I’ve been observing/analysing the reasons why I’m so productive at work (paid work) but seem to lose a lot of time on Ambisonia…. and there are a couple of key differences.
- At work, I dont read emails (or very few), reading and responding to emails takes a lot of time,
- at work I dont blog. Blogging takes a lot of time,
- at work I dont read other people’s blogs.
So I did a test, I removed iGoogle as my home page on my Browser. My productivity went up immediately.
Why?
Because I was no longer constantly side trackedby new emails, reading other people’s RSS feeds, new posts on the Ambisonia Forum. Previously, every time I opened a new browser window, all my emails, blogs, forum posts etc. would be displayed in front of me… and I would get sidetracked for, sometimes, hours.
So that’s my strategy. Separate out communications, research and monitoring from producing. So far so good.
Now, excuse me whilst I go and produce.
1 response so far ↓
Nick // October 23, 2007 at 5:00 am |
here’s a little trick i’ve recently found useful for productivity:
only read your rss feeds/email/etc just BEFORE you take a break away from the computer that you were ready to take anyway.
(eg just before a loo break or coffee break or whatever)
then when you’ve done your browsing or whatever, close that window and leave your computer in a ready-to-work state, so there’s no distraction when you come back.
this way, you’re motivated to make the browsing break as short as possible (because you’d already planned to move away from your computer for a bit), and you’re also not going to be distracted when you come back to resume work.
i can be self disciplined, but i’ve found there’s almost no point refusing to read email or blogs or whatever, as in part these can be necessary work activities.
so this trick has helped me have my cake (not be distracted from work for too long) and eat it too (still read blogs daily). [i think that analogy kinda works]
anyway, time for a break.