A flood of productivity – 5 ways to make yourself unstoppable

“Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.”

- Franz Kafka

Kafka is not often cited as someone who would write quick, easy to understand statements.  Often it seems the reader would be required to patiently read for a while until Kafka finally decided to end a sentence, thus allowing that reader to understand the point.  Kafka’s (apparent) surreptitious sense of urgency caused the reader to think about what they read in new ways.  I have had to take a similar approach in the past in order to improve the way I was working.  Getting more done in less time so I could enjoy more of my time felt like a good goal at the time, and most people would likely agree.  It takes some creativity and some effort, but it can be done!

You may have noticed that we changed our tagline (the words in the top right of the screen) to “productivity > risk� today.  The reason for this is that our old tagline (which will never be repeated here again) seemed a bit de-motivational.  While we at icebluebanana.com do occasionally love the darker side of humor (and music – see our review for Transit Rider), we just kept feeling unmotivated every time we visited our own site.  So, to celebrate our new motivational status, here are five ideas aimed at increasing your productivity.  Perhaps it will even allow you to get more done in a shorter time and then spend more time enjoying life!

Ideas you can use to increase your productivity:

Use the 10:00 AM method of prioritization.

This requires the choosing of one of your to-do items and setting a goal to complete it by 10:00 AM that day.  If you start off getting things done, you will have set your work pace and it should be easier to maintain this pace throughout the day than it would be to try and increase your pace through the day. Plus, it just makes you feel good. So why not do it?

Do the ugly one first.

Say you have three things to do in a day (I hear you – just pretend there could be a day where there were so few).  Think about the three items and determine which one you want to do the least.  Some days this will be easier than others, and some days there will be no question.  That item, the one you hate.  That is what you should do first.  Get it out of the way and then have a nice day.  Really, what more can we ask for than to have a nice day once in a while?

The deadline that does not exist.

My mother always tells me that lying is a sin.  So be it.  I can not say that lying ever helped me when I was a kid, but who am I to say that my mother is wrong.  Although, I must admit that it is possible that I just was not very good at lying.  Add it to the list, as my mother would say.  Hmm.  I just realized that my mother probably is not a very good motivator.  We will save that for another time.  The benefit of giving yourself a fake deadline that is sooner than the real one is that it can help if you are prone to procrastination.  Of course, if you begin to ignore your own made-up deadline, then you are doing basically the same thing as people who set their clock ahead then hit snooze 100 times.  If that is the case, no one can help you.

Ignore your coworkers.

Seems like a bad idea, doesn’t it?  Well, perhaps it could be if taken to an extreme, but that is not what I am suggesting here.  Putting on a pair of headphones usually helps too.  It might take some of them a little time to get the picture when you don’t respond to their inane comments, but once they get it, they don’t tend to forget it.  You generally don’t want to hit coworkers, so I will not say that is a good idea, though it does seem like it much of the time.

When all else fails, set a goal and reward yourself.

So there is something you would rather be doing than working?  That is not very surprising since work is generally not fun (see 7 things).  But, it is necessary, and it can be made to be a bit better if you work to find a way to enjoy some of what you do.  Make a game out of it.  If you have twenty items on your checklist, set times for having checked of groups of five of them and reward yourself in some way for each goal achieved.  Just to be clear, the rest of the day off may be a bad idea in general.  But, if you can make it work, have a nice afternoon!

Actually, have a nice afternoon anyway.  We would love to hear your suggestions!

Related posts

• How to Determine If You Use Your Time Wisely
• The Power of Priority
• 5 Ways to Clear The Garbage From Your Head
• 5 Pieces Of Paper You Should Keep In Your Pocket
• A Few Productivity Tools You Cannot Live Without

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