Be aware that we crave distraction, and distraction is the enemy of productivity. It’s so easy to get into the habit (or addiction) of distraction without realizing it. Don’t check email or other information sources in the morning (or impulsively).
Get it on Amazon Manage your day to day, by Jocelyn K. Glei
Notes
- 80% of success is just showing up. Persistence and chipping away at it.
- Super important: Don’t read email or other information sources in the morning. That scrambles your mind. Instead, schedule specific times for checking email.
- Meditate a little each morning. Get comfortable in solitude.
- Turn off notifications. That little red badge of 13 unread messages stays in your mind.
- Follow a routine. So many successful people attribute it to persistence.
- Block out uninterrupted time for focus.
- Discuss theses topics, how we work, with colleagues, too. Too often “how we work” isn’t a topic discussed among colleagues.
- To avoid attention residue, it’s suspected that its best to finish tasks before switching. Supports the notion of attacking specific well-defined tasks.
- Dan Ariely. Email is tempting because its random excitement. In an experiment with rats who got food after pulling a lever 100 times. They got excited. But when food came after random pulls, they to really excited. Email, twitter, etc. is intoxicating because every now and then we see something exciting, and it’s random.
- Dan Ariely. Email is also tempting because it provides such an immediate sense of progress. Working on a long term project doesn’t. We can try to find ways of exposing and reminding ourselves of progress. (This is probably the abstract feeling of momentum.)
- Erin Rooney. Combine mindful and mindless activities. (Theme: we have limited focused attention spans.)
- Scott Belsky. In those in-between moments and downtimes (e.g. waiting in line) just be present in the moment, rather than pulling out the phone.
- Scott Belshy. Notice and foster the power of serendipity. The best part of experiences are often at the seams.
- Aaron Dignan. Every four months reassess your complex goals.
- Warren Buffet. The difference between successful and very successful people is that the very successful say NO to almost everything.
- Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way, suggests “morning pages”, writing three pages of free-flowing thought first thing in the morning as a way to explore latent ideas, break through the voice of the censor in your head, and get your creative juices flowing. This is the concept of “Unnecessary Creation”.
- Stefan Sagmeister. Time planning. Take a jar, put some big stones in, then small stones, then sand. If you give priority first to the small stuff, you won’t have time to fit in the big important stuff.