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Productivity Resources

As with all habits the trick to success is figuring out the specific steps that when repeated will meet your goal. The area of productivity is a wide one and there are many forms of productivity you can work on.
Do you need to cut out disctractions?
Do you need to focus better?
Do you need to do a better job of prioritizing your attention?
Consider your personal strengths and weaknesses and hopefully some of the resources below can help you frame up the goal and make it happen!

The Martini Method

Getting things done is as much about motivation as it is about actual process. Being clear about a small treat to do some task you know you need to do can help you get that kick in the right direction.

This post talks about the "Martini Method" for getting a dissertation done but it can be applied anywhere.

Don't tell the folks over in the health section about all those martini's though. Or at least change it to Red Wine..

How to strike a work and life balance

In your quest from productivity it always makes sense to take a few minutes and make sure the productivity is towards the RIGHT, IMPORTANT goals.

Stephen Covey makes this point and other good ones in his "How to strike a work and life balance" blog post.

Worth a few minutes to read. But maybe only if you are at work and not at home.

How to strike a work and life balance

Getting Things Done

The classic of productivity.
If you want to be more effective and you feel overwhelmed this is simply the best place to start.
It outlines a nice system to attack all your organizational problems and stives to get it out of your head and down on paper so you can get it done!
If employing this system I greatly reccomend setting up two daily habits to help it to stick.
First have a habit, Review Inbox Daily.
Second, try "Put all relevant tasks thru GTD!"

Free Productivity E-book

This free ebook simply takes some general productivity principles and folds them together. Its not too long and a little bit less heavy handed than some.

It is focused on "creatives" but I strongly feel most of it applies to everyone.

In fact if you don't need ~some~ quiet focused "in flow" time in your job, maybe mulling over some alternatives would make sense?

I don't know about you, but flow time is happy time for me!

Work Smarter, have a plan

This great guide walks through some work productivity tips based on studies on the modern work place.

One idea I find worrying/intriguing is the the author actually recommends cutting off web access for most employees and having special 'internet terminals' spread around for when employees really do need access.

I understand time gets lost but I know lots of people would be truly upset at something like this. If you ~don't~ give trust you are asking for trouble...

Positivity and Productivity

For me my productivity is all wrapped up in how I am feeling. Thats why I read the "positive psychology" blog. Feeling positive always leads to more and better work!

This specific entry is about the APE method for getting out of a bad mood.
A - Alternatives
P - Perspective
E - Evidence
You owe it to your next bad mood to check it out.
I really should go create a habit to use this daily even if my mood is not ~too~ bad. Can't work on too many at once though!

Break it down, make it specific.

I truly believe its all about breaking down your goals into daily habits no matter what the goal. Break it down, make it specific, write it down and track it, track it, track it!

Thats what this website is all about. This link has an article backing that up with a little science and some studies on just that topic.

Break it down, make it specific.

Use the STING method to stop procrastinating

Sometimes productivity habits need a jump kick to get started. Procrastinating starting can really take the best of intentions and the most important tasks and completely sidetrack them.

STING, is simply an acronym for an approach to over come it.

S - Select one task. T - Time yourself. I - Ignore everything else. N - No breaks. G - Give yourself a reward.

(This is a new productivity blog for me to follow but it starts off with a bang!)

Clear Context: An email management solution for us

Great productivity tool to help you control your email and not have it control you. Using this product, I can manage my whole day from my inbox