Tips for Becoming More Productive

Lifehack.org recently had a post on "Eccentric Tips for Becoming Productive" and most of their tips were very useful, here we have added some of our own thoughts about their tips and we hope that this will also help to improve your productivity.

1. Keep Things Offline

The first Lifehack tip was to keep things offline and this is probably the one I have a few mixed feelings about. They are definitely against online to-do lists, which may be a point since as they say, you can too easily close your to-do list website but whereas they say to simply use a paper and pen to-do list, to-do list software that sits on your computer and opens automatically every day I believe can actually be more useful as paper can also quite easily get lost (especially if you have a disorganized desk with hundreds of papers on it anyway).

2. Shorten Your Task Lists

This is definitely a point to consider. The longer your task list is and the more detailed the less likely you are to get through it, as they say. Try to keep your tasks short and don't go into every single detail of what you should be doing. Your task list is really just a reminder of things, not an instruction manual on how to do it.

3. Stay Minimalist

Although I agree with the concept behind this tip for productivity, I think perhaps I see it in a slightly different light to what they mentioned on their blog. Staying minimalist can definitely help to improve your productivity - by keeping only the items you need in your office to make things easier to find, and also minimizing the number of additional services you use to those you really need in order to have less to do and keep better track of what is happening in each of these.

4. Time Yourself

Another excellent tip from Lifehack is to time yourself on your tasks. By timing yourself you can often improve your productivity by getting things done quicker and realizing how much time you are really spending on activities that could be minimized.

5. Use Applications, Don't Let Them Use You

Their final tip on productivity was to use applications and not let them use you and as we have discussed in previous posts on taming the email monster, it is important that you learn to use tools such as email, RSS and other applications to make your life more productive and don't let them become a big time waster, eating away at time that should be spent on more productive activities.

In general we feel that their tips are really good for improving your productivity, though we do not fully agree with all of them or see them in the same way. We do agree that you should shorten your task lists, stay minimalist, time yourself and use applications to improve your productivity.