Month: December 2011

7 Things Highly Productive People Do

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Ilya Pozin founded his first company, Ciplex, at age 17. The digital marketing and creative agency caters to small businesses and start-ups. Ciplex, which has received the Inc.500|5000 award for two consecutive years,  is headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in New York, Jerusalem, Serbia, and Germany. In 2010 Ilya hired a new CEO and moved into the President/CMO role so that he could focus on building new ventures.   Originally from Russia, he currently resides in L.A. with his wife and daughter. Via 7 Things Highly Productive People Do

You probably don’t want to admit it but you love distractions. In fact, just like monkeys, you get a shot of dopamine every time something pulls you in another direction. Why do you think you check your email so much?

Want to be more productive and get your focus back? There are no secret tricks here… do one thing at a time. Stop multitasking—it’s just another form of distraction.

Easier said than done, I know.

Recently I sat down with Tony Wong, a project management blackbelt whose client list includes Toyota, Honda, and Disney, to name a few. He’s an expert in keeping people on task, so I thought he’d be a good person to ask.

Here are his tips for staying productive:

  1. Work backwards from goals to milestones to tasks. Writing “launch company website” at the top of your to-do list is a sure way to make sure you never get it done. Break down the work into smaller and smaller chunks until you have specific tasks that can be accomplished in a few hours or less: Sketch a wireframe, outline an introduction for the homepage video, etc. That’s how you set goals and actually succeed in crossing them off your list.
  2. Stop multi-tasking. No, seriously—stop. Switching from task to task quickly does not work. In fact, changing tasks more than 10 times in a day makes you dumber than being stoned. When you’re stoned, your IQ drops by five points. When you multitask, it drops by an average of 10 points, 15 for men, five for women (yes, men are three times as bad at multitasking than women).
  3. Be militant about eliminating distractions. Lock your door, put a sign up, turn off your phone, texts, email, and instant messaging. In fact, if you know you may sneak a peek at your email, set it to offline mode, or even turn off your Internet connection. Go to a quiet area and focus on completing one task.
  4. Schedule your email. Pick two or three times during the day when you’re going to use your email. Checking your email constantly throughout the day creates a ton of noise and kills your productivity.
  5. Use the phone. Email isn’t meant for conversations. Don’t reply more than twice to an email. Pick up the phone instead.
  6. Work on your own agenda. Don’t let something else set your day. Most people go right to their emails and start freaking out. You will end up at inbox-zero, but accomplish nothing. After you wake up, drink water so you rehydrate, eat a good breakfast to replenish your glucose, then set prioritized goals for the rest of your day.
  7. Work in 60 to 90 minute intervals. Your brain uses up more glucose than any other bodily activity. Typically you will have spent most of it after 60-90 minutes. (That’s why you feel so burned out after super long meetings.) So take a break: Get up, go for a walk, have a snack, do something completely different to recharge. And yes, that means you need an extra hour for breaks, not including lunch, so if you’re required to get eight hours of work done each day, plan to be there for 9.5-10 hours.
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Don’t Be A Free User

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I’m just stopping by Don’t Be A Free User, “Pinboard is a bookmarking site and personal archive with an emphasis on speed over socializing.”. I would like include few lines. I have seen a lot free websites, they are allowing users to register on the websites for free and as well offering paid services – the more you will pay, more you will get features/ services. The structure you’ve shared and acquisition you’ve shared, those have sustainable business model, it will transform like “stagnaut– making very little money”; “Growing – making a lot money”; Exploding “spending less, making more then expected”.

To make such standards that way, I’d disagree with that. Like Delicious, they are providing free services to the customers and already acquired and they didn’t shuts down and as well they didn’t limit users with 1000 books or .001*users = more I have to pay; if you do follow such strategy – lets see in future. Also, take a look of Flickr.com – they are providing free services “upload as much photo as you want with limited features” and once you will paid you will get more. Also, to sustain in competitive market, you’ve to give free and as well you need such future forecasted business model that will make money for your business, same things will happen every morning “I wake up and dive into my vault of golden coins.”