“When you put off decisions, they pile up. And piles end up ignored, dealt with in haste, or thrown out.”

“Sometimes abandoning what you’re working on is the right move, even if you’ve put a lot of time into it. Don’t throw good time after bad work.”

“Interruption is the enemy of productivity…interruptions break up your work day into a bunch of work moments.”

“You can’t get meaningful things done when you’re always going start-STOP-start-STOP”

Getting into a flow state of productivity is like going into REM sleep – it doesn’t happen as soon as you fall asleep. It takes a certain amount of uninterrupted time for true productivity to take place.

When collaborating with others, use passive forms of communication such as e-mail whenever possible; this way, people can respond when it’s convenient for them instead of having to drop everything at unexpected times.

Meetings are toxic because:

  • they’re primarily about abstract concepts rather than real things
  • they get off-topic far too easily
  • the agendas are often so vague that no one is quite sure of the goal

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    Meetings are also black holes of productivity. If you have a one-hour meeting and you invite 10 people, you don’t just lose 1 hour of productivity, you lose 10 hours because each of those people lose an hour that they could have spent on actual work.

    If you NEED to have a meeting, at least follow these guidelines:

  • invite as few people as possible
  • set a timer and conclude the meeting as soon as it rings
  • have a clear agenda
  • begin with a specific problem
  • meet at the sight of the problem instead of a conference room
  • end with a solution and make someone responsible for implementing it

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    If it’s good enough to get the job done, do it. You can always turn “good enough” into “great” later.

    “Just because you’ve got a list of things to do doesn’t mean it’s not done.”

    “The way to build momentum is to finish one thing and then move on to the next. No one likes to work on an endless project with no finish line in sight.”

    “If you absolutely have to work on long-term projects, try to dedicate one day a week (or every two weeks) to small victories that generate enthusiasm.”

    “Long lists are guilt-trips. The longer the list of unfinished items, the worse you feel about it. And at a certain point, you just stop looking at it because it makes you feel bad.”

    Break your lists down into smaller lists. By breaking down a list of 25 items into five lists of five items, each item you finish completes 20% of the list instead of just 4%. Don’t you feel better?