Last month I had a good email conversation with Darren Neimke of Regex Blog fame http://blogs.regexadvice.com concerning, among many other topics, personal productivity and the factors that contribute to it. Among the memorable tips and suggestions that came up in our correspondence: * avoid time sinks --- beware excessive television, newspaper-reading, web-surfing, computer-reconfiguration, font-tweaking, etc. (and see TechnoTime)
- set the bar low --- don't attempt a huge sudden change in your work habits (PleasantSurprises)
- focus --- choose topics that are of personal interest to you which that have plenty of "headroom" and open-endedness; don't scatter your energies across too many things at once (TripleThink)
- be cheerful --- see the OptimistCreed, GoodDay, ...
- recognize luck --- when something great comes your way via a fortuitous coincidence, don't let it slip away --- write it down (and see Paul Ammann's comments re luck in UltraMan)
- cross-train --- make maximal use of your investments in time; take results of work in one domain and use them in others; seek principles and ideas which are applicable in diverse areas
- buffer --- take advantage of high-creativity times to build up reservoirs of ideas and partially-finished projects; take advantage of low-creativity times to work on finishing those fragments (MarginAlia)
- play the hand you've been dealt --- don't try to be what you're not, but do accept the challenge to be all that you can be (MyOb)
- persevere --- you will be amazed at your cumulative progress ("After twenty years, even coffee grounds pile up." --- Thomas Boswell, HeartOfTheOrder; and see TooSlowAndTooFast, HeadlightsAndDecisions, ...)
Above all, don't obsess --- and in particular don't get all wound up about short-term visible "productivity" to the detriment of long-term really important things, such as health, family, wisdom, ...
(The early 20th Century books mentioned in ReadingsOnThinkingAndLiving remain extraordinarily relevant, esp. Arnold Bennett's How to Live on 24 Hours a Day and Mental Efficiency, etc. --- see BennettOnLife, BennettOnStoicism, PersonalEnergy, ZhurnalAnniversary2, ... --- as well as Seneca in LifeTimeManagement1 and LifeTimeManagement2, ... )
TopicWriting - TopicLife - TopicThinking - Datetag20040120
(correlates: ReadingsOnThinkingAndLiving, ReallyGreat, OneThirdEach, ...)
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