From a33f2684abf1caf6d816e57dbfdc49acced1b6f0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Enda Phelan Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2022 14:56:24 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 1/5] wip --- .../my-journey-towards-getting-productive.md | 59 +++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 59 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/posts/my-journey-towards-getting-productive.md diff --git a/content/posts/my-journey-towards-getting-productive.md b/content/posts/my-journey-towards-getting-productive.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..27da21a1 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/my-journey-towards-getting-productive.md @@ -0,0 +1,59 @@ +--- +title: "Getting productive" +date: 2022-01-10T11:30:03+00:00 +weight: 1 +cover: + image: "https://i.imgur.com/IaI0TZD.jpg" +--- + +Up until relatively recently in my life I had been getting by with using my head as my primary store of all the long and short-term tasks I needed to do - both in work and personal environments. +This worked for me...up to a point. The number of responsibilites I increased in a fairly short period of time and my system lagged behind - I struggled to track everything I needed to do. I also had a number of goals I wanted to achieve outside of work which also complicated matters. +My head-based organisation system was no longer fit for purpose and I began struggling to keep track of all the things that I needed to do. + +So I began a journey towards getting organised and more productive. I tried out several methods - some that worked and others that didn't. + +## The things that worked for me + +### Fully utilizing my calendar + +I used to rarely use a calendar for tracking key dates and appointments. I didn't always require it as I did not have many important dates to track too far into the future and I was able to store them in my head. I did heavily use my calendar in work however as working in a remote distributed team heavily depends on it to operate smoothly. + +I began to use Google Calendar for my main appointments, shared it with my partner and vice-versa to have good visibility when needing to schedule appointments on behalf of both of us. I also shared my calendar to my work calendar to give myself a single view of my schedule. + +### Inbox Zero + +For my entire life once I had finished processing an email sent to me I did not do anything with it. I just left it in my inbox, unread and cluttering my screen even though I had no plans to ever interact with it again. +If I was not ready to process an email I opened I did one of two things: snooze it **or** mark it as unread. These are both very archaic ways of handling things. By snoozing it I was simply kicking the can down the road a little bit. By marking it as unread I was ensuring I would not lose the email as it gets pushed in with the thousands of other uncategorised emails still sitting in my inbox. + +I now follow an "Inbox Zero" approach to email management where I archive or delete emails I have finished with and use a label and filter-based workflow to categorise those emails that I need to do something with. + +Check out [this tutorial](https://youtu.be/9ql1CQfxWxQ) from Jeff Su on how to implement Inbox Zero into your own email. + +### Getting Things Done + +My biggest productivity struggle was that I did not have a coordinated system in place to capture and subsequently manage all of my tasks and projects. I tried a number of ways to capture tasks - from simple pen and paper to digital tools. These failed to be effective for so many reasons and I usually ended up falling back to using my head to do the work. + +I decided to give the [Getting Things Done](https://gettingthingsdone.com/what-is-gtd/) methodology after seeing it recommended on Twitter. +At a high level it involves five simple steps to organization: _Capture, Clarify, Organize, Review,_ and _Engage_. + +The book was easy to read and was extremely helpful. The great thing about it was I was able to slowly integrate the GTD methods into my life as I progressed through it - there was no need to reach the end before fully understanding it. + +### The Pomodoro Technique + +[The Pomodoro Technique](https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique) is something that I sometimes use, and even then I am not strict about it. +It is a very simple technique - set a 25 minute timer and focus on a single task, then take a five minute break. You are also supposed to block out other distractions but this is a little bit harder to do for me as our work instant messaging application frequently calls out for a response on a discussion where my input is necessary to allow the discussion to continue. +I also only call upon this technique when I need it as some days my work could be a little less defined or is broken up by meetings so it would make no sense to try to fit it in. +The main reason I use this technique when I do is to remind myself to take regular breaks. On days where I have not been using it I can find myself losing track of time while stuck on a task and going for far too long without getting up for a walk or stretch. + +### Todoist + +[Todoist](https://todoist.com/) is a feature-rich task management application that I have tried to use many times over the years but failed, simply because I did not have an organization system in place and the extent of how it could be useful was lost on me. I once again tried it out when I began to use GTD and thanks to its flexibility I was able to shape it to match the exact workflow that I was trying to create. It also has dozens of free integrations available such as Google Calendar two-way synchronization. I can safely say if I tried to use pen and paper or Google Tasks with the GTD methodology I would have failed to keep it up. There are probably other tools which work similarly to Todoist but this is the one for me. + +## Conclusion + +In school you learn the fundamentals of a broad spectrum of subjects that help prepare you for the next stage, be that higher education or work. In college you learn the fundamentals of your chosen discipline, along with some extras which are useful to land the job you want like interview preparation and how to build a CV. From then on the things you learn about are more or less on yourself, sometimes you might have support from your employer to enrol in a course or training (I have been lucky to have excellent support in this regard). + +Productivity and self-organization is not something we are all taught automatically as a life skill but I can imagine if I knew what I know today that staying on top of the mountain of work that I had in college would have been a lot easier. +It is probably because it is not such a straightforward thing to teach; different systems work well for different people and teaching one way could be counter-productive. + +This has been my productivity journey so far, and I am in no doubt that it's not yet close to the finish line. The key is to continuosly reflect on what works and what doesn't work. I will continue to refine my system to make it better, and I won't be afraid to stop using something if I find an alternative that works better for me. From 0d281170e989bae422502957e1f5b08674c13d10 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Enda Phelan Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2022 15:06:43 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 2/5] draft 1 --- .../my-journey-towards-getting-productive.md | 38 ++++++++++++------- 1 file changed, 24 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/posts/my-journey-towards-getting-productive.md b/content/posts/my-journey-towards-getting-productive.md index 27da21a1..c3359c09 100644 --- a/content/posts/my-journey-towards-getting-productive.md +++ b/content/posts/my-journey-towards-getting-productive.md @@ -6,30 +6,32 @@ cover: image: "https://i.imgur.com/IaI0TZD.jpg" --- -Up until relatively recently in my life I had been getting by with using my head as my primary store of all the long and short-term tasks I needed to do - both in work and personal environments. -This worked for me...up to a point. The number of responsibilites I increased in a fairly short period of time and my system lagged behind - I struggled to track everything I needed to do. I also had a number of goals I wanted to achieve outside of work which also complicated matters. -My head-based organisation system was no longer fit for purpose and I began struggling to keep track of all the things that I needed to do. +Up until relatively recently in my life I had been getting by with using my head as my primary store of all the long and short-term tasks I needed to do - both in work and outside of it. +After a certain threshold this primitive method began to struggle as the number of things I needed to do in a pretty short period. My system lagged behind and I struggled to keep track and complete everything that I needed to do. +I reached a conclusion that my head-based organisational system was no longer fit for purpose and I needed to do something about it. -So I began a journey towards getting organised and more productive. I tried out several methods - some that worked and others that didn't. +And so I began a journey towards getting more organised and setting up workflows which would enable me to become more productive. I tried out several methods and tools - some worked and many others did not. This is not a definitive list of what will work and what won't work, rather it is a reflection on what techniques I have started to employ to keep organized, focused and productive. -## The things that worked for me +## Fully utilizing my calendar -### Fully utilizing my calendar +It used to be a very rare occurence when I needed to put something into my calendar. This suited me fine at the time - I didn't really *need* to use it as I did not have that many that many appointments or dates to save so my head was sufficiently capable of remembering. +I did heavily use my calendar in work however as working in a remote distributed team heavily depends on it to operate smoothly. -I used to rarely use a calendar for tracking key dates and appointments. I didn't always require it as I did not have many important dates to track too far into the future and I was able to store them in my head. I did heavily use my calendar in work however as working in a remote distributed team heavily depends on it to operate smoothly. +As the need increased I began to use Google Calendar more and more. I shared it with my partner and vice-versa so we both have good visibility when needing to schedule appointments on behalf of both of us. I also shared my personal calendar with my work calendar to give myself a single view of my full schedule. -I began to use Google Calendar for my main appointments, shared it with my partner and vice-versa to have good visibility when needing to schedule appointments on behalf of both of us. I also shared my calendar to my work calendar to give myself a single view of my schedule. +## Inbox Zero -### Inbox Zero +I've been a GMail user since it was still invite-only in 2006. In all that time once I had finished processing an email received to my inbox sent I did not do anything with it. I just left it in my inbox, unread and cluttering my screen even though I had no plans to ever interact with it again. It would eventually go away, pushed down the screen by a number of other emails I will never read again. -For my entire life once I had finished processing an email sent to me I did not do anything with it. I just left it in my inbox, unread and cluttering my screen even though I had no plans to ever interact with it again. -If I was not ready to process an email I opened I did one of two things: snooze it **or** mark it as unread. These are both very archaic ways of handling things. By snoozing it I was simply kicking the can down the road a little bit. By marking it as unread I was ensuring I would not lose the email as it gets pushed in with the thousands of other uncategorised emails still sitting in my inbox. +If I was not ready to process an email I opened I did one of two things: snooze it **or** mark it as unread. I see now that these are both very archaic ways of handling things. +By snoozing it I was simply kicking the can down the road a little bit, to be reminded on some atribrary date which often has no relationship to when I need to action it. +By marking it as unread I was ensuring I would forget about the email as it gets pushed in with the thousands of other uncategorised emails still sitting in my inbox. I now follow an "Inbox Zero" approach to email management where I archive or delete emails I have finished with and use a label and filter-based workflow to categorise those emails that I need to do something with. Check out [this tutorial](https://youtu.be/9ql1CQfxWxQ) from Jeff Su on how to implement Inbox Zero into your own email. -### Getting Things Done +## Getting Things Done My biggest productivity struggle was that I did not have a coordinated system in place to capture and subsequently manage all of my tasks and projects. I tried a number of ways to capture tasks - from simple pen and paper to digital tools. These failed to be effective for so many reasons and I usually ended up falling back to using my head to do the work. @@ -38,17 +40,25 @@ At a high level it involves five simple steps to organization: _Capture, Clarify The book was easy to read and was extremely helpful. The great thing about it was I was able to slowly integrate the GTD methods into my life as I progressed through it - there was no need to reach the end before fully understanding it. -### The Pomodoro Technique +## The Pomodoro Technique [The Pomodoro Technique](https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique) is something that I sometimes use, and even then I am not strict about it. It is a very simple technique - set a 25 minute timer and focus on a single task, then take a five minute break. You are also supposed to block out other distractions but this is a little bit harder to do for me as our work instant messaging application frequently calls out for a response on a discussion where my input is necessary to allow the discussion to continue. I also only call upon this technique when I need it as some days my work could be a little less defined or is broken up by meetings so it would make no sense to try to fit it in. The main reason I use this technique when I do is to remind myself to take regular breaks. On days where I have not been using it I can find myself losing track of time while stuck on a task and going for far too long without getting up for a walk or stretch. -### Todoist +## Todoist [Todoist](https://todoist.com/) is a feature-rich task management application that I have tried to use many times over the years but failed, simply because I did not have an organization system in place and the extent of how it could be useful was lost on me. I once again tried it out when I began to use GTD and thanks to its flexibility I was able to shape it to match the exact workflow that I was trying to create. It also has dozens of free integrations available such as Google Calendar two-way synchronization. I can safely say if I tried to use pen and paper or Google Tasks with the GTD methodology I would have failed to keep it up. There are probably other tools which work similarly to Todoist but this is the one for me. +## Closing distractions + +How often do you check your emails? Maybe you get a pop-up whenever one comes in? Or if you're like me your eyes frequently shoot up to the pinned email tab to see if it has changed from **Inbox** to **Inbox (1)**. I cannot leave something unread when I know it's there, so I will rip myself away from what I am doing and read the email. 90% of the time it's not something I need to action immediately, if at all yet I've still interrrupted myself to go and read it and must refocus myself on what I was doing before..something which takes some time. +So what's the solution? Recently I have started to close my email tab and check it at fixed times throughout the day. I get notified by my calendar so I know it's time to check, otherwise they are out of sight and out of mind. + +Instant messaging services like Slack, Microsoft Teams are used heavily by most companies these days. They have a benefit of being able to engage in a quicker and less formal conversation than you get with email. You are always just a quick message away from someone who needs you and that can be fantastic tool for collaboration in a distributed team. What is a positive however can also be viewed as a negative and the problem is that you are always just a message away from someone. It can be very, very hard to remain focused on something when your messaging app frequently notifies you both visually and audibly that you have a message. +I used to leave my messaging app always open, sometimes even dedicating my secondary monitor to it so that I would be highly available. These days, I close my chat application when the thing that I am doing requires my focus (like this blog post) and I have it open in between focus windows. + ## Conclusion In school you learn the fundamentals of a broad spectrum of subjects that help prepare you for the next stage, be that higher education or work. In college you learn the fundamentals of your chosen discipline, along with some extras which are useful to land the job you want like interview preparation and how to build a CV. From then on the things you learn about are more or less on yourself, sometimes you might have support from your employer to enrol in a course or training (I have been lucky to have excellent support in this regard). From 8336cb89920e26ab21bee8505a20776a94a76591 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Enda Phelan Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2022 15:10:55 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 3/5] Add productivity blog post --- content/posts/getting-productive.md | 77 +++++++++++++++++++ .../my-journey-towards-getting-productive.md | 69 ----------------- 2 files changed, 77 insertions(+), 69 deletions(-) create mode 100644 content/posts/getting-productive.md delete mode 100644 content/posts/my-journey-towards-getting-productive.md diff --git a/content/posts/getting-productive.md b/content/posts/getting-productive.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..abbd38f9 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/getting-productive.md @@ -0,0 +1,77 @@ +--- +title: "Getting productive" +date: 2022-03-25T11:30:03+00:00 +weight: 1 +cover: + image: "https://i.imgur.com/l0kphcM.png" +--- + +The past couple of years have been my busiest ever, both in work and in my personal life. In two years of work I went from a junior to a senior software engineer, and with that came a raft of new responsibilities. In the same two years I had some big life events which required long term planning like which I had never needed before. + +I used to cope just fine using my head to keep track of both the short and long term tasks and goals - because there weren't that many happening at the same time. Suddenly, and before I even realized, this system had become no longer fit for purpose and it was unable to cope with my requirements. 2021 for me became a year of discovering, experimenting and adopting different methods that would enable me primarily to become more organized, which would in turn affect productivity. + +The following list is not supposed to be any kind of ultimate solution that is guaranteed to work for you. These are simply the things that I found that have helped me get closer to fulfilling my objective. + +## Maximizing calendar usage + +I used to occasionally put something in my calendar. Not because I needed to, I just liked the idea of it. My approach to calendar entry was not very systematic anyway so it just never felt very useful to me. As I got busier I began adding everything to my calendar otherwise I'd just end up forgetting things or having to retrieve the information from an email, text or WhatsApp message. + +I realized that I could do better. I created custom calendars to segment events by responsibilty. One of my favourites is my **Events of interest** calendar. When I learn about an event I am interested but cannot commit to attending until closer to the time then it gets added to **Events of interest**, keeping my main calendar as a hard lanscape of my schedule. My partner and I have both shared our calendars with each other for maximum visibility into each other's schedule. This has proved extremely useful as we now both have the autonomy of booking appointments while away from each other and not needing to worry about double bookings. + +Finally, I made sure to shares my personal calendar with my work calendar. Given that I spend almost 1/3 of my waking hours at work it makes sense to be able to view my *complete* schedule from a single calendar view. + +## Inbox Zero + +I've been a Gmail user since it was still invite-only in 2006. In all of those years once I opened a new email and "processed" I did not do anything to tidy it up. I just left it in my inbox, unread and cluttering my screen even though I had no plans to ever interact with it again. Slowly but surely my processed emails would make their way down my inbox, and eventually they would leave my sight forever. + +If I was not ready to process an email I opened I did one of two things: snooze it **or** mark it as unread. + +* By snoozing it I was simply handing the problem to Future Me to take care of. Usually I did not have a specific date/time that this email needed to be looked at so I'd pick something like `Today at 18:00` (deal with it after work) or `Monday at 09:00` (it's Friday, I'm in no mood for this now!). It was very unlikely that I would be in a position to process the email at these times either. +* By marking it as unread I was ensuring that I would not forget about this email by making it appear as though I had not yet read it. This just created more work for me as I had both unread unread emails and read unread emails mixed together. + +Upon reflection, I see now that this approach to email processing is pretty archaic and also very inefficient, yet it's probably what > 99% of us do as it's just how most email systems are set up by default. + +I now follow an "Inbox Zero" approach to managing my emails. I archive or even delete emails that I have completely finished with. For emails that I need to do something with but not straight away I now and use a label and filter-based workflow to place the emails into three clear categories: *Action Items*, *Waiting For* and *Read/Review*. These categories are also a feature of the Getting Things Done productivity system with I will talk about next. + +I followed this [Inbox Zero Tutorial](https://youtu.be/9ql1CQfxWxQ) by Jeff Su to implement an Inbox Zero workflow into both my work and personal gmail accounts. I'm a big fan of Jeff's content - he gives great productivity tips and I recommend you check out the rest of his videos. + +## Getting Things Done + +My biggest productivity struggle was that I did not have a coordinated system in place to capture and subsequently manage all of my tasks and projects. I tried a number of ways to capture tasks - from simple pen and paper to using popular digital tools. These failed to be effective for so many reasons and I usually ended up falling back to using my head to bear the load of figuring out everything that I needed to do. + +I decided to give the [Getting Things Done](https://gettingthingsdone.com/what-is-gtd/) methodology a go after seeing it recommended on Twitter. +At a high level it involves five simple steps to organization: _Capture, Clarify, Organize, Review,_ and _Engage_. + +The book was actually a light and enjoyable read and also extremely helpful. The great thing about it was I was able to slowly integrate the GTD methods into my life as I progressed through it - there was no need to reach the end before fully understanding it. You could start to use GTD without reading the book, but in my opinion it teaches you so much more in depth about the system than you would otherwise get. + +I now finally have a single system that is easy to use to track the multiple projects that I am working on at the same time. I don't forget about stuff like I used to because it's always there in front of me in my **Next Actions** list. + +## Todoist + +[Todoist](https://todoist.com/) is a feature-rich task management application that I have tried to use many times over the years but failed, simply because I did not have an organization system in place and I was unable to utilize the true extent of its power. I once again tried it out when I began using Getting Things Done. Thanks to its flexibility I was able to shape it to match the exact workflow that I was trying to create. It also has dozens of free integrations available such as Google Calendar two-way synchronization. I can safely say that if I tried to use pen and paper or Google Tasks with the GTD methodology I would have failed to keep it up. + +## The Pomodoro Technique + +[The Pomodoro Technique](https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique) is something that I sometimes use, and even then I am not strict about it. +It is a very simple technique - set a 25 minute timer and focus on a single task, then take a five minute break. +I only call upon this technique when I need to have strong focus as my workload on some days may be a little less defined or be broken up with meetings where it would make little sense to use this. +Other than the focus blocks this encourages, I also like to use this technique to remind myself to take frequent short breaks. On days where I don't use it I can find myself losing track of time while stuck on something and I go far too long without getting up for a walk or stretch. + +## Closing distractions + +How often do you check your emails? Maybe you get a pop-up whenever one comes in? Or if you're like me your eyes frequently shoot up to the pinned email tab to see if it has changed from **Inbox** to **Inbox (1)**. I cannot leave something unread when I know it's there, so I will rip myself away from what I am doing and read the email. 90% of the time it's not something I need to action immediately, if at all. Yet I've still interrrupted myself to go and read it and now must try to refocus myself on what I had been doing which takes time. + +So what's the solution? Recently I have started to close my email tab and check it at fixed times throughout the day. I get notified by my calendar when it's time to check, otherwise they are out of sight and out of mind. + +Instant messaging services like Slack, Microsoft Teams are used heavily by most companies these days. They do give the benefit of enabling people to converse instantly and in and less formal structure than you tend to get with email. You are always just a quick message away from someone who needs you and that can be fantastic tool for collaboration in a distributed team. +What is a positive however can also be viewed as a negative and the problem is that you are always just a message away from someone. It can be very, very hard to keep focused on something when your messaging app frequently notifies you both visually and audibly when you have a message. + +I used to leave my messaging app always open, sometimes even dedicating my secondary monitor to it so that I would be highly available. These days, I close my chat application when the thing that I am doing requires my focus (like this blog post) and I have it open in between my "focus windows". + +## Conclusion + +In school you learn the fundamentals in a broad spectrum of subjects that help prepare you for the next stage in your life, be that further education or in the workplace. In college/university you learn the fundamentals of your chosen discipline, along with some extras which are useful to land the job you want like interview preparation and how to write a CV. From then on the things you learn about are more or less down to yourself but there is no predetermined path created for you like you have had while in formal education. + +Productivity and how to be organized is not something we are all taught as a life skill. I imagine that if had acquired even some of the skills, techniques and methodologies from this blog post earlier in my life then I would have been able to perform better, especially in college and in my first few years as a software engineer. + +This has been my productivity journey so far, and I am in no doubt that it's not yet close to the finish line. The key is to continuosly reflect on what works and what doesn't work for you. I will continue to refine my system to make it better, and I won't be afraid to stop using something if I find an alternative that works better for me. diff --git a/content/posts/my-journey-towards-getting-productive.md b/content/posts/my-journey-towards-getting-productive.md deleted file mode 100644 index c3359c09..00000000 --- a/content/posts/my-journey-towards-getting-productive.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,69 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: "Getting productive" -date: 2022-01-10T11:30:03+00:00 -weight: 1 -cover: - image: "https://i.imgur.com/IaI0TZD.jpg" ---- - -Up until relatively recently in my life I had been getting by with using my head as my primary store of all the long and short-term tasks I needed to do - both in work and outside of it. -After a certain threshold this primitive method began to struggle as the number of things I needed to do in a pretty short period. My system lagged behind and I struggled to keep track and complete everything that I needed to do. -I reached a conclusion that my head-based organisational system was no longer fit for purpose and I needed to do something about it. - -And so I began a journey towards getting more organised and setting up workflows which would enable me to become more productive. I tried out several methods and tools - some worked and many others did not. This is not a definitive list of what will work and what won't work, rather it is a reflection on what techniques I have started to employ to keep organized, focused and productive. - -## Fully utilizing my calendar - -It used to be a very rare occurence when I needed to put something into my calendar. This suited me fine at the time - I didn't really *need* to use it as I did not have that many that many appointments or dates to save so my head was sufficiently capable of remembering. -I did heavily use my calendar in work however as working in a remote distributed team heavily depends on it to operate smoothly. - -As the need increased I began to use Google Calendar more and more. I shared it with my partner and vice-versa so we both have good visibility when needing to schedule appointments on behalf of both of us. I also shared my personal calendar with my work calendar to give myself a single view of my full schedule. - -## Inbox Zero - -I've been a GMail user since it was still invite-only in 2006. In all that time once I had finished processing an email received to my inbox sent I did not do anything with it. I just left it in my inbox, unread and cluttering my screen even though I had no plans to ever interact with it again. It would eventually go away, pushed down the screen by a number of other emails I will never read again. - -If I was not ready to process an email I opened I did one of two things: snooze it **or** mark it as unread. I see now that these are both very archaic ways of handling things. -By snoozing it I was simply kicking the can down the road a little bit, to be reminded on some atribrary date which often has no relationship to when I need to action it. -By marking it as unread I was ensuring I would forget about the email as it gets pushed in with the thousands of other uncategorised emails still sitting in my inbox. - -I now follow an "Inbox Zero" approach to email management where I archive or delete emails I have finished with and use a label and filter-based workflow to categorise those emails that I need to do something with. - -Check out [this tutorial](https://youtu.be/9ql1CQfxWxQ) from Jeff Su on how to implement Inbox Zero into your own email. - -## Getting Things Done - -My biggest productivity struggle was that I did not have a coordinated system in place to capture and subsequently manage all of my tasks and projects. I tried a number of ways to capture tasks - from simple pen and paper to digital tools. These failed to be effective for so many reasons and I usually ended up falling back to using my head to do the work. - -I decided to give the [Getting Things Done](https://gettingthingsdone.com/what-is-gtd/) methodology after seeing it recommended on Twitter. -At a high level it involves five simple steps to organization: _Capture, Clarify, Organize, Review,_ and _Engage_. - -The book was easy to read and was extremely helpful. The great thing about it was I was able to slowly integrate the GTD methods into my life as I progressed through it - there was no need to reach the end before fully understanding it. - -## The Pomodoro Technique - -[The Pomodoro Technique](https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique) is something that I sometimes use, and even then I am not strict about it. -It is a very simple technique - set a 25 minute timer and focus on a single task, then take a five minute break. You are also supposed to block out other distractions but this is a little bit harder to do for me as our work instant messaging application frequently calls out for a response on a discussion where my input is necessary to allow the discussion to continue. -I also only call upon this technique when I need it as some days my work could be a little less defined or is broken up by meetings so it would make no sense to try to fit it in. -The main reason I use this technique when I do is to remind myself to take regular breaks. On days where I have not been using it I can find myself losing track of time while stuck on a task and going for far too long without getting up for a walk or stretch. - -## Todoist - -[Todoist](https://todoist.com/) is a feature-rich task management application that I have tried to use many times over the years but failed, simply because I did not have an organization system in place and the extent of how it could be useful was lost on me. I once again tried it out when I began to use GTD and thanks to its flexibility I was able to shape it to match the exact workflow that I was trying to create. It also has dozens of free integrations available such as Google Calendar two-way synchronization. I can safely say if I tried to use pen and paper or Google Tasks with the GTD methodology I would have failed to keep it up. There are probably other tools which work similarly to Todoist but this is the one for me. - -## Closing distractions - -How often do you check your emails? Maybe you get a pop-up whenever one comes in? Or if you're like me your eyes frequently shoot up to the pinned email tab to see if it has changed from **Inbox** to **Inbox (1)**. I cannot leave something unread when I know it's there, so I will rip myself away from what I am doing and read the email. 90% of the time it's not something I need to action immediately, if at all yet I've still interrrupted myself to go and read it and must refocus myself on what I was doing before..something which takes some time. -So what's the solution? Recently I have started to close my email tab and check it at fixed times throughout the day. I get notified by my calendar so I know it's time to check, otherwise they are out of sight and out of mind. - -Instant messaging services like Slack, Microsoft Teams are used heavily by most companies these days. They have a benefit of being able to engage in a quicker and less formal conversation than you get with email. You are always just a quick message away from someone who needs you and that can be fantastic tool for collaboration in a distributed team. What is a positive however can also be viewed as a negative and the problem is that you are always just a message away from someone. It can be very, very hard to remain focused on something when your messaging app frequently notifies you both visually and audibly that you have a message. -I used to leave my messaging app always open, sometimes even dedicating my secondary monitor to it so that I would be highly available. These days, I close my chat application when the thing that I am doing requires my focus (like this blog post) and I have it open in between focus windows. - -## Conclusion - -In school you learn the fundamentals of a broad spectrum of subjects that help prepare you for the next stage, be that higher education or work. In college you learn the fundamentals of your chosen discipline, along with some extras which are useful to land the job you want like interview preparation and how to build a CV. From then on the things you learn about are more or less on yourself, sometimes you might have support from your employer to enrol in a course or training (I have been lucky to have excellent support in this regard). - -Productivity and self-organization is not something we are all taught automatically as a life skill but I can imagine if I knew what I know today that staying on top of the mountain of work that I had in college would have been a lot easier. -It is probably because it is not such a straightforward thing to teach; different systems work well for different people and teaching one way could be counter-productive. - -This has been my productivity journey so far, and I am in no doubt that it's not yet close to the finish line. The key is to continuosly reflect on what works and what doesn't work. I will continue to refine my system to make it better, and I won't be afraid to stop using something if I find an alternative that works better for me. From 897ac7c84e6333ff37ffcbfc190311add00e8c1a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Enda Phelan Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2022 14:20:23 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 4/5] add some emojis --- content/posts/getting-productive.md | 12 ++++++------ 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/posts/getting-productive.md b/content/posts/getting-productive.md index abbd38f9..9f543347 100644 --- a/content/posts/getting-productive.md +++ b/content/posts/getting-productive.md @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ I used to cope just fine using my head to keep track of both the short and long The following list is not supposed to be any kind of ultimate solution that is guaranteed to work for you. These are simply the things that I found that have helped me get closer to fulfilling my objective. -## Maximizing calendar usage +## Maximizing calendar usage 📅 I used to occasionally put something in my calendar. Not because I needed to, I just liked the idea of it. My approach to calendar entry was not very systematic anyway so it just never felt very useful to me. As I got busier I began adding everything to my calendar otherwise I'd just end up forgetting things or having to retrieve the information from an email, text or WhatsApp message. @@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ I realized that I could do better. I created custom calendars to segment events Finally, I made sure to shares my personal calendar with my work calendar. Given that I spend almost 1/3 of my waking hours at work it makes sense to be able to view my *complete* schedule from a single calendar view. -## Inbox Zero +## Inbox Zero 📧 I've been a Gmail user since it was still invite-only in 2006. In all of those years once I opened a new email and "processed" I did not do anything to tidy it up. I just left it in my inbox, unread and cluttering my screen even though I had no plans to ever interact with it again. Slowly but surely my processed emails would make their way down my inbox, and eventually they would leave my sight forever. @@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ I now follow an "Inbox Zero" approach to managing my emails. I archive or even d I followed this [Inbox Zero Tutorial](https://youtu.be/9ql1CQfxWxQ) by Jeff Su to implement an Inbox Zero workflow into both my work and personal gmail accounts. I'm a big fan of Jeff's content - he gives great productivity tips and I recommend you check out the rest of his videos. -## Getting Things Done +## Getting Things Done ✅✅✅ My biggest productivity struggle was that I did not have a coordinated system in place to capture and subsequently manage all of my tasks and projects. I tried a number of ways to capture tasks - from simple pen and paper to using popular digital tools. These failed to be effective for so many reasons and I usually ended up falling back to using my head to bear the load of figuring out everything that I needed to do. @@ -46,18 +46,18 @@ The book was actually a light and enjoyable read and also extremely helpful. The I now finally have a single system that is easy to use to track the multiple projects that I am working on at the same time. I don't forget about stuff like I used to because it's always there in front of me in my **Next Actions** list. -## Todoist +## Todoist 🗒️ [Todoist](https://todoist.com/) is a feature-rich task management application that I have tried to use many times over the years but failed, simply because I did not have an organization system in place and I was unable to utilize the true extent of its power. I once again tried it out when I began using Getting Things Done. Thanks to its flexibility I was able to shape it to match the exact workflow that I was trying to create. It also has dozens of free integrations available such as Google Calendar two-way synchronization. I can safely say that if I tried to use pen and paper or Google Tasks with the GTD methodology I would have failed to keep it up. -## The Pomodoro Technique +## The Pomodoro Technique 🍅 [The Pomodoro Technique](https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique) is something that I sometimes use, and even then I am not strict about it. It is a very simple technique - set a 25 minute timer and focus on a single task, then take a five minute break. I only call upon this technique when I need to have strong focus as my workload on some days may be a little less defined or be broken up with meetings where it would make little sense to use this. Other than the focus blocks this encourages, I also like to use this technique to remind myself to take frequent short breaks. On days where I don't use it I can find myself losing track of time while stuck on something and I go far too long without getting up for a walk or stretch. -## Closing distractions +## Closing distractions ✋ How often do you check your emails? Maybe you get a pop-up whenever one comes in? Or if you're like me your eyes frequently shoot up to the pinned email tab to see if it has changed from **Inbox** to **Inbox (1)**. I cannot leave something unread when I know it's there, so I will rip myself away from what I am doing and read the email. 90% of the time it's not something I need to action immediately, if at all. Yet I've still interrrupted myself to go and read it and now must try to refocus myself on what I had been doing which takes time. From cc99c0fe7c6dd158bf49ee0f9d73bf3bdac1e485 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Enda Phelan Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2022 14:22:09 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 5/5] change text --- content/posts/getting-productive.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/content/posts/getting-productive.md b/content/posts/getting-productive.md index 9f543347..f97532df 100644 --- a/content/posts/getting-productive.md +++ b/content/posts/getting-productive.md @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ cover: The past couple of years have been my busiest ever, both in work and in my personal life. In two years of work I went from a junior to a senior software engineer, and with that came a raft of new responsibilities. In the same two years I had some big life events which required long term planning like which I had never needed before. -I used to cope just fine using my head to keep track of both the short and long term tasks and goals - because there weren't that many happening at the same time. Suddenly, and before I even realized, this system had become no longer fit for purpose and it was unable to cope with my requirements. 2021 for me became a year of discovering, experimenting and adopting different methods that would enable me primarily to become more organized, which would in turn affect productivity. +I used to cope just fine using my head to keep track of both the short and long term tasks and goals - because there weren't that many happening at the same time. Suddenly, and before I even realized, this system had become no longer fit for purpose and it was unable to cope with my requirements. 2021 for me became a year of discovering, experimenting and adopting different methods that would enable me primarily to become more organized, which would in turn enhance productivity. The following list is not supposed to be any kind of ultimate solution that is guaranteed to work for you. These are simply the things that I found that have helped me get closer to fulfilling my objective.