Blog Productivity Tips - Most popular blogs focus on productivity. Here are six productivity blogger tips with some new takes on the old idea of blowing through your to-do list to feel good about your day. What's interesting to note is that each piece of advice actually encourages people to get more done by slowing down to focus rather than multitasking nonstop:
• Having goals is more important than the content of the goals. Productivity should be aimed at meeting goals rather than merely keeping up with one's to-do list. It's a question of the big picture versus the little picture, and we need to be sure to have some big-picture ideas about our life or we won't be able to steer it. So often, though, we don't set goals because we're worried they'll change. But they'll change regardless, and we don't want the same things throughout our whole lives anyway. The particular goals aren't as important as the process of setting goals and working to meet them. Knowing you can meet goals encourages you to set more, and setting more encourages more conscious thinking about what you're doing. That may well be the very core of productivity.
• Get information at scheduled times - In a world where most of us are knowledge workers, the person who's best at taking in information and synthesizing it is going to stand out. The last thing you'd want to do, then, is stop taking in information. But there's limitless information, so you have to set your own limits.
• Make your to-do list doable - A lot of us get stuck because everything on our to-do list is daunting. Each of us has two selves, the boss and the assistant. The boss self comes up with things that are cool to do, as well as things that are awful to do but that need to get done anyway. The assistant self has to execute all of it, and sometimes the boss self makes life impossible for the assistant self. Ideas that have no execution strategy, projects that have 50 steps, and administrative tasks that aren't essential all drive your assistant self crazy. Trapani explains how to make sure your boss self and assistant self are working together to create a to-do list that doesn't stop you in your tracks.
• Do something you're passionate about - If you schedule something important for certain days or certain times each day, you'll get into the habit of getting the important things done. No. 1 productivity tip is to do something you're passionate about. Why? Because when you're enthusiastic about something you're better at it, and you don't mind trying harder and putting more time into it. It's the work you don't really want to do that you put off or do slowly and without much attention.
• Do important tasks instead of urgent ones - Must have distinctions between the important tasks and the urgent tasks on your to do list. Examples of important items on your list could be learning new skills or starting a new project. Ask yourself if it will matter in five years whether you did a particular task or not. Taking that class you've always wanted to take passes the test it'll surely matter in five years. On the other hand, not answering that e-mail from an impatient coworker right this minute probably won't matter in five years.
What does this have to do with productivity? You can't be truly productive if you're wearing yourself out by taking care of other people's needs. If you decide that 5 out of 10 things on your to-do list won't really be important in the long run, then you'll be much more productive by making time to work on those less-urgent but more-important items first.
• Focus on outcome - Just because you're getting something done doesn't mean it matters. In the long run, you'll feel better about the time you spend if you're making a difference with the outcome. We often put things on our to-do list that take much more time to accomplish than they're worth, but we focus so much on getting them done that we don't think about if they were worth the time.