With a hectic schedule, modern distractions such as social networking sites, email, and the vast amount of information the Internet has to offer it is easy to get distracted and see your productivity levels crash. Without productivity, however, you will not get everything done. Increasing your productivity is the best way to ensure that you finish important tasks, but how do you avoid the perils of distraction and procrastination? The best way to become more productive is to break everything in your life down step-by-step and make solid, timessaving plans.
Create Weekly Plans
At the end of the week, write down every single task, even small tasks such as paying the electricity bill or cleaning the bathroom, that you would like to complete next week. This will help you to get a clearer picture of everything that you need to do. Create separate lists from your task list by separating work tasks, chores such as washing the dishes and other projects, such as writing a book, onto different lists.
You should have three lists, or more depending on how many different categories you have, one for work, one for chores and one for other projects. Separating your weekly to-do list will help you to see what categories will require more time, which can help your to delegate your time better throughout the week.
Keep a Daily Schedule
Once you know what tasks need completing during the week, you must incorporate them into your day-to-day schedule. A daily schedule will improve your time management and ensure that you are able to fit all of your tasks in. However, when making a daily schedule keep the following tips in mind:
- Many people often do not give themselves enough time to complete a task. Tasks always take longer than expected, so if you think a particular task should take an hour schedule in an hour and fifteen minutes to complete it. If you happen to finish the task in an hour, then you can give yourself the treat of a fifteen-minute break.
- If you feel like there are so many things you need that it seems impossible, then think of what tasks must be done. Before you even start on your schedule think of three to four tasks that are most important. These are your must-do tasks and everything else should be sidelined until you finish these three or four must-do tasks.
- When writing a schedule, it is tempting to put easy tasks at the start and put-off hard tasks until later. However, if you avoid a task in the morning it is unlikely you will ever complete it later on in the day. Instead, place the tasks you’re avoiding at the start of your schedule to get them out of the way.
Learn to Separate Work and Play
When working on a tedious or difficult task, it is easy to distract yourself with more enjoyable activities such as checking Facebook, or reading a post on your favorite blog. However, this makes the task take twice as long, and leaves less time in your schedule for other tasks, and for real breaks.
Instead, when faced with a tedious task, work in short, focused bursts without distractions, and then give yourself a real break. Do not blur the line between work and play by doing fun things like checking Facebook in the middle of work task.
Samantha Goodings is a professional writer who often writes on time-management and productivity for sites including Degree Jungle a resource for college students @degreejungle.
Maybe you’ve become aware of the fact that you can’t seem to stop yourself from refreshing your Gmail inbox, your Facebook homepage, or your endless Twitter feed. Maybe you’re a student working toward your master’s degree, and you’re working full-time, too, to pay your way through school and you’ve come to realize your dependency on (or perhaps obsession with) the Internet. If you’re starting to think this sounds a lot like you, then maybe it’s time for an Internet detox.
At first it sounds scary. Even impossible. Maybe you’re genuinely perplexed when you begin to wonder how you ever survived before the Internet came along. Maybe you’ve taken after the “digital natives” and have forgotten what answering machines were for.
But we survived. Before the iPhone, we really did survive. And our minds were calmer then. The endless chatter of online communication — whether trivial or business-related — has removed many of us from the simpler life and led us to forget how to relax.
It is okay to take a break. You are allowed a break. You are allowed freedom. And it’s healthy to take a vacation from work, school, the “Twitterverse” every once in a while. Tell yourself you deserve it (because you do).
We live in a fast-paced world of technological communication where we are now able and expected to communicate with our coworkers, bosses, friends, family and community anytime, anywhere, 24/7; the Internet has morphed us into, if not workaholics, webaholics. So, as hard as it may be at first, it’s more important than ever to let yourself take a short-but-sweet vacation from your online responsibilities: to close your laptop, turn off your phone, and unplug your commitments for a while, to enjoy what you’ve probably missed out on for far too long: real life.
Emily Matthews is currently applying to master’s degree programs across the U.S., and loves to read about new research into health care, gender issues, and literature. She lives and writes in Seattle, Washington.
Here is my argument “pro” e-hoarding is unhealthy: Either comment below or join the commentary at Business week here or at http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/
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You say, “So what?” to hoarding gigabytes of mostly useless information. I say, “Get real.”
Information has never been easier to acquire. E-mails fly across the world in milliseconds. The average worker fields more than 100 every day, and you say e-hoarding is healthy? Is clutter healthy?
E-clutter, which results from e-hoarding, is costly, both mentally and monetarily. We have the same capacity to digest information as our forefathers, but the amount of information zinging its way into our lives is increasing exponentially.
According to the research firm Basex, information overload costs the U.S. economy a minimum of $900 billion per year in lowered employee productivity and reduced innovation. It adds time to normal tasks and creates stress.
A recent survey by the technology market research firm Radicati Group reported that “the typical corporate e-mail user sends and receives about 105 e-mail messages per day.” That is a lot of e-mail to process, categorize, or store. Sorting through old messages and rummaging through our in-boxes like we’re after the Holy Grail strips hours from each day.
Additionally, the anxiety that goes with having to scavenge through thousands of pieces of information, hoping that you’ve responded to all your e-mails, can be overwhelming.
Here’s what it all comes down to: The more you save, the more you have to sift through. The less everything is organized, the more time you’ll waste and the more stressed you’ll become.
Organize your e-clutter, trash stuff you don’t need, and free yourself to work on what truly matters.
To see the “con” side of the argument, click here. And leave a comment!
Let’s remember the two minute rule. Take the number of items you have in your inbox and multiply that number by 2. That’s the maximum number of minutes this project should take you. Then, set aside uninterrupted time to start working on your inbox.
This practice is actually a great way to help you get acclimated to the new way you will handle your inbox. If you have a very large amount of items, it may be useful to break this project into a few different time slots. BUT… Don’t stop the project until your inbox is totally clear!
NO. NO. NO. That’s extra work. That will create another email to handle. If you want or need to save an item that you sent, go into your sent mail, as soon as it is sent, and do whatever you were going to do with that blind copied email.
This is another one that could be tough to give you rules to follow. Sometimes the received email is enough for you to save. Sometimes you may need to keep your response. Whatever you do, try not to keep both.
Not only is how we email and manage our computer important for productivity, but the way we sit at that computer can also help or hurt our productivity. Here’s a guest post that we thought you’d find helpful…
What is Ergonomics?
Ergonomics is a science involving the design of the workplace and workplace equipment to fit the worker in a way that prevents development of injuries due to certain repetitive motions. When a workplace is ergonomically designed it results in a boost of worker productivity.
What can be ergonomically redesigned?
Almost any office equipment can be bought or rearranged to be more ergonomic including furniture and tools like desks, chairs, phones, keyboards, and even staplers.
How does ergonomics affect productivity?
When an office and its procedures are designed to fit the worker ergonomically, the worker experiences less discomfort, pain, and injuries. He/she will be less likely to call out of work due to injury and, therefore, will be able to get more done while at work. When absenteeism declines, productivity rises. More comfort and less pain give way to the accomplishment of getting more work done.
Beginning with Ergonomic Chairs
One of the most common injuries or complaints among office workers is back pain, many times accompanied by neck pain. Chairs such as these are designed to provide maximum comfort for optimal performance.
Advantages of Ergonomic Chairs over Traditional Chairs
- Reduce or eliminate back, neck, and shoulder pain (especially carpal tunnel syndrome)
- Reduce fatigue
- Reduce risk of injury
- Increase focus and attention
- Increase blood flow
- Offer vast array of adjustment mechanisms to provide comfort unique and necessary to each individual worker
All of these combined puts a downturn on absenteeism and an upturn on productivity and performance.
Dave Gotter is an author. His articles can be found here.
I have thousands and thousands of e-mails not only in my inbox, but in many folders….
It is difficult to give you rules on when you should purge your e-mails. But the first thing is to spend time getting all of those e-mails out of your inbox, and into action folders or into reference folders.
The second thing I suggest you do is to go into your folders, sort your mail by date, and start with the oldest, and just start purging. Another way to sort is to sort by those with attachments, because some attachments can be quite large, and can impact the performance of your system.
Another suggestion is to save the attachment on an e-mail to your hard drive, the first time you view it, and make sure that the e-mail references the path where the item is saved.
Finally, every time you are in a folder, take a quick look at what is “hanging” in the folder. You might be able to easily delete the out of date items in a few quick seconds.
How many items do you regularly carry in your inbox?
Well, if it is more than what recently arrived, chances are that you are using that inbox and its contents to remind you to do tasks related to those emails.
As Dr Phil would say, “How’s THAT workin’ for ya?”
Keeping hundreds of messages in your inbox is like having hundreds of papers strewn all over the top of your desk, in no files, in no piles, just sitting there waiting for you to root through them do decide what to work on next.
Using your inbox as a to do list is choosing the most dysfunctional, disorganized, and productivity sapping way to try to get things done. Why? Here are three reasons:
1. It essentially requires that you review each item each day to choose your next task, then do the same the next day, and the next. You’re repeating the same process every day.
2. Scrolling up and down, opening and closing messages, reading and rereading the same message is just plain wastefully unproductive.
3. It also is an instant source of morning stress, opening that inbox and viewing everything you’re NOT going to get done that day.
Our solution? Sort all items requiring your action to folders you’ve created for that purpose. Call them Action A and Action B – A for the important stuff, and B for the not so important stuff.Drag and drop the message there, and set a reminder for the date you want/need to view it to work it. Your reminder system then becomes the trigger for you to work that items rather than viewing it every day waiting for its importance to rise to the top.
As if we don’t have enough emails charging into our inboxes already! Now we have Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. notifications haphazardly gracing that inbox, intterupting us, and adding more messages to an already crowded space.
Here’s a tip that you might find useful:
Create folders for each social media account. Or perhaps just one folder for all your social media stuff. Whatever works best for you…
Then, create an automated rule that sends any email notification directly to that folder. In other words, you might create a rule that says all messages coming from Facebook are dropped directly into your newly created Facebook folder. This emliminates another flash or ding of an interrupting email. It also eliminates your having to read, or drag and drop them to the folder. It is done automatically.
Then, view all the contents of that folder at a time that works for you. Simple – that’s all there is to it.
The benefit of this is that you’ll avoid multiple sporadic interruptions throughout the day. It also sets you up to “group like tasks” which is a time management technique that truly works.Then, when you’re in the mood to check in on your FB friends, YOU decide when you’ll view the notifications, not the other way around.
