How to be More Productive
~ December 18th, 2009You’ll advance your career if you can become more productive. Your managers will trust you with more important tasks because they’ll know you’ll get it done.
You can become more productive over time through repetition and practice, but there are also techniques you can learn that will have big increases on your productivity. I highly suggest you read up on some Getting Things Done materials, Tim Ferris’ Four Hour Work Week, or Dragos Roua’s Brilliantly Better blog.
Here’s a quick tip that will help you become more productive from Peter Bregman’s post An 18-minute Plan for Managing Your Day:
STEP 1 (5 Minutes) Set Plan for Day. Before turning on your computer, sit down with a blank piece of paper and decide what will make this day highly successful.
Computers are distracting. Figure out what you need to do before you check your email, Facebook, and Twitter. Many an hour have been lost to Facebook, Twitter, and crossword puzzles…(not by me of course, but I’ve been told these things are distracting).
Lay out your to-do list from highest priority to lowest. Set a time limit for yourself to complete these tasks. You’ll be surprised how focused you can become from a self-imposed time limit.
As I’m writing this post I closed my email and chat client, because I have a bad habit of constantly checking it when I get stumped on something I’m writing. It helped.
One thing that I find very rewarding is putting a little check mark box beside each activity on your task list. For some strange reason it’s very satisfy to check off a completed task. Check out the rest of An 18-minute Plan for Managing Your Day to learn the rest of the steps.
1 post down: check!
Recent Comments