Productivity

The main thing that I believe helps me with my productivity are lists - annual / monthly / weekly / daily (can you tell I love ticking things off lists?) As you already know, I love setting huge goals at the beginning of the year and then steadily working my way through them during the course of the year. Part of the productivity process is not to be busy for the sake of busy-ness; to quote Tim Ferriss, are you inventing things to avoid the important? It's about doing things that are important and have an impact.  Scheduling time for exercise and fun things are just as important.

What I also find quite helpful to get things done, is instead of trying to juggle too many things in one go and testing my multi-tasking skills, is to focus and complete one activity at a time. Completing an activity half way means that firstly, I can't tick it off my 'to do' list, and secondly when I do get around to working on it again, I need to get back into the mindset, which sometimes takes longer to get back into the groove than if I had just invested a bit more time to focus on finishing it.

My colleague recently shared a great article on productivity published on the Business Insider website, here are their tips:

1. Wake up earlier
2. Be on time
3. Take a mid-morning coffee break (I really like this as well as a 15:00 tea break)
4. Make a productivity playlist
5. Keep energy levels up with exercise and sleep
6. Take the first flight out
7. Take a minute to make the bed in the morning
8. Use the "Rapid Planning Method" from Tony Robbins. (he focuses on teaching people "to become obsessed with outcomes instead of activities)
9. Drawing things out on a whiteboard
10. Downloading time-saving apps (personally I love using the 'Todoist' app)
11. Organize your computer desktop.
12. Unplug during the weekend.
13. Use applications to block distracting websites.
14. Get rid of pointless meetings. (YES!)
15. Keep your phone on 'silent' and hide it during work hours. (uhm...easier said than done)
16. Network while you eat. (I really like this, and also really like Steve Job's example of having walking meetings)
17. Listen to TED talks on productivity.

What tips do you have to help with productivity?