Best Convos about #PRODUCTIVITY
Productivity often comes down to this: Work on whatever is most important or most interesting.
Having said that, here's what I've learned about productivity here ....
Do the most important thing first in the morning.
Improve your company at an atomic level: better meetings, more productive engineers, etc.
Don't say you don't have enough time.
One hour of visualization is equivalent to seven hours of physical practice.
3 words: Overconfidence, Decoration, Happiness.
3 words: Minimum AWESOME Product.
Your destination is not a place, but a new way of looking at things.
Nobody cares why something isn't working. So employ your Kanban boards. And make it succeed.
Here's one:
1. Write down the goals you want to be done
2. Break down each item into sub-items. Write those down.
3. Either complete an item and cross it off the list, or repeat step 2 with the remaining items.
This is the SW tool I use to accomplish the above:
http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper
TaskPaper is glorified text files... and it is magnificent. OmniOutliner is good for second place.
MarcA also advocates glorified text files: http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-personal-productivity
From a recent blog post:
1) The secret to getting more done is to make things automatic.
2) Progress motivates us more than anything else.
3) But we know a lot more than that about motivation. And there's a quick trick when you need to hustle ASAP.
4) Men and women use their time at work differently.
5) When you give the boss info, use numbers.
6) Control over our schedule stops us from getting tired at work.
7) Sorting your email into folders? Stop it.
8) There are rules that your brain works by. Get familiar with them.
9) Gesturing helps you learn.
10) There's a quick and easy way to improve performance at anything.
You advance from your position of strength. That which you love - that which you are known for - is where one provides most value.
Unless you love something illegal, in which case, DON'T DO THAT.
There's also an excellent productivity trick to be learned from Jerry Seinfeld, believe it or not. I also have a firm belief in the awesome power of checklists.
Every morning I make a checklist of the top 3 things I want to get done that day.
The list can have more than 3 items, but I always make sure to have a top 3.
There is nothing more satisfying than getting each one of those top 3 things done.
Eric, do you have anything more about making progress one day at a time?