Last Thursday I had one o the most productive days of of bogging/social media work that I’ve ever had. I commented on about 20+ blogs, responded to comments on my own site, wrote 3 guest posts, and did a few other things. I did this all in about 2 hours. In case you’re wondering whether I’m on a performance enhancing drug, the answer is no. I just took advantage of laser like focus. Let’s look at how you can do replicate this.
Make your list: One thing I learned from a quick study of the things that Robert Granholm does at the Life Design Project was that you need to know your daily routine. If you look closely at your daily routine, you’ll start to notice that it is quite repetitive. The good thing about this is you can get to a very high level of efficiency once you know that routine. I broke down my list as follows:
- Read and comment on blog posts
- Write new posts and guest posts
- Respond to comments on my blogs
- Hang out on Twitter and chat
Prioritize: After I made my list I decided to prioritize. A while back I wrote about the one question time management method. My order of operations goes something like this:
- Read and comment on blog posts: You might wonder why I would actually put this before writing my own posts. The main reason is that I often will get ideas for my own content from something I read at a particular blog. Sometimes those ideas will come from somebody’s post or from some commenter’s post.
- Write new posts/Guests Posts: A few weeks back I talked about how to consistently write a blog post in 20 minutes or less. I can still do it, but I’m focusing on longer posts at this point, so I’d say add about 5 minutes. When I write I prefer a distraction free writing tool called Mac Journal.
- Respond to comments: This seems like the next logical step when you think about tasks that are of high value. Responding to comments is necessary, but not a super high value task.
- Twitter/Social Media: This is kind of my coffee break. I get on Twitter for about 20 mins and I see what’s going on. I retweet articles and join a few conversations.
- Email: I decided to see if I could check email only twice that day. That was actually fundamental to my increase in productivity. I also setup some filters so all newsletters went into separate folders and the only things that came into my inbox were emails from people that I could respond to right away. I recommend you don’t check email first thing in the morning. Some of you might disagree, but I say shut it off for at least 2 hours and see what happens.
Turn off Distractions: The ultimate irony of all this efficiency increasing technology that we have created is that we’ve created so much of it that we’ve made ourselves less efficient because of it. In this short period of time I decided to shut off everything. No email, no Chat, no Tweetdeck. You’d be amazed at how much little distractions will throw off your flow. The reason I can write so quickly is I’m not distracted by the sound of emails in my inbox and Tweetdeck notifications.
Batch Process/Uni-Task: I’m not the first person to say this, so it’s nothing original. But, if you work on one thing at at time you’ll be amazed at how much faster you’ll get each thing done. For me, ADHD gives me a fair amount of challenges with this, so I have to take advantage of a flow state when I hit it and use it to do only one thing. Batch processing allows me to get so much more done when I hit a flow state.
Use Music: Depending on the type of person you are, music can help you get into a rhythm when you are doing your work. I prefer using techno music because lyrics of music seem to clutter my mind a bit. But, throw on some headphones during this period and you’ll see a nice little increase in productivity.
Everybody has different ways of being productive so I’m not saying this will be the perfect solution. In fact it can probably be made even more efficient. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you get the most out of your time.
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
So true about technology being such a distraction. It’s the whole mult-tasking thing: you jump around from one thing to another without actually finishing the first thing and then you wind up getting nothing done. Focus is a really big issue for me and it’s something I’m trying to work on.
And I can’t believe how much work you got done in 2 hours – that’s zen-focus!
Sarah´s last blog ..Introvert / Extrovert Epiphany
@Sarah: It’s really incredible what we can do when we focus. I also should have mentioned that I use time constraints in everything I do. Once I implement time constraints things seem to go much faster and I never switch from one task to another.
Great, great list Srini. I definitely need to figure out the email checking schedule. And as a fellow “whoa look at that butterfly!” ADD-er, I need to do more of the flow writing you mentioned. It’s a definite solution for us special folk. haha
Jenny´s last blog ..It’s Sunday Evening and I’m Confused
@Jenny: That email checking thing alone increase my productivity tenfold. I realized that literally about75% of what I get in email is just noise, so it doesn’t require constant attention.
Yo Srini,
Spot on man. Processing my email in bursts (combining prioritizing, turning off distractions AND batch processing all on that one task) is one of the single biggest productivity boosters I’ve found. That and just not replying to email on occasion =P
For me music often has the opposite effect – I find that I get so caught up in the music that even though I feel good, my productivity suffers. I tracked my productivity for a while with music on and off, and that’s what my results showed.
Although if I’m feeling unmotivated, I guess I’d rather have music on and feel good and get something done than just lounge around unproductively
Sid Savara´s last blog ..7 Common Procrastination Excuses
@Sid: Yeah, I’m amazed at a what time suck email was. Your article on lifehack about email was what forced me to put in filters. I realized I was probably getting about 30 emails a day that really were just sucking at least an hour of time out of the day. Music is one of those things that has different effects for different people. When I’m writing I find techno music gets me into a groove and speeds up my production drastically.
I wish that was my whole day! Throw my full-time job and taking care of a house into that mix, and that’s my daily routine.
Jen´s last blog ..Welcome to another addition of R&T!
@Jen: My whole day is definitely not just that
. But most my working schedule is also driven by thing in social media so it kind of helps to have some overlap.
Srini, yours is a simple but pretty effective way of doing more in less time. I’m currently looking into the GTD system by David Allen. So far, i could see that the principles are sound but it looks tedious! thanks for sharing your time management system.
It’s sometimes very difficult to get out of this distraction culture that we now have.
Mighty´s last blog ..Corazon Aquino Biography: Political Leadership for the Filipino People
@Mighty: It’s ironic how a time management system could be tedious and time consuming. But the GTD experts are definitely experts for a reason. I think it’s about finding what actually works for you.