Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Managing Distractions: How to be Productive, Part 2

If you missed yesterday's post, click here.


3.   Leave the House – At least once or twice a week, you should leave the house during working hours. You can either go somewhere to work or you can go take a break. Have lunch with a friend, run an errand, or take your work to a coffee shop and do some stuff there. While there are a lot of distractions outside of the house, they are not your distractions, which can make it easier for some people to concentrate. By getting out of the house for a while, you give your eyes and your brain break. When you get home, it’ll be easier to focus on your work.

4.   Organize Your Day – This probably works best for people who like lists. Take some time at the beginning of the day to take a look at what you need to do. Once you know what you want to accomplish during a day, you need to prioritize what needs to be done first. One of the ways that I do this (I love lists) is to divide the day in half. I try to get as much as possible done before lunch. First, because I am much more productive in the morning, and second, because I tend to run my errands in the afternoon.

In all, you know the things that distract you the most. All you have to do is find the self-discipline to eliminate them.



2 comments:

  1. These are some great suggestions. I really like the idea of using an egg timer to keep track of time, and lists always help me keep organized. I try to do my least favorite tasks first, so the worst is out of the way, and everything else just seems easy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. My favorite thing about lists is crossing things off! Yeah, I sometimes write the hardest articles first so that I won't be staring at them cross-eyed at 4 p.m.

    ReplyDelete