I'm often asked how I am able to juggle so many tasks at once, and get a lot of things done. Productivity is a skill that can be learned and while ...
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I personally start with the easiest/Most important task. The joy of completing a task will increase my will power. So that i can start the hard one easily
Not only that, bulldozing thru a stack of todos is insanely satisfying. It's like getting a flywheel up to top speed that helps you power thru the 1 or 2 more intensive tasks.
After spending the morning bustin out a 12 long todo list, I have all the energy to work solid on that 1 thing for the afternoon. If I did it the other way, I'm super distracted in the afternoon, looking at dev and reddit between tasks and not finishing the stack of todos.
I think the same way. Sometimes my co-workers look at me weird when they see I only have 4 tabs open in my browser and they literally have 40 tabs opened from last week!!! Not only will this hamper my productivity in terms of mentally, it will also slow down my computer 🤔
I shut down my computer every night (work and personal) and there's no better feeling than starting fresh each day.
Yes!! This is something I recently started to do at work. I used to just let my computer sleep when I leave work and come back in the morning and resume (Weekends I would let it hibernate). It would usually be fine that is until a few days later the computer gets slow presumably because of memory build up. Even if it happens once or twice in the week it would kill productivity - my computer should NEVER be slow! So I decided "what the heck, I'll just create a scheduled task to restart my computer every morning BEFORE I come to work" (sorry folks I'm on Windows and using Vagrant Linux - and Docker if necessary, for development) and it's worked wonders!!!
I used to hate when I accidentally did that but these days, I enjoy it. I'm ok with the extra overhead of having to open all the apps, spin up docker, and whatever else. :)
...40? HOW? I start feeling stressed after 10! 😰
I’m sorry but I don’t agree with some of these. Shutting down your laptop won’t save you a lot of time. Hiring a person to do and manage your work? That’s not productivity that’s giving up your responsibilities. If something is loading on your screen and you start doing something else, that’s multitasking and will break your productivity.
Thank you for yours tips, Emma. 👍
Interesting, I didn't know that only 2% of people could effectively multitask. I'll have to consider that when I evaluate people.
Nonetheless, as a multitasker, I still do everything on this list.
Nice tips and one more tip which boosts my productivity
Drink a lot of water (liitle bit tea or coffee) while working, it refreshes your brain.
Careful, the caffeine in tea and especially coffee can have the reverse effect because it takes a long time to leave the body, disallowing your body to rest properly at night, which robs you of energy in the long term. If you're after hydration - which is certainly energy-giving, pure water is the best!
Yes I don't drink tea and rarely I will drink coffee usually I will drink a lot of water.
Modified the previous comment also😀
I love the "theme your days" tip! It made me realize I've been stuck in this rut of trying to do a little bit of everything every day, which results in not much progress being made in any category. Some serious schedule reworking is in my future, thanks!
Not always rainbows and butterflies??? NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! ;o)
Great points! I use hand-written to-do lists too.
One thing- if you have a ton of browser tabs, you might try looking at a tab manager like Toby. I love it! They're like better bookmarks that I can organize by project.
Yip, Toby saves me from Open Tab Overload too!
Thanks Emma, Enjoyed Reading it.
Sometimes I think I should start blogging too Lol
These tips are great. I would like to add that todo lists meet agendas in a bullet journal. Hobbies are great, and if you can find things that incorporate some hobby enjoyment into your ritual then it forces you to unwind in that ritual. I personally took up wetshaving over disposable/cartridge razors; podcasts during my commute, mechanical keyboard and upgraded mouse for work as well as a monitor stand to hole my two smaller monitors one over the other.
make your routine enjoyable.
I do believe that if everyone in the world followed these principles there would already be a cure for cancer. However, I'm not all this disciplined myself. Suppose that leaves me room to grow? Explained in a nice concise manner, thank you! (I've already eliminated most notifications, annoying buggers.)
This is true and yet the hardest part of them all. Prioritizing work is the most difficult part. I use to handwrite them down on post-it and stick them on my desk. But things get lost easily. Now, I use online to do list app to help me organize work and personal task. I use Todoist and Quire. Todoist is more for my personal task. Quire is great for work assignments and project management. Quire is an excellent tool for organizingprojects. You can add each individual task and also include sub-task.
The hardest part of productivity is something you don't even know when/where to start.
Interesting indeed. I've come to some of the same conclusions over the past few months. A daily written todo list is very powerful. A finite amount of willpower is so true. I now try to schedule all meetings for afternoons when I've run out of steam and block my mornings for getting stuff done.
I've also found the pomodoro really good. I don't like setting a timer, but anytime my concentration starts to wander I take a short break and return with more focus.
Something I've also found useful is deliberate context switches. If I'm not getting anywhere on a coding task, I'll get some document reviews out of the way, or vice versa. Something about a completely unrelated task helps with a reset.
I personally still use a good old pen and paper planner for my daily todo lists. Nothing beats the satisfaction of checking off lists with a pen!
I use notion too! it's pretty amazing isn't it. I also use Microsoft Project for project management (doesn't work on Linux ugh) and can't seem to find an alternative to it that's right for me though.
Thanks for the tips!
In my opinion, ToDo list (combined with discipline to review and complete it) is the most important one. Most of the times we have a lot of small-medium tasks and is difficult to have everything in the head without forget at least one of those.
Love it! I always struggle with the workspace because I love postit notes!
Some other useful similar tools:
Sunsama (sunsama.com): Calendar and Task tool, makes planning your day much easier
Haystack (haystackapps.com): Makes finding documents and moving between tasks much faster
Veamly: (veamly.com): Great for communication reach roles by adding in the Pomodoro and reducing notifications.
Nice! I usually average 250 tabs open (my PC has 8GB RAM). Most of them are not loaded and are just thumbnails. I have lots of DEV posts and other pages I want to read.
Here's a tip: When you open Chrome, it will load all of your tabs at once which will deplete all of your memory. If you open Firefox and it restores your session, it won't load any tabs unless you click on them which is very, very handy and memory saving.
Also I'm the kind of guy who forgets to read his email sometimes.
Hi Emma, how do you combine lunch and German class, is it a real offline class or do you mean using some sort of app during the lunch? Interested, because it would be nice for me as well :)
Great tips! I especially like the "theming" idea. That might help me organize some unpredictable bits of my schedule.
Great advice, thanks!
Wow thank you, this is great. I usually have a hard time but I'm going to follow this from now on.
Very cool! Loved the day themes tip
Perhaps you should switch your Notion link to a referral link. This way you'll benefit yourself and others.
Awesome article, continue this great work Emma!
800 tabs?! what were you working on?
Gift me your RAM? :)
Check out the browser plugin The Great Suspender.
Great, but I think that the most important part is the care of yourself.
Awesome advice thank you! I should print this out and put them on my wall.
Here I am getting distracted. Ok back to work!
Use a good productivity app to help you. My team uses Google Drive and Quire to help us keep track of our projects.
Thanks Emma for your tips,
Regards