Productivity 0

Entrepreneur and/or busy people. Be more productive and improve your life by reading a short quote once a day on Productivity 0.

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How To Become A Morning Person 101 - Imgur

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Organize your personal life as well.

If you want to be productive and efficient, you have to be organized in both your personal and professional behaviors. Organizing your holidays, your weekend or a party with your friends are projects that have to be splitted in tasks and appear in your to do lists. Also, going to see your parents for dinner or your weekend with your friends have to appear in your agenda.

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Be charismatic.

People naturally tend to listen more to, trust more and rely more on people who seem to feel confident and are charismatic. It might sound unfair but it's a fact. See also: http://p0.db0.fr/post/64973626523

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Weekly review yourself.

Schedule a meeting a week with yourself. - Go through your current tasks - Add new tasks - Plan your tasks for the week - Plan meetups/conferences/events - Go through your emails - Politely ask people who haven't replied to your emails to do it - Make actions related to your emails (add tasks or execute tasks) then archive them - Analyze and criticize your last week's achievements and adapt your tools or mindset to improve This meeting shouldn't last more than 20 minutes.

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Attend meetups.

At meetups.com, you can find meetups everyday about subjects that matters to you. You can learn a lot from people who have things to share on those. It's probably the best way to relax between two tasks you're working on.

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Stop reading RSS feeds, social networks, or even the news.

Knowing what's happening in the world might sound smart, but think about it twice. Will it make you a better person knowing a girl has been killed in your city? Also, if something serious is happening, don't worry, people will talk about it. You don't need to spend that much time reading about it. If that's part of your work to keep yourself informed, pick specific subjects and schedule a strict timeframe to read the news.

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Go through your emails in a batch.

Set up a time when you'll go through your emails, once or twice a day (maybe more, depends on your job). Evaluate the time it will take you and set an alarm. Answer them, both addressed to you or a group you're in, but do not take external actions (unless < 2 minutes), or you'll end up being stuck in your inbox all day. Instead, add tasks to your to do list. You may even consider answering a very long email as a task of its own.

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Never comment on someone else's appearance.

Maybe she's not pregnant, just a little overweight. Maybe he's not tired, it's just his normal, neutral face. You want to know how she got this arm injury? She's probably tired of explaining it all the time. If they do want to talk about it, they will do it. Don't push them. It's also true if they went through hard situations, such as a recent death.

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Use email templates.

Also known as “text extension” or “standard responses”, they might exist directly inside your client or available as an external tool (chrome extensions, labs). Time savers! - Hello, Dear, … Thanks, Sincerely, … - Thank you for those information. I’ll go through it and get back to you soon. - Long paragraphs as well.

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Use emails labels to keep track of what's going on.

"Waiting people": you're waiting for people to answer an email you sent. Once a week (during your weekly review), politely ask again for an answer.

"Waiting action": something needs to be done before archiving or answering it. Link this label with your to do list.

"Waiting answer": do your best do keep this one empty. It's the one that will contain the emails you should have replied to, but you were to busy when you red them.

"Read later": informative emails you don't need to read right away but would like to read later.

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Use direct action verbs in your to-do-list.

General projects ideas such as "organize vacations" or "Write a book" will not help you. Instead, split it in very next actions: "call", "read", "write", "send an email to", "take", "search", "reply", ...

In other words, break "projects" into "achievable tasks".

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Take responsibility when something doesn't work.

It's pretty common to put the responsibility on someone else when a project or even a small task is blocked. Yes, it's important to delegate, but no, you should not blame someone else.

Ask yourself: do you really want this do be done? Then take actions and make it happen, by asking people again, asking someone else or doing it yourself.

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Time your tasks.

Before starting working on a task, evaluate the time it will take you to achieve it. It should never take you more than one hour. If it does, it means you haven't split it enough into smaller, achievable tasks. It will help you focus and will make it more exciting.

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Use labels and filters in your inbox.

Labels and filters are also a "0 inbox" solution that will help you not miss any important emails and stop postponing your answers by getting only what concerns you.

A filter is a rule that GMail will apply when you receive an email that match.

A label is a sort of a "folder" for your emails. You can also have sub-labels.

Use the "archive" and "apply a label" options together

With this solution, you can read what you receive in your priority inbox because it really concerns you and requires your attention, and if you want, you can read your other emails later by browsing your labels. Also note that it is possible to configure notifications on the Android GMail app based on the labels. It's probably also available on the iOs app.

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Know your relatives' good anectodes

Because it's not very well socially accepted to talk about what you're proud of, but it's still fascinating. Know the other's facts to share them and it will make both your friend and then audience feel comfortable and glad to hear it.

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Time yourself.

Before starting a task, evaluate the time it should take you to realize it. It should never take you more than one hour, or it means you haven't splited it enough into smallest tasks. Then turn on a timer or set an alarm. It will help you stay focused on what you're doing and make it more exciting.

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Shy people are smart too.

We naturally tend to listen more to charismatic, confident people. If you want to get a large, complete panel of information/feedback from your audience, make the effort to talk to shy people.