Angie recently did an overhaul of her work schedule with the intent of trying to be more productive. Making an attempt to maximize her days, and squeeze as much efficiency out of the day, or more to the point, the night, as she can muster. In the process of doing this she found that there were 5 major productivity killers standing between her and freedom… wait, no, that’s not it… standing between her and certain death… whoa, okay that’s not even close… Goals! That’s it! They were standing between her and her goals. Now these 5 killers are actually activities that, not only, make you feel like you are getting work done, but most of them are necessary and actually do need to be done on the daily. However, finding that balance was a major part of what Angie found she had to do to help her stop these time suckers from taking over her whole day.
The best thing she has done to ensure her day would be filled with productivity, has been to create blocks of time during the day when she closes all of these productivity killers so she can put 100% of her focus on work. She’s become the Buffy of slaying these time vamps who suck her day away. ( and if you don’t get that last reference, you need to sort your life out, friend. It’s Whedon, man, seriously, get to sorting.)
1. Twitter and Social Media
**Disclaimer**As operators of the Social Media Directory for Designers we are in no way denying its value or hoping to spurn this medium that we have so much respect for. Having said that, Social Media comes with a cost when not handled with care. Here endeth the disclaimer.
Social media sites, and Twitter in particular, are indispensable for networking with potential clients and other designers. In fact, other than direct hits and google traffic, the majority of our site visits now come from Twitter. The design community has embraced these social sites and through them helped build one of the most helpful and supportive communities we have ever been a part of.
We know it’s an easy trap to fall into, leaving your favorite social media site open all of the time so that you don’t miss anything. However, this tends to cause a constant distraction that starts to break up your work flow and make you less productive.
The Slayer’s Guide: Angie will go ahead and admit that her Twitter client is only closed during those blocks of time set aside for work. But making that decision to shut it down for those times during the day, and sticking to it, has worked wonders for her productivity. There is a time to tweet, and a time to retweet… but you need to be sure you still leave yourself the time to focus on the projects whose deadlines are looming.
2. RSS Readers
Reading RSS feeds is an easy way to feel like you are being productive, since you are both potentially learning new things, and if you are commenting on the blogs, networking at the same time. Angie can spend hours on end reading articles in her reader, letting the day get lost in the aether as she combs through the design communities daily offerings. Even though this is an invaluable part of running the blog, it has to be regulated to keep it from taking over.
The Slayer’s Guide: Angie now only checks her feed reader twice a day to keep the excessive run throughs down to a minimum. She opens it once in the morning when she first wakes up, and has found that it is an excellent and relaxing way to start the day. Not to mention, it often provides quite a bit of inspiration that can carry her through the rest of the day. Then she checks back in with the reader once more right before she calls it a day for a final community update. This has helped her maintain the workflow throughout the afternoon with fewer distractions.
3. Email
Email is a tricky one because you sure don’t want to miss an urgent message from a client, but leaving it open all day, once again provides you with a constant stream of distractions. Trying to reply to every email you get, especially as they come in, would eventually become more of a hindrance to your productivity than anything else. Stopping and starting back all day would generally mean that you are not going to get much else done, effectively killing the inspiration that was driving you through to meeting your deadline.
The Slayer’s Guide: Angie has now decided to only check her email approximately five times a day, just to see if there is anything urgent that needs her immediate attention. However, unless there is something pressing that she must reply to that moment, she only replies to messages once a day. Usually keeping this until the end of the day, and then taking the time to go through them fully.
4. Stumble Toolbar
Okay, admittedly, this one may not fool you into believing you are being productive but, having that button right in front of you can sometimes provide more of a temptation than you can resist and can kill your productivity quicker than the tube. I’m talking about Youtube, not the train. However, since Angie has a tendency to stumble when she is brainstorming for article ideas, she can trick herself into believing she is being productive anytime she reaches for that button in the toolbar. And once you start that cycle, it can be really hard to stop and get back to work.
The Slayer’s Guide: A lot of people don’t know that you can actually hide the stumble toolbar, thereby ridding yourself of the temptation to take off down that path. Angie tries to keep the stumble toolbar closed during work hours and only open it if she gets really stuck and needs to unplug and decompress, or to get a quick fix of inspiration. This helps keep her creative train from stumbling off its track.
5. Compulsive Planning
Not sure if others have this problem like Angie does, but she has the tendency to kill her productivity by planning to be productive without actually ever getting around to being productive. Making detailed to-do lists and outlining the day can be very important, indeed, but if you engage in this compulsively without moving on to accomplishing any of these tasks you aren’t exactly screaming productivity. You are, in fact, keeping yourself in a limbo and not progressing passed the planning stages.
The Slayer’s Guide: Angie now adds items to her to-do list as they come up but that is as much as she does during unscheduled times. Instead of compulsively planning, she sits down every Monday and maps out the week that lays ahead. Then, once a day, usually in the morning, she looks at her list to see what she has set up and planned for the day. This still keeps her on track, without derailing her schedule for the day.
To Sum Up
Those are the top five distractions that Angie identified in her quest for a more productive work week, along with a couple of ways that she Buffy’d them from her path. What are some of the productivity killers that stand in your way, and keep you from meeting your daily or weekly goals?
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Well, I was directed here through my Twitter feed, where it was originally found through someone’s RSS Reader. I might email a friend or coworker about this before compulsively planning the rest of my week. Am I doing this right?
Seriously though, some good ideas/thoughts. More or less it’s all about time management and doing things in a way that best suits your own time. If I spent all day intermittently checking blogs, twitter and email, I’d get nothing done. Based on this post’s existence, it seems like there are people who do just that.
@ Jaremy — I think that’s the way to do it…according to Angie anyway. ;)
I agree, it is about time management, and perhaps a little about willpower. It was funny when we were talking about the article with a friend who isn’t a freelance blogger and designer about having to fight to be productive sometimes, they said, ‘yeah, sometimes you just have to turn off the internet and computer to get things done.’ We just looked at each other, and were like, but our work is mostly online or at least on our computers where all of these necessary distractions live and lurk.
When Angie was contacted by a few tweeps asking what she had done recently to be more productive, we felt that perhaps she wasn’t the only one who had to fight off these demons…okay, so the Buffy metaphor didn’t die with the post… :). So we thought we would turn it into a post to give an idea of what we identified as problem areas on this end, just like you said, it’s all about what works for you. Hopefully, it will help others to recognize some things that maybe traps for them that they hadn’t really thought about before.
That was a nice read! But isn’t the Stumble toolbar the same as “Social Media”?
Marcos last blog post..[Imagedump] May 2009
@Marco — Thanks! I know that Stumble is technically a social media site but the way it works differs so much from other sites that I had to include it on it’s own. Not to mention the fact that it can be an uber productivity killer.
Totally agree with all of the above. Google Reader is the biggest killer, and i must spend hours on it a day.
Lists are the biggest time waster.
My favorite is 100+ ways to save time, and I know they weren’t trying to be clever.
I get about 40 emails a day (rss feeds in emails) and usually they take 4 hours minimum to check them. Many are freebies or nice articles/tutorials/inspiration. It is quite a waste of time and I haven’t really figured out a way to stop that.
I guess I can try to read some in the morning (but I would be at work) and some at night.
My other emails are open all day but it only takes 1–2 hours total to check/reply to all of them.
Good tips! Moderation. Now I must get back to work! :)
Jentris last blog post..It’s Never Crowded Along the Extra Mile
Great points on how to reclaim your day.
Email on mobile devices is another area that needs to be managed for maximum efficiency. I did this by switching from Exchange/Outlook to Gmail. I set Exchange email to forward to Gmail and then added Gmail as an Exchange account on my iPhone. Since Gmail doesn’t support push email notification, this stopped the constant “you have mail” interruption.
Alternatively you could mail setup alone and just change the notification sound to none/silent for incoming mail.
@Andy — Google Reader is both a blessing and a curse at the same time. lol
@Anthony — Are you saying we wasted your time here ;p. LOL @ 100+ ways to save time!
@e11world — It’s definitely a fine line to toe. I just make sure that I get in at least 6 hours of actual design work a day (meaning no email, reader, social media, ect)
@Jentri — Moderation is definitely the key!
@J. Charles — I keep email off of my mobile all together. I know that I’m lucky to not be out of the office enough to need it though and that for others this may not be a viable solution.