Ever feel like you’re just not getting enough done? Know how many days per week you’re actually productive?
For my whole life, people have commented on my ability to get things done. I am a productive person, constantly tackling projects and tasks and using my time and my energy to produce results. But there is dark for every light.
Want to be more productive during your day or week? Who doesn't. Well, you can do what some of the world's most successful people do -- wake up at that ungodly hour of 4 a.m.
The traditional 9–5 workday is poorly structured for high productivity. Perhaps when most work was physical labor, but not in the knowledge working world we now live in.
The 8-hour workday is an outdated and ineffective approach to work. If you want to be as productive as possible, you need to let go of this relic and find a new approach.
You can apply the “ONE Thing” into your daily tasks using this free tool. Brendon Burchard, who’s recognized as one of the world’s top high-performance coaches, designed a framework called the Productivity Formula.
In 2015, according to a study by the Radicati Group, over 205 billion emails were sent and received worldwide each day. There were also about 2.58 billion email users and 4.53 billion emails in existence that same year.
With smartphones came the addiction to readily-accessible technology and, by extension, to the quest for tech-enabled productivity.
It makes sense — when you get into work in the morning, you don't want to spend an hour trying to figure out what to do first. And yet, sometimes, all that planning and scheduling can work to your detriment. Which is why they're best used in conjunction with the "do it now" rule.
Decades before Marie Kondo became the go-to Japanese organizational guru—transforming her name into a verb and selling more than 6 million copies of her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up—another declutter philosophy became one of Japan’s biggest exports.
Not all hours are created equal. Sometimes an hour is enough to blaze through a massive project, and other times all you manage is to tiredly send a couple of unimportant emails.
Trello is an awesome project management tool that makes collaboration easy and, dare I say, even fun. But this visual list tool can do so much more, whether you’re organizing work projects, family chores, travel plans, or just about anything else.
For the past few years I’ve used RescueTime, an app that monitors which apps you use and rates you for how 'productively' you spend your computer time. While the reports and graphs that RescueTime delivers are great, I’ve never gotten in the habit of regularly checking on them.
These are the bad habits you most likely cling to but should rid yourself of. It will enhance your productivity and make you feel better.
The eight-hour workday is an outdated and ineffective approach to work. If you want to be as productive as possible, you need to let go of this relic and find a new approach.
Regular readers know I definitely believe in the power of hard work. As Jimmy Spithill, skipper of Team Oracle USA, says, "Rarely have I seen a situation where doing less than the other guy is a good strategy." But we can all work smarter, too.
Back in the days of paper based planners, I depended on mine to help me stay on top of my to-do list and commitments. Making the switch to electronic tools was difficult and disruptive, and initially I didn’t want to do it.
On average, each of us wake up to 25,000 mornings in our adult life, which means we have 25,000 days to maximize how we spend it. If you can optimize your morning routines, you’ve set yourself up to have a productive day ahead of you.
Ever feel like you’re just not getting enough done? Know how many days a week you’re actually productive?
In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published his groundbreaking book, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, which described his three laws of motion. In the process, Newton laid the foundation for classical mechanics and redefined the way the world looked at physics and science.
The way we are working isn’t working anymore, and hasn’t been for some time. Checking email in bed the moment we awake, chugging too much coffee, hour-long commutes twice each day…they all take a toll on the quality of our work and our lives.
When Google acquired the online photo editor Picnik in 2010, CMO Lisa Conquergood and the rest of the Picnik team went, too. They worked on the site until Google narrowed its focus and closed Picnik in 2012.
Ever feel like you’re just not getting enough done? Know how many days per week you’re actually productive?
Productivity is not doing lots of stuff fast. You can do lots of stuff and get nowhere closer to your ideal. Most people are living their lives this way. They are burning themselves out running in a million different directions. Our society has become obsessed with constant doing.
It’s not the answers you get from others, but the questions you ask yourself that will help you grow stronger. In fact, the simple questions you ask yourself on a daily basis will determine the type of person you become in the long run.
This counterintuitive advice is one of a dozen-plus productivity practices preached by Scott Hanselman, a program manager at Microsoft, author and avid blogger and speaker. Hanselman's not the person you'd to expect to hear encourage dropping the ball and discourage burning the midnight oil.
In recent years, work has become infinitely more complex. Technological innovations have led to round-the-clock work schedules and mounting expectations. Our assignments have grown more collaborative, requiring more coordination, conference calls, and meetings.
President Obama has warned that ATMs and airport check-in kiosks are contributing to high unemployment. Sen. Marco Rubio said that the central challenge of our times is "to ensure that the rise of the machines is not the fall of the worker.
It seems like we are busier than ever. There is always something to do—between email to meetings it’s hard to actually get any work done. To deal with doing more we often resort to sleeping less, or even worse, the to-do list. This is not the answer.
Google Calendar was likely the second Google app you tried, right after Gmail, when you got your first Google account. With a history dating back to 2006, one that's overshadowed by Gmail and Google's other apps, it's easy to overlook Google Calendar's deep set of features.
Most of us suck at planning and it’s assumed that we all know how to do it. After years of trial-and-error I want to show you a proven framework that we use at Asian Efficiency that allows you to plan the perfect day with an advanced tip at the end that will change the way plan… forever.
Think about your productivity levels throughout the day. Chances are you’re like me – you have a good idea of when you’re more likely to get stuff done, and when to avoid complex tasks.
Tax Day is a horror for many procrastinators. For many people, a little procrastination isn't harmful — like 15 minutes lost in Facebook or putting off doing the laundry for a few days.
Let's face it - business owners have a lot on their plates. Whether you're managing teams locally or globally, your day-to-day thoughts and activities are likely consumed by the need to accelerate the growth of your company.
Here’s a rundown of the first 47 top-rated productivity extensions for Chrome (as of July 2013). It can be a pretty exhausting task trying to look through endless lists of extensions and apps, not knowing which ones will fit your needs best.
Welcome Reddit Users! Just a quick shout out—Hack the System is about quick methods to success. So, if you’re interested in learning how to become more productive, or if you want to learn how to get free plane tickets, you should subscribe to my newsletter.
I was going to start this column with some new productivity figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but I realized that at least half of the readers would quit right there. Productivity is one of those subjects that fascinates economists and bores, or mystifies, almost everyone else.
Over the last 12 months I have conducted countless productivity experiments on myself, interviewed some of the most productive people in the world, and read a ton of books and academic literature on productivity, all to explore how I could become as productive as possible.
Every one of us, on average, will be sleeping 24 years in our lifetime. That’s a pretty long time if you ask me and makes it even more important to know exactly how the phenomenon of sleep impacts us.
In my late 20s and early 30s, I thought of myself as an efficiency machine. I got up early to run most days, worked long hours, and frequently had breakfast meetings and evening drinks with sources. I wrote a lot of stories. I doubted her.
There’s something about Farhad. Tech reporters can quickly become jaded and cynical about their work, but Farhad Manjoo’s lucid writing lacks any sense of needless snark when he discusses how technology affects our lives.
I’ve been working from home full-time for more than seven years, and running my own business for the same amount of time. Many of us at least have the opportunity to occasionally work from home, and I daresay that many people would like the chance to do so permanently.
Putting your daily tasks on autopilot isn't just an efficient way to conduct your life: It’s the smart way. We're all triple-taskers nowadays, and it’s sometimes impossible to take a moment to catch your bearings and recall the laundry list of things you have to get done.
For many of us, the balance between work and life has become so hopelessly out of kilter that getting a handle on it seems overwhelming and nearly impossible. But as the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen (改善) teaches, change doesn't have to happen all at once.
Being busy is very often a waste of time. Slacking off can actually get better results. Just ask nature. A sidewinder snake camouflaged against the desert sand lies idle, doing not a lot at all. But when a mouse passes within striking distance, the effectiveness of the snake’s strategy is clear.
Writing starts way before you put letters to a page. It involves processes like critical thinking, communication, and creativity. Even if writing feels like pulling teeth, you can apply the principles of writing to many facets of your day-to-day life. Here's how.
Every week I write up to three new articles like this one. And every week I struggle to find the motivation to get started on each article. On Sunday night I make my to do list for the week ahead, and think about how quickly I’ll get to work on this week’s articles.
One of my all-time favorite guilty pleasures is indulging in productivity porn. Productivity porn (or, for those really in the know, "productivity pr0n") consists of techniques, tactics, and tricks for maximizing personal productivity -- or, as they say, "getting things done".
When I was 17 years old, I used to work and study for about 20 hours a day. I went to school, did my homework during breaks and managed a not-for-profit organization at night.
To aid your quest for efficiency, here are 25 of the most useful web productivity resources we've found. Buffer — You share things all day on the internet, but you don't want to share them right away. Enter Buffer, a simple, robust utility for scheduling your social media.
Getting more done in less time helps us get ahead, and even gives us more availability to do the things we love outside of work. The problem we run into is that it is easy to get motivated, but hard to stay disciplined.
In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published his groundbreaking book, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, which described his three laws of motion. In the process, Newton laid the foundation for classical mechanics and redefined the way the world looked at physics and science.
The Misconception: You procrastinate because you are lazy and can’t manage your time well. The Truth: Procrastination is fueled by weakness in the face of impulse and a failure to think about thinking.
As a graduate student I was known for being organized. I was reminded of this a couple weeks ago when I attended a computer science conference along with many of my old lab mates. What I also remember is that I always felt indifferent about this reputation. To be organized is a nice thing.
The best productivity methods keep your to-dos in front of you and prioritized so you never wonder what to work on next. Some are complicated, but others make it easy to see everything, organized by priority—so easy you could use Post-It notes if you wanted.
Do you struggle to keep up with your Twitter activities? Interested in tools to improve productivity?
May your actions speak louder than your words. May your life preach louder than your lips. May your success be your noise in the end. The result of enormous success is often pretty noisy – lots of people talking, writing and sharing stories about it.
The only resource that none of us can get more of in this life is time. We get what we get, so we've got to make the most of it. For perspective, I have a full-time day job, a profitable online side business and I also write regularly for six different large web sites including Entrepreneur.com.
What really got me hooked on Medium was not just the awesome posts I read daily but it was the amount of value I received after I took the time to go back to January of 2014 and read as many posts as I could from then until now.
I’m lining up guest posts during my travels over the next two weeks. This post is written by Timo Kiander. Timo is a blogger, author and speaker who helps work-at-home professionals get stuff done fast so that they have time for living.
Ever have those days when you feel you’re dragging a ball and chain behind you? Everything is a struggle. Your productivity has tanked, your energy is at rock-bottom, and you just want to crawl in a hole and suck your thumb. Sometimes it’s easy to identify why we’re so lethargic.
Everyone is obsessed with how successful people start their day. And if you’ve decided to do something about the quality of your life, you’ll start working on developing a morning routine and trying different versions of it.
I used to wake up, stumble over to my phone, and immediately get lost in a stream of pointless notifications. This digital haze continued throughout the day, keeping me from accomplishing important tasks. I was distracted, anxious, and ineffective as a leader.
Feeling overwhelmed? Are you constantly running from thing to thing but never getting it all done? When researchers survey people, they say they’re too busy — about everything.
Have you ever read a book passage that you're certain could one day be applicable to your life? But, between your shopping list, work to-dos, and your aunt's upcoming birthday, the passage quickly fades from your memory causing you to draw a blank when you really need to reference it.
Mornings are rough, especially if you're not the type of person who jumps out of bed ready to take on the day. Still, the sun rises whether you care for the AM hours or not.
September is Professional Development Month at The Muse! Check in all month for ways to boost your skills, get ahead at work, and be the best professional you can possibly be.
Most people are pretty good at coming up with ideas for the future, and many of us are pretty good at developing plans to achieve those things. I know I certainly am.
The key to being more productive is literally right in front of you.
Productivity is often a nebulous concept. Knowing when you’ve achieved a productive state can be even less concrete. Evernote is a tool you can leverage to capture ideas and goals, and keep track of your progress.
Everyone knows that leading a company is one of the toughest gigs around.
Ahhh, productivity. The revered topic in both the business and personal world. It seems we’re all looking for a magic bullet to help us get more done in less time.
Companies like Apple, Netflix, Google, and Dell are 40% more productive than the average company, according to research from the leadership consulting firm Bain & Company.
You have no problem keeping busy. No problem crossing things off your to-do list. You multitask like it’s going out of style. But the weeks continue to fly by and you can’t help but be dissatisfied with what you’ve actually accomplished. Not only that, but you’re exhausted.
Most of us use Gmail as our main email service, but it's so much more. Gmail can act as your to-do list, your notes board, your reminders, your list maker, and all the other things you need to be productive. Browsers hog computer resources, so opening up too many tabs can strain performance.
Based on a recommendation from an old friend, who also happens to be a psychologist and a successful entrepreneur, I read John Maxwell’s book Failing Forward this past week.
If time is money, productivity is like that Apple stock you bought decades ago – it has the power to make you a very rich Scrooge McDuck. I remember when I was younger feeling totally befuddled by the vast shelves of self-help books about time management. It all sounded like a capital snore fest.
Do you sometimes feel like you spend all your time managing crises? That your life is basically spent putting out one proverbial fire after another? At the end of the day do you feel completely sapped and drained of energy, and yet can’t point to anything you accomplished of real significance?
Author George R.R. Martin once wrote that “a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,” while “the man who never reads lives only one.”
When you write about the way people work for a living, it affects the way you work.
The number of productivity strategies out there are innumerable. Every day, dozens and perhaps hundreds of articles are published online about how to get more done, both in work and in life generally. It can be downright overwhelming.
Productivity doesn’t just increase your efficiency. If you do it right, it can also increase your income. The problem is that traditional systems get productivity all wrong. They define productivity as the ability to do more and do it faster.
When it comes to keeping track of all your text and to-do lists, there's no shortage of apps to choose from, but sometimes the ease and simplicity of working with plain text files can actually be more productive. Here are ten clever plain text files that you might want to keep on hand.
More than 151 million Americans count themselves employed, a number that has risen sharply in the last few years. The question is this: What are they doing all day? Because whatever it is, it barely seems to be registering in economic output. The number of hours Americans worked rose 1.
In the past, time management experts would recommend that you divide up your work into A tasks, B tasks, and C tasks. The concept was to do the A tasks first, then the B tasks, then the C tasks, when you can get to them. If priorities changed, you just changed the order of your As, Bs, and Cs.
I’ve long used Evernote for my resource and reference materials. all of my research is stored there, along with notebooks that contain living documents that I want to share with those who are helping build Productivityist and my virtual assistant.
Working at an office can be surprisingly unhealthy. Between sitting all day, eating poorly, and enduring never-ending stress, your office can take a few years off your life. Here's how to stay healthy and energetic at the office (and make the day go by faster).
One of the simplest and most overlooked aspects of being organized is getting your computer files organized. It’s something that’s easy to take for granted, especially when you forget that most people don’t use their computers like us crazy systems-people do.
Many of us have the urge to reach for more caffeine, work longer hours to get it all done, and feel defeated before even reaching the computer in the morning. That’s just the reality of modern workloads, right? Well, it doesn’t have to be that way.
There’s one thing that I do better than most people. I’m not smarter than most people. I’m not more talented. I don’t have some Ivy League education. I don’t get a lot of lucky breaks.
I’ve posted a fair amount of research related to procrastination in the past, let’s round it up so we have a useful list to refer to when willpower gets low. Yes, that’s right, procrastination can be a good thing.
At Techstars, we talk a lot about productivity, email, getting things done, basic business development and fundraising culture. Below is a collection of general tips we give our founders.
As admittedly wonderful and fascinating as the human brain is, it definitely can feel like our brain is out to get us sometimes.
Something we all need more of, but never seem to get. (If only we had more time, right?)
Not everyone works 9-5. When you schedule doesn't fit into neat little boxes, it can require some special skills to keep everything in order. Here are some tactics you can use to keep your energy up and maintain a bit of control.
Firefighters are always a call away, ready to tackle potentially dangerous situations. But while their job probably carries a ton of stress and responsibility, their methods and tricks can still apply to your job and everyday life.
A badly managed meeting can suck away time, energy and money without being productive for anyone. But it is avoidable: Here's what you should and shouldn't do when meeting in a group at work, whether you are leading the meeting or not.
This is one of the most common questions readers ask us via email, blog comments, and social media. So today I want to share some simple, actionable ways to improve your happiness and wellbeing on a daily basis.