How To be so Productive You Can't Stand it 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.
43 Simple Ways To Simplify Your Life Post written by Sherri Kruger. Follow me on Twitter. Simplicity. How can we make things simpler, more streamlined, or more efficient? Is this all just hype or is there actually something to this simplicity thing? Reducing complexity in my life has reduced stress, increased free time, and top priorities are actually top priorities. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. There are countless ways to simplify your life, these are but a few.
Designing The Perfect Daily Routine: The Ultimate System Harvard’s Positive Psychology Professor, Tal Ben-Shahar, believes happiness is the result of balancing meaning with pleasure. But understanding what gives us meaning and what gives us pleasure is not as easy as it sounds. In this article, I will teach you how to track everything you do and then restructure your activities in the optimal way. You will learn the best way to end procrastination and develop the right habits such as meditation, exercise, and learning so that you can grow every day. You will learn how to work diligently on that which gives you meaning and reward yourself accordingly with pleasure. Work, for example, is thought of by most people as annoying and tedious, but psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Judith LeFevre show otherwise. In their article, Optimal Experience in Work and Leisure [PDF], they show that while people say they prefer leisure over work, actually, they have more ‘flow’ and ‘peak experiences’ at work. aTime Logger 2 The Meaning Map 1. 2. 3. 4.
How to Spend the First 10 Minutes of Your Day - Ron Friedman If you’re working in the kitchen of Anthony Bourdain, legendary chef of Brasserie Les Halles, best-selling author, and famed television personality, you don’t dare so much as boil hot water without attending to a ritual that’s essential for any self-respecting chef: mise-en-place. The “Meez,” as professionals call it, translates into “everything in its place.” In practice, it involves studying a recipe, thinking through the tools and equipment you will need, and assembling the ingredients in the right proportion before you begin. It is the planning phase of every meal—the moment when chefs evaluate the totality of what they are trying to achieve and create an action plan for the meal ahead. For the experienced chef, mise-en-place represents more than a quaint practice or a time-saving technique. “Mise-en-place is the religion of all good line cooks,” Bourdain wrote in his runaway bestseller Kitchen Confidential. Most of us do not work in kitchens. Finally, prioritize your list.
A Pattern Language for Productivity, Pattern #3: Checklists by Andre · 4 Comments Checklists are mental inventories made physical. Instead of trying to hold your thoughts on a topic entirely in your head, write them down as a list. Having a list to review reduces the need to rethink what you need to consider about a topic. For instance, a travel checklist would include all of the items you need to take with you on a trip: TicketBoarding passDress suit2 casual shirts2 casual pantsToiletriesEtc… For blogging, I brainstormed a checklist of future articles to write. Checklists are a great way of seeding the mind for further thinking on a topic. Toiletries to takeAirport restrictionsWhat’s already available for free in the hotel roomDrugstores and markets near hotelCommercial toiletry kits The first checklist was meant to be an inventory of what to bring. You can spend five minutes creating a checklist of checklists that would be useful to make during windows of free time: Checklists are a great way to avoid reacting to problems in a knee-jerk fashion.
Why Efficiency is Overrated – and What to Do About It An awful lot of time-management techniques show an obsession with efficiency. And being efficient – getting tasks done quickly – is certainly important. But efficiency for its own sake is worthless. Sure, you could spend three hours implementing a new system that lets you automatically tag every email as it comes in. But I doubt that you’re going to look back in ten years’ time and say, “Wow, my inbox was always so well organized.” If you pay too much attention to efficiency, you might actually become less effective. Here’s how efficiency is damaging: Playing the Numbers Game Efficiency tends to reduce everything to numbers: How many emails did you answer this morning? Now, I’ll be the first to agree that paying attention to metrics can help you with your time management. What about that long, heartfelt email from an old friend? Change It: Cut yourself some slack, and remember that there are many situations that can’t be reduced to numbers. Shying Away From Challenges Inability to Enjoy Life
Are You Taking Productivity Too Far? Since you’re reading Pick the Brain, I expect that you’ll agree with me when I say that productivity is a good thing. Being productive generally means: You’re living up to your full potential (instead of daydreaming about what might be … and never actually doing it)You’re being proactive rather than reactive, taking control of your own lifeYou feel good about yourself and your life: each day, you have a sense of accomplishmentYou’ve got clear goals, and you’re on track to reach them Pretty great, huh? It sounds like a recipe for a happy life. Except… …can you end up being too productive? The Darker Side of Productivity Like I say, I’m all for productivity. But … I know that sometimes I take it a little too far. Yes, getting things done (or if you’re a David Allan fan, Getting Things Done) is good. When you get overly focused on being productive: Your relationships suffer. Do you need to take your foot off the pedal? Taking a Break From Productivity You could: So … a challenge for you!
The productivity pyramid (give yourself a promotion) Productivity is a measure of output over time. All other things being equal, the more you produce per minute, the more productive you are. And economists understand that wealth (for a company or a community) is based on increasing productivity. The simplest way to boost productivity is to get better at the task that has been assigned to you. The next step up is to find people who are cheaper than you to do those assigned tasks. The next step up is to invest in existing technology that can boost your team's output. The step after that? The final step, the one that that eludes so many of us: Figure out better things to work on. It turns out that the most productive thing we can do is to stop working on someone else’s task list and figure out a more useful contribution instead. The challenge is that the final step requires a short-term hit to your productivity.
Square CEO Jack Dorsey Says If You’re Making Decisions, You’re Not Leading The Manager--How Not to Do It Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, is famous for having up to 70 meetings, and receiving 3,500 to 4,000 emails, each week. She has joked about having people in line outside her office and needing a "take-a-number" machine to manage the traffic. This is not leadership, it's management, two very different things. Leaders who figure out they shouldn't make decisions can lead wildly successful companies devoid of command-and-control management. The Pioneer Bill Gore was so far ahead of his time in 1958 that he was ignored. Today, W. With almost 60 years behind it, W. The Maverick In 1981, at the age of 21, Ricardo Semler replaced his father at Semco, a tiny manufacturing company. Ricardo Semler celebrated his 10th anniversary of not making a decision many years ago. Devoid of managers who solve and decide for others, Semco has grown to more than $1 billion a year in revenue and multiples of that in assets, with employee retention at an unheard of 98 percent.
Confessions of a recovering lifehacker | John Pavlus I used to be a lifehacking addict, and in some ways I still am. I have a perverse love of systems and efficiency: analyzing, configuring, optmizing, categorizing, defining, and parameter-setting. (I’m the son of two librarians, one of whom also worked as an unofficial programmer/sysadmin. I guess it’s genetic.) I loved my first Palm Pilot, I read “Getting Things Done” over a Christmas break for fun, and I took a dickish kind of pride in replacing whatever corporate email solution a job might foist upon me with my own selfishly optimized system (damn the consequences for company security). There was always a better way to do almost anything. But sometime over the last couple years (around the time I turned 30, not coincidentally), it has begun to dawn on me: Maybe all the time I spend looking for better ways to do things is keeping me from, well, doing things. It’s like running on a treadmill: you might get in really good shape, I guess, but you never actually go anywhere. Here be dragons.
10 requirements of the perfect manager If you could hire your next boss, what selection criteria would you use? Alan Norton shares a make-believe want ad aimed at finding the ideal manager. Haven't you wished at least once that you could hire your next boss? You might win the lottery, buy the company, and do just that. But chances are if that happened, you would be out the door in less time than it took to pick the numbers. One of the wonderful things about being a writer is that I don't have to win the lottery for my daydreams to become reality. 1: Be a "people person" Norxodd is people and we are looking for managers who like people. 2: Be visionary Can you see the future? 3: Be a good communicator You should be able to communicate effectively using all methods, including visual presentations, public speaking, email, teleconferencing, and face-to-face. All information at Norxodd is shared equally among all employees. 4: Be technically proficient The products we create at Norxodd are technically complicated. 7: Lead by example
Eight ways to radically increase your productivity Beginnings are the most exciting and energizing times in life. If things have been in a slump for you, make some changes. Lasting success comes from making pointed shifts in your behavior on a daily basis. Success is rarely the result of the major decisions you have to make due to the long and short term consequences that ensue. 1. To be more productive do some of your work outside of the office or redecorate your office and add more color. Changing the appearance and location of your working space helps you to think in different and more innovative ways. 2. Work backward from your "ideal self" by setting small, incremental goals for each area of your business. To succeed at these levels you must not only be a great starter but an even better finisher. 3. More from Entrepreneur.com Make healthy changes to your diet. Expand your perspective by changing patterns and breaking outdated habits. 4. To inspire your passion for work, make sure to schedule time for yourself. 5. 6. 7. 8.
EE204 Business Management for Engineers and Computer Scientists Product/Market Fit The only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit. by Marc Andreesen, June 25, 2007 This post is all about the only thing that matters for a new startup. But first, some theory: If you look at a broad cross-section of startups -- say, 30 or 40 or more; enough to screen out the pure flukes and look for patterns -- two obvious facts will jump out at you. First obvious fact: there is an incredibly wide divergence of success -- some of those startups are insanely successful, some highly successful, many somewhat successful, and quite a few of course outright fail. Second obvious fact: there is an incredibly wide divergence of caliber and quality for the three core elements of each startup -- team, product, and market. At any given startup, the team will range from outstanding to remarkably flawed; the product will range from a masterpiece of engineering to barely functional; and the market will range from booming to comatose. Let's start by defining terms. So: Why?