Productivity Tip 2 – Uninterrupted Work Time

The most productive way to work to just concentrate on one thing and do it, Multi-tasking makes you fill efficient (look at how many things I'm doing in the same time) but it's a productivity killer – you spend a little bit of time re-orienting yourself every time you switch tasks, and that time adds up - you could get things done faster if you did them sequentially.

Also, in today’s connected world, when you’re flooded with e-mail, phone calls and instant messages in addition to the traditional co-worker or boss stopping by and breaking your concentration it’s a wonder anyone manages to focus on work tasks at all.

But you can fight back against all those interruptions and regain your productivity - just try it, turn off your cell-phone, unplug your phone, close your e-mail and instant messenger program, turn off any TV or radio in the room and if you have to work in a noisy environment use a good noise cancellation earphones.

Now just start working, pick a task and do it.

You’ll be surprised how much you can get done in just one or two hours of uninterrupted, non-multitasking work time.

You’ll also be surprised how hard it is to just work to do your tasks without being constantly interrupted - that is why uninterrupted work time is most productive with the simple task list technique described in productivity tip #1.

The best way to do this is to schedule your uninterrupted work time – so people know you’ll be unavailable, then turn off all distraction and set a countdown timer for whatever time you allocated (one or two hours at a time works best), when the timer rings you can turn all your communication equipment back on and rejoin civilization.

yaTimer, my time tracking application, is obviously ideal for this, it even let you log your work time to whatever task you work on while the countdown is running, but this will work equally well with any other timer software, your watch or even a mechanical timer.

posted @ Friday, October 26, 2007 12:20 AM

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