Posts Tagged ‘productivity’

Whenever possible, your preferred communication method should be email, chat, or social media. No phone calls, no meetings. In other words, use “passive” communication methods.

You see, when you’re on a phone call or meet with people, everyone involved is “stuck”. You can’t take your time to reply, think about what you want to say properly, do some research, or prioritize.

A phone call or meeting interrupts your work flow, disturbs your focus, and puts you in a position where you have less control over your time and resources.

You can choose to get off your email while you’re working, ignore chat windows, etc… When using passive communication methods you can prioritize and decide what requires your attention more urgently and what doesn’t matter as much.

Passive communication methods are more respectful of people’s time and priorities. They’re also usually much more efficient – people tend to be more concise, precise, and effective when they have to write things down.

You can also keep track of your conversations and exchanges and refer back to them down the road.

Of course don’t apply this to your personal life .

Some related posts in this Productivity Tips series:

• Focus on the next step
• Work when you’re productive

How is it that everybody drop their new year resolution by February? Because our resolutions are usually too vague and abstract to remain sustainable. If you want to reach the top of the mountain – you’ve got to forget about the top of the mountain and focus on the next step you need to take. Every journey, long or short, starts with one small step – and the entire journey is made of a continuity of small steps. (more…)

“Goal” is a broad term. But it’s something you want to achieve – a specific state or a result or whatever. Anything in life that’s valuable to you can be defined as a goal. For example it can be “quit smoking” or “be fit” or “make my business reach $1 million per year” – etc…

The very first step towards achieving anything in life is realizing you want to get there. You don’t go on a hike if you don’t want to climb the mountain and get to the top. Once you’ve discovered you have a goal – you need to commit to it in some way or another. Writing it down somewhere is one way.

So committing to a goal is the very first step – with the prerequisite that you realize you have a goal of course . (more…)

One of the main things I’ve come to realize about getting things done and optimizing my creativity is that organization doesn’t help. To the contrary – it kinda gets in the way. You get so focused on keeping track of everything and being on top of your projects that you lose the flexibility and “looseness” that’s necessary for creativity to flow. You’ve got to let go of the illusion that you’re in control and embrace the uncertainty that’s part of any project in life.

Same with planning. Planning really is guessing and it’s totally useless. Like organization, planning kills creativity, motivation, and productivity. (more…)

Before you start spending time on something, ask yourself if that’s going to make a difference for your business. Are you sure you really need to worry about this right now? (more…)

I always say that cooking is all about the ingredients. If you take the best ingredients of the highest quality, it almost doesn’t matter how you mix them up together, cook them, or arrange them. Even if you were to just blend them all together there’s a good chance a great smoothie will come out of that.

What really matters is the ingredients. That’s why it’s rewarding when there’s no food left at home but you’re still able to cook up a great meal just from leftovers and random ingredients. It’s because it’s a challenge to make something great without good ingredients and overcoming a challenge is always rewarding. While you can welcome this challenge from time to time, you’ll eat much better food (and get much better results) if you prepare your meals from really good ingredients. (more…)

“Productivity comes from interactivity and the exchange of ideas and talents.” Seth Godin. (more…)

Sometimes the simplest and most obvious things are also the easiest to overlook. Working when you’re productive and not working when you’re not is one of these duh facts that I rarely see applied effectively. In fact, if you simply take a minute to read this post and answer the quiz at end, you’d be surprised at the immediate benefits you’ll get! (more…)

You don’t need to have your email open all day. That’s pretty obvious when it comes to personal email but the same holds true for your professional email. I have the bad habit of keeping my various work emails open on my computer and I check them all the time while I’m working on other stuff. I’ m going to change that.

Nobody expects an immediate response to their emails so there’s really no need to have it open all day long. Any email can wait a few hours. For urgent stuff, you should have specific support and sales channels that’s separated from your main email.

In fact having your email open all day is the best way to lose track of your important emails. (more…)