, my productivity buddy and fellow online worker Thomas Frank did a roundup of all the apps and tools he uses to keep his blog, podcast and youtube channel up and running. He asked his fellow keyboard banging friends what was in their batman utility belt of hardware and software… 5 months later… I obliged. Skitch MindJet Mindmanager Dropbox 1. 2. 3. 4.
amazon How to Organize Your Entire Life with Trello The Chokehold of Calendars Meetings may be toxic, but calendars are the superfund sites that allow that toxicity to thrive. All calendars suck. And they all suck in the same way. In my experience, most people don’t schedule their work. I’ve yet to see a résumé—and I hope I never do— that lists “attends meetings well” as a skill. The problem here is two-fold. Let’s start with the premise that you have a 40 hour week. People rarely schedule working time. Why are you letting other people put things on your calendar? Start saying no. Why do you feel like others have more of a right to your time than you do? The problem with calendars is that they are additive rather than subtractive. “I’m adding a meeting” should really be “I’m subtracting an hour from your life.” We need a goal-oriented calendar, but first we need to understand why a goal-oriented calendar is necessary. Imagine that rather than scheduling individual points in time, such as meetings, you were instead scheduling a goal.
untitled Connaissez-vous les bons outils pour gérer vos listes de tâches? Si vous travaillez en mode projet, vous devez lister les tâches de vos projets, définir les tâches prioritaires et ordonnancer ces tâches. Afin de faciliter ce travail, faisons appel à des applications gestionnaires de tâches. L’offre est pléthorique. Voici une petite sélection de ces outils, découvrons-la … Faire la différence entre un gestionnaire de tâches collaboratif et un gestionnaire de tâches individuel Les outils présentés dans cet article ne sont pas collaboratifs mais sont à usage individuel. Ces outils ne permettent donc pas d’impliquer l’intervention de plusieurs ressources. Si vous recherchez un gestionnaire de tâches collaboratif, vous pouvez tester GroupCamp si vous travaillez avec des anglophones ou Taskii sur vous travaillez uniquement avec des francophones. Quelques gestionnaires de tâches efficaces Simple GTD Présentation de Simple GTD : c’est le plus simple à utiliser des gestionnaires de tâches anglophones à mon sens. Où le trouver? Remember the Milk Où le trouver?
How to Scale Yourself and Get More Done Than You Thought Possible The following is a detailed write-up of a popular productivity talk delivered by Scott Hanselman. Visit his blog, hanselman.com, for more productivity tips. "Don't worry, just drop the ball." This counterintuitive advice is one of a dozen-plus productivity practices preached by Scott Hanselman, a program manager at Microsoft, author and avid blogger and speaker. "Dropping the ball is sometimes the right answer," Hanselman says. Hanselman's not the person you'd to expect to hear encourage dropping the ball and discourage burning the midnight oil. How does he do it? "A lot of people say, 'Well, Scott, you're doing all this stuff. "It turns out," he continues, "the less that you do, the more of it that you can do. Scale Yourself In a 40-minute talk Hanselman originally delivered in 2012, and has since presented several times—most recently at South by Southwest Interactive earlier this month—he shares his productivity practices. Look for Danger Signs "Hope is not a plan," Hanselman says.
Productivity vs. Getting Things Done This post originally appeared on the Exist blog. I’ve been a sucker for so-called “productivity porn” for a while. I still am, to some degree, but I’ve been working hard to cure myself of this time-wasting habit and I’m getting a lot closer to that. For anyone who’s not familiar with it, my interpretation of productivity porn is pretty much anything related to productivity as a topic of interest, that doesn’t actually involve getting anything done. I’ve known for years that this habit isn’t doing me any favors, but I’ve only recently started to shake it by enforcing some strict rules on myself. Go back to basics The first thing I did that really made a difference was cutting out all the tools, apps and systems I had been using. I’d never truly understood my own workflow before this. One thing I realized was that I like to have a consolidated “Today” list that includes work and personal tasks and calendar appointments. Use MITs Focus on what works Cut out unproductive habits