You have a lot of things you want to get done; you have the same number of hours in a day that everyone else on the planet has. Sure, the idle rich might have a little more free time, but regardless, there’s still only 24 hours in a day. How are you going to get all your work done, as well as work on your favorite side-project(s), open source projects, learn new programming languages, experiment with new techniques, make that iPhone app you keep mumbling about at networking events, hang out with your friends and family, eat, sleep, watch the Office, read that new novel/tech book/blog post, write your blog/book/ebook/great american novel/epic comic book trilogy, not to mention floss your teeth?
You were going to floss your teeth, yes?
Well, there’s very little magic, and very little I could suggest that’s new or original. There’s just a handful of techniques that will work if you use them.
1. Make a list of the things you want to do.
This applies to long-term and short-term goals, but this isn’t really about long-term goals. Write down what you want to do today. Indicate which things (if any) are time-sensitive, fixed (i.e., appointments), etc. You may want to use a system (A, B, C levels) to show which are the most important. Then just start plowing through them. Get them one at a time. Do the most important first.
It’s important that your items are discrete, doable items. “Finish website” is not a task. “Implement DNS”, “set up capistrano”, “Deploy to server”, and so on, are tasks. If something isn’t doable as a discrete item, split it up into tasks that are.
2. Focus on what you need/want to do.
Great, you have a list. Now you need to actually go through it and do it. There are a lot of ways to do this. David Allen’s GTD suggests a system of buckets, with Next Actions, and that sort of categorization. A quick take-away from GTD is to keep in mind how long it will take to do something, and also where you need to be. If you have a half dozen things to so that will each take 2 minutes or less, the rule is, do them now. Bam. Done. Also, you might have a few things to do that you can only do when you’re in the office; group them together and when you’re in the office, do them.
The Pomodoro technique is a pretty simple way to try to help you focus on tasks; in a nutshell, it suggests you purposefully stay completely on task for 25 minutes, and then take a deliberate 5 minute break; then repeat. FocusBooster is a nifty app to help with this sort of timing (if you’re working at a computer, of course).
3. Make it a habit
They say (whoever “they” are) that it takes 21 days to form a habit. So make a decision to pick one or more ways of focusing on what you need to do, and do them for 21 days. Even if you just write one goal per day down for 21 days, and check that goal off every day, you’ve (hopefully) formed a habit that you can expand in to getting more things done, every day, going forward.
So just do something, already
So, that’s about it. Or, it’s a start. I’d dare suggest that even just doing these few simple things would increase most folks productivity, maybe dramatically. Yes, I know; you’ve heard them all before. The reason you’ve heard them before is because they’re techniques that work.
Happy hacking.