Good Plum » Productivity

7 Tips to Avoid Distraction and Prevent Interruption

Erin McKellar — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:10:41 +0000

Oh how easy it is to be distracted when you’re working from home. True, you don’t have your coworkers talking about last night’s Dancing with the Stars or showing you photos of their children. However, you do have other distractions, like last night’s Dancing with the Stars and your very own children. How do you handle them and still manage to be productive? It isn’t easy.

Here are seven tips to avoid distraction and prevent interruption.

#1 Create “work time” and set limits. Get a do not disturb sign if you need to. Just make sure everyone knows you’re working and not to be disturbed. It’s helpful if you can create special times during the day that are devoted to work and special times that are devoted to family, chores and errands.

#2 Close any and all computer applications that aren’t directly related to what you’re doing. Yes, that means Facebook and Twitter too! And of course close your email unless you’re checking it.

#3 Speaking of email, stop checking it every five minutes! Check it three times a day, max. Check it once in the morning, once in the evening and once during lunch.

#4 Turn off your phone or set specific ring tones for important numbers and ignore all other calls. Google Voice is a great tool because you can have voice mail messages sent to you as text messages. That saves you time during your lunch break because you can check your voice mail and your email at the same time.

#5 Remove the television and the radio/stereo from your office if they’re distractions. Generally, television is a distraction for most people. However, some people find it easier to work to music. You decide. You know yourself better than anyone else. If music is a distraction, remove it from your work environment.

#6 Plan ahead. Take the dog outside before you settle down to work. Use the facilities and grab some food and something to drink so you don’t have to get up while you’re working.

#7 Set time aside for chores and errands. Laundry, dirty dishes and grocery shopping can wait, right? However, if you haven’t set aside time to get them done they’ll loom over you and distract you from getting your work completed. Schedule time for them and the stress is removed. You can focus on being productive.

Distractions are a part of working from home or anywhere else. As they arise, you’ll need to figure out the best way to manage them and prevent them. Enjoy the benefits of working from home for what they are and the amazing freedom you do have.

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Chaos: Getting Productivity Back in Your Business

Elliott Kosmicki — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:42:11 +0000

A lot of businesses fail for the simple reason that they have no clear direction. If you go to work and don’t have a plan for what you want to achieve, chaos is inevitable. This is how you end up simply answering hundreds emails or phone calls during an eight hour day, and not getting anything important accomplished.

First you need to know where you are going. If you haven’t already done so, consider setting goals for the next three to six months for things you want to achieve with your business. This is the only way you are going to have a clear direction.

Once you know what you are working towards, now you can begin planning your day and your week. Break that three month goal down to a one month goal, and finally a weekly goal.

Consider writing out everything you have to do in the upcoming week prior before it starts. Then set two or three really important tasks for each day and attempt to get those done first.

Most people set an unachievable amount of stuff to get done. When that doesn’t get done, they just carry over the ten things they didn’t get done to the next day.

If you are honest with yourself, there probably should be no more than two or three really important tasks that have to be accomplished. If there are more, consider outsourcing the less crucial things.

Try not to do anything else until you’ve finished the two or three important things you’ve written down. That means no checking your email, handling phone calls, etc. Attempt to get your critical activities done before lunch if possible.

What if you work with employees? Then try getting to the office before anyone else so you can get things done before the distractions begin. The alternative to that is time blocking. This is where you set aside time where you don’t allow visitors into your office, and eliminate all other distractions. Consider taking the phone off the hook if you have to. Try not to leave until you get those crucial tasks done.

What are these “crucial tasks?” Any successful business owner will tell you that the most important thing you can focus on is the marketing. Other things can be outsourced, and probably should be if they are cutting into your marketing time. If you not adept at this skill, you will not get customers no matter how great your product might be.

Finally, get rid of clutter. If your desk is littered with papers from the past few years, this can wreak havoc on your mental state of mind. Consider throwing out anything and everything you haven’t used for the past three months.

You will probably be amazed at how much better you feel from doing this. Hopefully this advice will help you get a lot more done in a shorter period of time.

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4 Websites for More Effective Outsourcing

Brad Kohler — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:27:19 +0000

Building a sizable website takes a lot of time and energy.

You can’t do everything yourself because there are only so many hours in the day. Outsourcing portions of your work can save you time and money and it can also help you focus on the parts of building a website or a business that you really enjoy.

Unfortunately outsourcing can sometimes increase your headaches and wasted time.

Avoiding scammers, slackers, and talentless hacks is the key here but where do you start?

There are many websites for finding freelancers and outsourced workers but the following four sites are your best bets. You’re not guaranteed to avoid bad outsourced labor on these sites but you’ll filter out a lot of the noise that is found on some webmaster forums.

Craigslist

There is a very good chance there are great freelancers in your own town.

The best part is you can get together with them first to make sure they are a good fit for your project. Have them meet you at a local coffee shop or buy them lunch and get to know your outsourcer before you commit to working with them.

Having your outsourced worker in town will also make it easier to have an occasional meeting. Skype is great but meeting in person is almost always a better way to communicate with a team of people.

If you live in the States, a local worker may cost more but sometimes paying decent money for great work is the best decision you could make.

Elance

Some service providers complain that Elance is lowering the cost of their services but that’s a great thing if you’re doing the hiring.

Some workers from countries like the Philippines will set up a website for you for $100-$200. (I can’t vouch for the quality of $100 website though!)

The tough part is that your outsourcers will likely be hit or miss and the talented and cheap folks often get snapped up so if you find someone good make sure to treat them nice and keep them busy.

With Elance, you’ll need to dig a little deeper to find the top 10% of service providers. Look for great portfolios and those that specialize in only one or two things.

Textbroker

This website specializes in written content.

If you’re building a large website than chances are you’re going to need a lot of content and this is where Textbroker can help.

Internet Marketer Michael Gray has a review of Textbroker on his website and it describes their services as follows:

“I got an excellent value for the price, the articles delivered were of good quality, and they were delivered quickly. It won’t replace flagship content created by high quality writers, but it has a lot of value for the cost.”

If you’re in need of lots of content then head over to Textbroker and test out a few articles for yourself.

Mechanical Turk

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is a crowd-sourcing network that allows you to pay for others to perform small tasks – most of which can be completed in an hour.

These Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) are small assignments that are completed for money.

For example, you may have several hundred photos along with a list of 20 products. The HIT may be to select from the set of photos the best picture to represent each product. Or you may use Mechanical Turk to audit user-uploaded images or content on your website for inappropriate submissions. A final example is that you could use Mechanical Turk to have a document translated into Cantonese.

Payouts for HITs start at one cent and can go up significantly depending on the time and knowledge required to complete each task. Work can be rejected if it isn’t good enough and bonuses are also available for exceptional work.

These are just four websites that can help you build up your network of outsourcers. The key to any outsourcing job is to find the best candidate and to thoroughly explain what is needed of them. Don’t leave your outsourcer guessing as to what you want – make it clear from the start and hope for the best.

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Taking Intelligent (and Calculated) Risks

Erin McKellar — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:14:42 +0000

Taking risks is part of life, and it’s hard to succeed without ever taking any form of risk. It’s been said that “many a false step was made by standing still.” The biggest risk of all may be not doing anything and settling for a comfortable and boring existence.

You grow when you take intelligent risks. Think of the last time you felt the most alive. What were you doing? It was most likely when you were learning a new skill or doing something that challenged your limits.

Most people are willing to accept their lot in life. Even though there is a very small upside to doing the same things, they are too afraid to try something new. However, if you want to achieve extraordinary results, you need to take risks.

That doesn’t mean you should jump out of an airplane without a parachute, however. Your goal in business and life is to minimize risk while maximizing the upside.

Let’s use a scale of 1-10, with one being the worst possible scenario and ten being the best. If a certain marketing endeavour has an upside of 10 but a downside of 0, it might not be worth taking. For instance, what if you have $1000 in the bank, and you decided to invest 100% of that into a new advertising campaign?

The upside is easily 10 if it works. However, the downside is definitely 0 because bankruptcy and financial ruin are real possibilities. This is a risk you shouldn’t take.

However, if there is an upside of 4 but a downside of 4 with something you are considering, that doesn’t mean it’s worth it either. There isn’t enough potential in this endeavour. The goal is finding the solution with the highest potential while minimizing the risk (although it can never be eliminated entirely).

Remember that there is a 100% chance of failure for not trying. Getting rid of risk is impossible. In any decision you make there is an inherent danger. When you drive, you risk a life-threatening crash. So getting rid of risks shouldn’t be the goal; the goal is managing the risk. Everything you do needs to have a high upside and relatively low downside.

Therefore the key to success in business is to manage risk and reward. There is a point where the risk outweighs the reward, so you need to carefully evaluate it and then make the best decision possible.

However, don’t get “paralysis by analysis.” It’s impossible to have all the information before acting. So the key is to plan out to the best of your ability the risks and rewards of something, and then make the best decision possible. However, chances are that even if you really think about the worst-case scenario for most things you fear, it’s probably not as bad as you think.

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7 Tips to Avoid Distraction and Prevent Interruption

Elliott Kosmicki — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:59:37 +0000

Here are seven tips to avoid distraction and prevent interruption.

#3 Speaking of email, stop checking it every five minutes! Check it three times a day, max. Check it once in the morning, once in the evening and once during lunch.

#6 Plan ahead. Take the dog outside before you settle down to work. Use the facilities and grab some food and something to drink so you don’t have to get up while you’re working.

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How to Organize Your Desk in a Few Easy Steps

Elliott Kosmicki — Mon, 10 May 2010 18:20:59 +0000

An un-organized desk can significantly impede your productivity. If you can’t find an important file or even find a space for your laptop, you will waste valuable time looking for the file or just clearing off space. Worse still, not being organized can be demoralizing and foster procrastination. Fortunately, organizing your desk is possible – in just a few simple steps. Here’s how:

1) Manage your time. First and foremost, if the task seems overwhelming, set a timer and limit yourself to just 15 minutes of organizing at a time. You’ll be amazed at how much you can get done in just 15-20 minutes. If you haven’t tried the The Pomodoro Technique, I highly recommend looking into it.

2) Put up or give up. Clear your desk and put back only what you use every day. Store everything else in drawers, on shelves, or in your supply closet. If you never or seldom use something, get rid of it. Give it away to someone who could make good use of it. Put anything that doesn’t belong on your desk in a pile. When the timer goes off, put all of those things away in their proper places.

3) No more “misc.” Don’t keep a “miscellaneous” file. Sort papers into files labeled specifically for the action needed. For example, keep a file for bills to pay, receipts to enter, papers to shred, etc. Anything that cannot be filed this way is not important enough to keep. Maintain virtual folders (and subfolders) the same way.

4) Organize your drawers. Arrange like items in each drawer. For example, put all of your office supplies in one drawer, stationery and notepads in another. That way, you won’t waste a lot of time searching for a pen when on the phone or looking for printer paper just before a deadline.

5) Clean out your virtual inbox. Declutter your virtual desk by deleting old emails that require no further action on your part. To store email you need to save, create a folder for it on your hard drive. Do not print emails unless you absolutely have to.

I also recommend keeping your inbox completely empty at the end of each day. It sounds daunting, and is a topic for another day, but I promise you that it can work wonders keeping you and your mind organized.

6) Use simple organizational tools. Bundle related papers together with clips, use trays for current papers or files (labeled “next week,” “this week,” etc.), and keep pens in a cup.

7) Take a moment. Whenever you have a lull in the day, take a moment to trash or shred old paperwork you don’t need anymore.

8) Conclude cleanly. At the end of each day, before you step away from your desk, clear it off and put everything away in its proper place. Wipe off your desk with a cleaner or just plain water.

Now that your desk is organized, you can get down to business! An organized desk makes for an organized mind.

Photo by Uwe Hermann / CC BY-SA 2.0

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Change Your Schedule to Increase Productivity

Elliott Kosmicki — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:01:38 +0000

Accidents happen. The accidental things in life are sometimes the moments you should be paying the most attention to.

I can tell you without hesitation that I am a night person. I love the late-night clickity clack on the keyboard as my mind races towards the next project. I love sleeping in until 8 or 9 before heading into the office. I also love how the Universe kindly puts me in my place whenever it doesn’t agree with what I love.

This late-sleeper and my wife got a puppy four weeks ago. This puppy, for the first week at least, had no concept of time. Day, night – it made no difference to her. It whined to go outside every hour or two – all day and all night. I’m not going to pretend like this was worse than people who have babies. I’m sure it’s nothing in comparison - but this was a BIG deal to me. My schedule was completely thrown off, I was tired every minute of every day, and I hadn’t accomplished anything really worthwhile since she arrived.

By the way, the puppy is a female Shih Tzu and Terrier mix. Her name is Beta, she’s 15 weeks old, and weighs about 6 or 7 pounds. She probably won’t get over 12 pounds full-grown. She absolutely loves people and chasing anything that moves – even wind.

Four weeks without a full blog post or completing a project is like an eternity for me. I had to figure out a way to “fix” this.

Beta is at the point now where she can sleep at night for about 5 or 6 hours without having to go out. She’s so tiny that I don’t think this will ever get to be much longer – at lease by much. So, at least for now, I decided to analyze my current out-of-flux life:

I’m still up late, because that’s what I’m used to. However, after about 8pm, I’m completely worthless I’m so tired. I essentially spend the next 5-6 hours letting the dog out and wishing I was in bed. Many times, my wife gets up with the dog to let her out in the morning. However, I end up waking up, going back to sleep, waking back up for the next 3-4 hours until I would “normally” get up.

I’ve noticed, though, that when I get up to let the dog out in the morning at 4 or 5am, I have a hard time going back to sleep right away — once I’m up, I’m up.

I decided to use my body’s new schedule to change the way I do things.

I was up at 4am this morning to let the dog out. I put her back to sleep for a little while while I got ready. Took her back out at 5am and played with her a little bit, got her some food, put her back to bed and left for the office.

After a Starbucks stop, I was here by 6am with a much clearer mind than I thought I would have. After mail-check and news updates, I was writing by 6:30. I’m not sure yet how I’ll feel the rest of the day, but I know that it can’t be much worse than what’s been happening the last several weeks. I’ll at least have a few more hours of productivity than I normally would.

Should You Change Your Schedule?

Without being forced into this by some external source (ie, a dog or baby), I’m not sure how easy this would be to do – especially if you’re the type of person who loves to be up late or up early and have always been like that.

I would challenge you to look at your schedule for a day. When are you the most productive? When are you the least productive? Is there a certain time of the day you typically spend doing nothing except sitting around, watching TV? If you have goals that you want to reach in life, those goals and dreams should be enough to get you to at least evaluate your current schedule.

If it’s not working, change it. If I can get 4 extra hours per day just by waking up early and not continually going back to sleep, then that’s what I need to do. If you’re spending the late evening hours forcing your eyelids open to watch some primetime summer series or, heaven forbid, Daisy of Love – maybe it’s time you ask yourself what’s more important?

Maybe you’re one who gets up early, but doesn’t accomplish anything. Have you thought that maybe your body just wants to be productive at night? I’d say it’s worth trying. Forget the “early bird gets the worm” stuff, this is about your unique body and energy. Who knows, maybe you need the moonlight to feed your creativity. Creepy ;)

The bottom line here is that we need to stay aware of our productivity cycles. If we aren’t as productive as we’d like to be – there are likely times of the day that we COULD be productive, but are just doing other things at those times. Adjust accordingly and let’s watch our productivity sore!

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Develop Better Social Media Habits

Elliott Kosmicki — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 23:29:07 +0000

Most of us spend too much unproductive time in front of social media during the day. Like Alec Baldwin’s alien character in the recent Hulu Super Bowl commercial says, “What are you going to do, turn off your TV and your computer? Ha!”

It’s sadly true. Television is one of the most unproductive habits you can engage yourself in. Though some people advocate getting rid of your TV altogether, I think I’d rather be slightly unproductive than miss Lost. The internet and social media have together created another hole for us to get trapped in. But, we have a choice: keep digging, or stay out.

I love Facebook. It allows me (much more-so than MySpace did) to keep in touch with current friends, family, and even friends I haven’t seen face-to-face for 10+ years. However, if you let yourself get overwhelmed with invitations, wall-posts, and applications – it’s easy for just this one site alone to consume you. Here’s a few tips to make your Facebook time less interfering and more productive.

- Write down what you want your Facebook experience to be. For me, it’s simply to stay in touch with people.
- Turn off email alerts. This will prevent you from clicking through every time someone adds you to something and distracting you from what you were focused on.
- Block invitations from people or applications. I appreciate you want to give me a bumper sticker, but it doesn’t do anything for my life (or yours).
- Set aside time for Facebook. If you know you’ll only spend 15 minutes each day checking friends, leaving messages, etc – you’ll now have the rest of the day freed up to build your empire.

These tips can be translated to almost any site that is sucking your productivity away. I’ll put together a Twitter post another time, but for now – do whatever it takes to make your online life less of a distraction.

How do you prevent social sites from eating up your productivity?

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The Moleskine Volant Mini – Should You Be a Paper Person?

Elliott Kosmicki — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:39:17 +0000

I love paper. There’s something about the silky-smooth pages of a Moleskine notebook and a high-quality pen that give me a warm and fuzzy feeling. The Moleskine Volant mini is a relatively new (re)addition to the popular family of notebooks, and well-worth a look.

If you find yourself out and about and needing to make a quick note – maybe you should try turning the pages of a notebook instead of typing something into your phone. The Moleskine Volant mini is 2.5″ by 4″ and has 56 pages – the last 16 which are perforatted for easy removal. It’s a perfect pocket-companion for any of the Fisher bullet space pens.

Personally, there are many advantages to having paper available at a moment’s notice. Whether it’s jotting a quick note-to-self, leaving a note to someone, or making an impromtu list — paper just works however you need it to. With so many digital companions available (I use my iPhone for almost everything mobile), using paper regularly is a much needed break from the out-of-touch internet world.

Yes, it’s nice to use Evernote to keep all my notes in one location. Yes, it’s great I can access my Toodledo lists from anywhere. However, it’s a small notebook and pocket-pen that are the quickest to get an idea out of my head. It’s a hand-written note to someone that they might remember you by.

I typically export all of my handwritten items to their correct digital place each day. If I was digital-only, I would pass-up on writing down a lot of list items and ideas – I never have that problem with paper.

I think there’s a place for a physical notebook in everyone’s workflow, and with the Moleskine Volant mini – you really don’t have an excuse!

Do you use paper in your life? Let me know how you manage it in the comments!

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If You are Unproductive, Stop Reading Mashable

Elliott Kosmicki — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:32:22 +0000

Are you following me on Twitter?

You might ask yourself how a guy who eats and sleeps everything web-related could say “stop reading Mashable” in the title of an article. Mashable is actually one of my favorite sites and I think after you’re done with this post, you’ll simply read Mashable differently – not stop altogether.

I must have been one of the first readers of Mashable (at least I like to think so). I remember commenting on an early post, when Pete was still writing everything on the site himself. I got an email back from him personally thanking me and asking if I wanted him to review my (early-stage then never-launched) start-up, to just let him know.

It was engaging – and I attribute much of Mashable’s success to Pete’s early commitment to his readers. Mashable immediately became a daily read for me. A constant stream of start-ups being reviewed: tools, mash-ups, social networks – it would’ve been fine if I would’ve just read the articles and had drawn knowledge and lessons out of each story – but instead, I had become a “beta addict.”

Almost every web app that came along which got mentioned on Mashable, I was one of the first to register for. Keeping track of account names and passwords was obviously difficult – but it even got to the point where I was getting dozens of emails from sites that I had forgotten what their purpose was.

So began the circle of beta sign-ups, confirmation clicks, account registrations, friend-finding, app-learning, and finally… app-quitting.

Know What You Need to Be Productive

I get upset at my mother when she constantly finds stuff at discount stores and swap meets that she “needs.” Her house is full of things that she couldn’t pass up because of the price – even though she’ll never use it and it’ll just add to the clutter.

In the web-world, the price is our time and our mind is our house – but the definition of our needs is still very important. Because I never had a definite outline of HOW I wanted to be productive, I had no idea what I NEEDED to be productive. The effect of this is that I signed up to use everything that came my way.

1.) Write down exactly how you want your work flow to happen. This will change depending on who you are and what you do. The key here is to be exact – know how and when thoughts enter your head, what the easiest way to record that thought would be, do you need a main system of recording and tracking information, etc.

When will you review all these bits of information? How often? Maybe you’ll need project management software and maybe you’ll find you can do everything you need by using Google Calendar. Either way, breaking down exactly what you need will help you determine what you need to fulfill your productivity.

2.) Sign up for only what you’re missing. Let’s say you’ve broken down your information process and you’ve determined that you’re going to immediately input any thought or action into a pocket Moleskine. At a later time each day, you’re going to enter the day’s notes into a web notebook, like Evernote, so you have access to it anywhere. You’ll add dates and reminders to Google Calendar, and to-dos to…. oops, you don’t have anywhere to put to-dos.

You can make due for now, but now you know that all you need to make your process complete is an online to-do manager. You can limit yourself from signing up with just any service to try it out – and focus only on testing new to-do apps. (I’ve chosen Remember the Milk.)

Wash and Repeat

No matter what process you’re overloading yourself with – whether it’s social networking, blogging, finance or design – you can become more productive by repeating this process again and again.

I. Write down the exact needs for your process.

II. List what you currently use that you love and can be used in that process.

III. Define what needs you have left to fill and only try new applications that fill that need.

The web is allowing us to be more productive than ever, but the flood of new applications on a daily basis can actually destroy our productivity instead of making it more sound.

Start today! If you can define your process and the tools you need, the next article on Mashable about a social network for your cat can simply be entertaining instead of distracting you from what’s important!