Over the last couple weeks I’ve been making a conscious effort to increase my productivity, and I’ve come up with a few ways to really help myself work more efficiently and for a longer time. I’m gonna try to stay away from the usual “make a vision board, use crazy Internet filters, handcuff yourself to your computer, etc”, because if you have to do that stuff you don’t have any motivation anyways. Here we go:

Productivity Tip #1 – Have Cold Water in the A.M.

Haha, seriously. I don’t know what it is, but for some reason if I have a cold bottle of water right when I wake up, I’m ready to get going and almost always am in the office within half an hour. If I don’t, I lay around for an hour doing nothing.

Productivity Tip #2 – Look Good = Work Good

Just like golf right? If I wake up, take a shower, and put on some nice clothes, I get a lot more done than if I just wake up and throw on some sweats.

Productivity Tip #3 – Make a DAILY To-Do List

On my computer I have a Word document with dozens of things that need to be done, but the first thing I always do every morning is write down exactly what I want to get done *today*. There are usually five to ten items on the list, and by doing this I force myself to be accountable for the day. Instead of saying “eh I knocked a few things off the list”, I can look at my daily list and see if it is done or not. Then I know if I’ve had a good day or if I need to work longer.

Productivity Tip #4 – Keep a Clean Workspace

Right now my apartment is a wreck, but my office is clean. That’s probably why I get 99% of my work done here. I can work much better with a little space and without clutter everywhere.

Productivity Tip #5 – Close the Email/Skype/AIM

This one is a pretty common tip, but the worst thing you can do for your productivity is to leave your Gmail inbox open, Skype chat online, and AIM buddy list up. It’s way too easy to respond to emails/chats as they come in and lose your focus when you could have handled all your emails at the end of your day.

Time to practice what I preach – working on my new online craps guide today.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.