4 Ways to Increase Productivity

By Adam Kidan

Just do itSure, it’s a bit cliched at this point (thanks Nike!) but that’s also because it’s true. There isn’t a potion you can drink, a book you can read, a lifestyle that you can adopt that will get your life moving. Procrastination is something you must face head on. Tomorrow is today, so stop contemplating your next move and just start the task you need to do. And once you start, don’t stop until it’s done.

Schedule Your Day

A key to success is a schedule. Everyone’s is different, but they all serve the same purpose. Whether you schedule your to-do’s by the week, the day, or even the hour, having a clear cut list of tasks that must be completed is a sure fire way to keep you on track. You have no idea how much time you waste floundering around trying to figure out what needs to be done. Pro tip: tonight, sit down and create a list of things that, when completed, would count for you as a very productive day. And once a week, schedule out your entire life for the next six days. The Art of Manliness has a great post about the weekly planning session. I encourage you to check it out.

Figure out where you’re killing time

To increase productivity, find out where you’re wasting time. Facebook? Twitter? Email? The News? To get a good handle on these habits, download and install Time Tracker, a free browser extension for Chrome and Firefox. It will track how long you’ve been on a particular website– and calculate the percentage of your total time, too!

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Then Kill ItThat’s where Self Control comes in. A cleverly named app for those of us who may be lacking it, Self Control allows you to set a timer (say, eight hours) during which you can blacklist entire domains. Gmail is too much of a time sucker? Cut it off entirely, with only 30 minutes to check mid-day. Find yourself on Facebook? Blacklist it so you can’t check it until you get home. No matter how hard you try, you can’t undo the timer, either. And yes, that means a simple restart won’t stop it. The only way you can bypass it is by running some complicated scripts, but that would be defeating the purpose, wouldn’t it?

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