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 :-).
Blog Cyber-defense 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
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.
businessinsider Books suck. No question about it, almost everyone who writes a book is a crappy writer. And this is a good thing. It's because the writer spent his life getting GOOD at what he was writing about. He didn't spend his life being good at writing. He didn't spend his life typing. He or She DID something. But that's ok. I like reading billion-person books. I like reading books where I feel my brain have an IQ orgasm. And, (please let me stick with this metaphor one more sentence), I might have a little brain-child that turns into my own special idea or book after reading a great book. Before I give my list, I want to mention there are three kinds of non-fiction books: (and I'm only dealing with non-fiction. These are books like "How to be a leader". They establish the author as an expert. These books usually suck. In fact, writing one might be desperately important to your career. A publisher will see an article somewhere like, "12 ways to become smarter" and say, "that should be a book".
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.
amazon Forget the 80-20 Rule. Follow the 1-50 Rule Instead Over the last few years, I have written a lot about time management and shared ways that you can do more by working less. Once you understand that the idea of a direct, one-to-one relationship between time and value is outdated, you can begin to upgrade the use of your time within your business for faster growth and a better work-life balance. The Old 80-20 Rule To upgrade your use of time, you first have to identify what tasks you do that truly create value for your business. And the first step to creating more value per unit of time is to concretely define what your real value-creation activities are and then focus on those activities to help grow your company. If you've read anything on time management, you've come across Pareto's Principle, inspired by the work of 19th-century economist Vilfredo Pareto. With my coaching clients I have taken this idea and further refined it to create something that I share in detail in my latest book, The Freedom Formula. The Math (Stick with Me)
Why You Get More Done When You Gamify Your Life As a kid playing games, you didn’t stay up for hours because of the music, the graphics, or the storyline. Rather, it was because the games were so difficult that any kind of achievement was a massive deal for your 8-year-old self. As an adult, these basic lessons still ring true: difficulty doesn’t put you off if it’s supplemented with rewards. No matter how difficult a task might be, you can get through it if you can manage it incrementally. “Difficult” can mean mentally demanding, or even just arduous (as you’ve undoubtedly experienced after spending six hours on the same darn spreadsheet). In fact, you probably already have tried to gamify your life, that is, you’ve made games out of boring activities to pass the time. How To Gamify Your Life Gamification is turning a task into a game to motivate yourself to do it. When these factors come together and you are rewarded, achieve your goals and collaborate with other people, your brain releases dopamine, a chemical that motivates you.
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.
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 Prioritize Work: 7 Practical Methods for When "Everything is Important" One of the biggest struggles in the modern workplace is knowing how to prioritize work. Workloads are ballooning and everything feels important. However, the truth is that a lot of the work we do every day doesn’t really need to be done. At least not right away. Learning how to prioritize means getting more out of the limited time you have each day. But while the elements of prioritization are simple (i.e. To make things easier, we’ve collected some of the best strategies out there on how to prioritize work into one master list. RescueTime tells you exactly how you’re spending your time every day so you can prioritize the work that matters most. 1. Prioritization happens on different levels. Unfortunately, those lists don’t always match up. Start by making a master list—a document, app, or piece of paper where every current and future task will be stored. Once you have all your tasks together, it’s time to break them down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals. 2. 3. Here’s how it works:
uk.businessinsider Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design/flickr Tapping your productivity in ways you never have before takes unconventional thinking. Reaching optimal productivity is about working smarter, not harder, and making the most of each day. The following TED talks offer valuable lessons in doing just that. Adam Grant's 'The surprising habits of original thinkers' If fear of failure is stopping you from producing more ideas, Grant, a Wharton professor and author of "Originals," has some inspiration for you. "The greatest originals are the ones who fail the most, because they're the ones who try the most," he says. According to Grant — who has studied many of the greats — churning out tons of ideas, even bad ones, is the key to successfully launching a game-changing idea. Shawn Achor's 'The happy secret to better work' He suggests the common belief that we should work to be happy is misguided, and instead happiness inspires productivity. Nilofer Merchant's 'Got a meeting?
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.