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The Secret Weapon For Better Focus

The Secret Weapon For Better Focus
Advertisement Are you looking for a more efficient way to organise your work-days? Try Time Blocking. A few months back, I came across Cal Newport’s illuminating post on Time Blocking — a productivity “hack” that helps you to make the most of your work day by assigning very specific tasks to very specific blocks of time. For some, the idea of scheduling tasks in such a rigid way may be counter intuitive. Newport generally spends around 15-20 minutes at the end of each day planning his ‘time blocks’ for the following day, with the overall goal to “make sure progress is being made on the right things at the right pace for the relevant deadlines”. For a potential promise of a 50% increase in productivity (especially related to deep, tough work), the temptation to give this hack a trial run is hard to resist. Give Some Time To Planning You can see a basic example (for just one day) I used a few days ago below, though you can of course make this as detailed as possible. Be Honest With Yourself Related:  Productivitytime management

The S.T.A.R. Method: A More Effective, Less Stressful Way to Process Email Do you struggle with having a manageable email Inbox? Are you worried that you’re missing something important because you can’t keep up with the volume of email traffic you’re getting? Don’t worry, you’re not alone – and there’s an easier way to get have less stress and overwhelm without being anal-retentive that doesn’t require you to learn to be anal-retentive about clearing your Inbox. I’ve written a lot about effective email habits, and I’ve recommended using the R.A.F.T. (Read-Act-File-Trash) method to process your Inbox. Over the course of time, though, I recognized some of the weaknesses of that particular method, and I’ve changed things up a bit – the process that I’ve distilled and now recommend is the S.T.A.R. method. Here’s a quick breakdown: S stands for SCAN. Scan your Inbox for senders and subjects. T stands for TRASH – as in “trash everything that’s not relevant, useful, or something you want or need A stands for ARCHIVE, as in “archive relevant reference information

Joe's Goals - Free Online Habit Tracker These 3 Types Of Lists Will Help You Be More Productive When it comes to being organized and productive, the to-do list is the ultimate tool. That’s why there are so many task management apps and project management systems that are focused around task lists. But at some point, you have to stop listing and start doing. By using these three lists, you’ll have all the list-making power you need without a complicated system that takes up too much time. Why Make Lists At All? Research into human psychology has given us a lot of interesting ideas about why we make lists and how we think about productivity in general. An oft-quoted passage from the book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength reads: [I]t turns out that the Zeigarnik effect is not, as we assumed for decades, a reminder that continues unabated until the task gets done . . . Having a clear mind goes a long way towards being able to concentrate on a single task — this is the principle behind one of the most popular productivity systems around, Getting Things Done.

How To Stop Being Lazy And Get More Done - 5 Expert Tips Before we commence with the festivities, I wanted to thank everyone for helping my first book become a Wall Street Journal bestseller. To check it out, click here. Some days the to-do list seems bottomless. We all want to know how to stop being lazy and get more done. So I decided to call a friend who manages to do this — and more. Cal Newport impresses the heck out of me. He has a full-time job as a professor at Georgetown University, teaching classes and meeting with students.He writes 6 (or more) peer-reviewed academic journal papers per year.He’s the author of 4 books including the wonderful “So Good They Can’t Ignore You.” And yet he finishes work at 5:30PM every day and rarely works weekends. No, he does not have superpowers or a staff of 15. Below you’ll get Cal’s secrets on how you can better manage your time, stop being lazy, get more done — and be finished by 5:30. 1) To-Do Lists Are Evil. To-do lists by themselves are useless. Here’s Cal: Great — build that into your schedule.

The Goldilocks principle: Ensuring your capacity to meet demand is just right The often-used businesses term “right-sizing” has in recent years become common in higher education. Though sometimes used as a euphemism for “downsizing,” it more rightly refers to an effort to optimize enrollment, human resources, programs and facilities—in other words, fixed costs. There are a host of factors that should go into the analysis when an institution is attempting to match demand with its capacity to meet that demand. Internal factors The list that follows begins with several internal factors to consider—most of which the institution has some ability to control. It continues with external factors, over which the institution has limited or no control. Capacity We can define enrollment capacity as the maximum enrollment attainable without having to add significant fixed costs (variable costs—such as adjunct faculty—can ebb and flow with enrollment). Curriculum/program mix An institution must determine if its program offerings match the demand. Program costs Enrollment blend

A Life of Productivity – 100 time, energy, and attention hacks to be more productive When I graduated University with a business degree last May, I received two incredible full-time job offers, both of which I declined because I had a plan. For exactly one year, from May 1, 2013, through May 1, 2014, I would devour everything I could get my hands on about productivity, and write every day about the lessons I learned on A Year of Productivity. Over the last 12 months I have conducted countless productivity experiments on myself, interviewed some of the most productive people in the world, and read a ton of books and academic literature on productivity, all to explore how I could become as productive as possible, and then write about the lessons I learned. One year, 197 articles, and over one million hits later, I’ve reached the end of my year-long journey, but not before going out with a bang. This article’s a long one, but it’s pretty skimmable! Without further ado, let’s jump in. To kick things off, here are a number of my favorite time hacks to both: Hacks to get more time

Align Your Time Management with Your Goals At the end of a busy day, sometimes it’s hard to figure out where the time went. The following excerpt from the book Getting Work Done provides a simple process for you to prioritize your work and understand how you’re actually using your time. What goals are you aiming for in your work? Does the way that you are spending your time actually correlate to those goals? Without answers to these questions, you won’t know how the many tasks on your list should be prioritized, organized, and ultimately accomplished. List your goals Ideally, you and your manager should meet at the start of each year to formulate a set of performance goals. Revisiting them now, write these goals down—on paper or in a note-taking app if you prefer. Track your time Once you’ve identified your goals, it’s time to examine how you’re currently spending your time. First, write down your activities. Core responsibilities: day-to-day tasks that make up the crux of your job. Then, track your time.

10 Mini Productivity Hacks To Ease Your Life We probably live in the busiest and most distracting time in history, and all the tasks we have to accomplish each day can be really difficult to complete when it’s hard to focus. Everyone wants to be more productive, but many people don’t know where to start. Or worse, they think the key to productivity involves doing things that look like a major lifestyle shift. The good news, however, is that there are many small things you can do to make your life easier and more productive. 1. One of the key things to realize about productivity is that not every task we have on our plates is equally important. If you want to boost your productivity and get more done, a simple trick to start out with is making a list of the day’s tasks and determine the top three tasks that you simply must complete before the day is up. 2. The Pomodoro Technique is a simple productivity strategy in which you pick one task you’re going to focus on without distraction and without stopping for 25 minutes straight. 3.

10 Ways to Cut to the Chase and Get Stuff Done 10 Ways to Cut to the Chase and Get Stuff Done You grow quiet when someone with more power is in the room. You blab when you’re perceived as the big cheese. How many times have you wished the boss would just shut up? Leaders can’t wait for you to shut up, either. Ever feel like you’re just an inconvenience? Overall, there’s too much talk and not enough “do” in organizations. Anyone who leaves a meeting without something to do, shouldn’t have been there in the first place, even if it’s just to monitor and fuel the success of others. Use email to inform – talk to decide. Successful leaders cut to the chase. 5 questions before you open your mouth: What am I trying to accomplish? 3 reasons to talk: To understand.Make something better.Move the agenda forward. The purpose of talk is making decisions not more talking. Talk to make decisions or don’t talk. 10 questions that cut to the chase: What would you like to happen? Bonus: Before you say anything else, what are you prepared to do about this? Like this:

Procrastination hack: '(10+2)*5' Following on the idea of the procrastination dash and Jeff’s progressive dash, I’ve been experimenting with a squirelly new system to pound through my procrastinated to-do list. Brace yourself, because it is a bit more byzantine than is Merlin 2005’s newly stripped-down habit. It’s called (10+2)*5, and today it will save your ass. Who it’s for procrastinatorsthe easily distractedcompulsive web-surferspeople with a long list of very short tasks (a/k/a “mosquitos”) people having trouble chipping away at very large tasks What you’ll need a timermust be easy to resetelectronic kitchen timer is particularly good (pref. with multiple alarm memories), oran app like Minuteur (get the newest version—several cool new features)a reduced subset of your to-do list tasks that can be worked on (not necessarily completed) in blocks of 10 minutes or lessGTD people: next actions only, pleasean hour of your time (less is potentially okay, but it’s non-canonical)your sorry, procrastinating ass How it works

8 Startling Truths About Multitasking And Productivity One of the more popular posts on this blog described how to save time writing blog posts. Perhaps I ought to have taken that to heart. Over the three days it took me to write this blog post, I found myself writing it: While watching TV.While babysitting three little kids.While periodically checking Twitter.With two side-by-side computer monitors, one running a news feed. That would explain why it took me three days to write one post. What destroys your blog? Content marketers are a busy lot, especially if they are going it alone. Except that a pie sliced into lots of tiny pieces is a mushy mess. Content marketers are true multitaskers. 1. Let’s start with the big one: your brain. Ever write your blog posts while watching TV? And not only can our brains not make it happen, but they get damaged when we try to force them. Constant interruption (which is what multitasking is) brings on higher levels of stress. So no. 2. According to Dr. Singular focus is how you get things done. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

40 of the Best To-Do Apps for Personal Task Management What was once the simple choice between using a notebook, legal pad, or stack of Post-it notes to manage your personal to-do list is now a mind-numbing decision between dozens of to-do apps. Flashy apps that offer more features than you could ever use. Free apps that are so bare you wonder how they'd be helpful at all. And paid apps that look just right, but you're not sure it's worth paying the price just to find out. Wonder no more. Quick Reference Guide: Download a free PDF "cheat sheet" offering an overview of all 40 apps in this post. Download Zapier's To-Do App Cheat Sheet Just sign up for our blog and we'll give you our free ebook. How to Pick a To-Do App "There are approximately 17 million software applications and web sites out there built to manage your to do list," Gina Trapani, founder of Lifehacker, wrote in 2006. So where do you begin? Answering these questions helps you decide which task management method you follow. How to Integrate Your To-Do App 40 of the Best To-Do Apps Due

9 Incredible Books to Phenomenally Boost Your Productivity Books on productivity can be great investments, rewarding us with better ways to work, stay creative, and reduce stress. Here’s a list of 9 Incredible Books to Phenomenally Boost Your Productivity. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity In today’s world, yesterday’s methods just don’t work. In Getting Things Done, veteran coach and management consultant David Allen shares the breakthrough methods for stress-free performance that he has introduced to tens of thousands of people across the country. Allen’s premise is simple: our productivity is directly proportional to our ability to relax. Do The Work Could you be getting in your way of producing great work? The answer is Do the Work, a manifesto by bestselling author Steven Pressfield, that will show you that it’s not about better ideas, it’s about actually doing the work. “There is an enemy. Show Your Work! Show Your Work! The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results • cut through the clutter

labmanager This article is a slightly modified version of a press release that originally appeared on the Saint Leo University website regarding online programs, but the tips provided are also applicable to any business or lab environment. Image credit: Keith A Frith on ShutterstockDid you do anything yesterday that was not necessary? Maybe you started a discussion post during your lunch hour and got side-tracked by a co-worker with a “quick” question. Or you got sucked into Angry Birds while you were in the pick-up line at your son’s school when you could have been catching up on reading about the latest technologies for your lab. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Sandburg said, “Time is the most valuable coin in your life. Clearly, that’s so much easier said than done, especially when you wear many different hats in any given day — from parent, lab manager, and employee, to sister, brother, or caretaker. 1. 2. What environment makes you most productive? 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Some things are important. 8.

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