Contribute Fridays: How Do You Stay Productive?
How do you stay productive throughout the day? Do you take a lot of breaks? Force yourself not to check emails? (I’ve tried that but doesn’t work 
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About the author
Amber Weinberg specializes in clean and semantic XHTML, CSS and WordPress development. She has over 10 years of coding experience and is pretty cool to work with. Amber is available for freelance work, so why not hire her for your next project?
Dog walks. That’s they key. I take long walks with the dog in the morning and in the afternoon. Clears the senses and helps me focus and doing productive things.
I suppose it helps if you have a dog.
My favorite topic. I do take a lot of “Breaks” because I find that it makes the 4-6 hours of work I do, highly productive. I employ a million tricks to stay productive throughout the day, here are a bunch:
1. I walk my dogs twice per day, morning and evening. I’m not a “tech” guy and being indoors and online for long periods of time would drive me crazy. The fresh air and the fact that I am moving and getting my blood flowing increases my productivity in all areas
2. I write for 1-2 hours early in the morning when everything is quiet
3. I am a meditator and I find that it enhances all areas of my life, including productivity.
4. I have all kinds of accountability tools in place. I hold monthly challenges and I post the results daily on FB fan page including pictures to hold myself accountable to the “fans”. I am part of 2 mastermind groups and I don’t want to look like the one douche who doesn’t get his shit done. Accountability is a big one for me.
5. I work in blocks of 2-3 hours max. The quality of my work starts to decrease at 3 hours. I prefer to have my work knocked out early in the day and spend the afternoons and evenings with friends and fam.
6. I eat 100% raw food, well this month I am doing it as a challenge. I have found that it keeps my mind “on” and razor sharp throughout the day.
I guess I try to live a balanced life as best I can. The times in my life where I “worked” long hours, were not very enjoyable for me and I don’t think the quality of the work I was doing was that great.
Amber, what are some of the tips/tricks you use? I know you work a ton and are highly productive, I would love to see what “a day in the life” looks like
The main thing for me is to just get rolling. I check my email way too often, but am trying to cut that down. If I can have 2 hours of uninterrupted coding time in a work day, that’s a good day :0
1) Wake up early. Don’t let the fact that you’re a freelancer let you sleep in. I’m always most productive in the morning… Sometimes even before coffee!
2) Things for mac. This is a lifesaver.
See I can’t wake up early ever – 8:30-9:00 is the earliest I can get this brain up :0
I am super productive early in the mornings. I get up at 5am and I can work focused for 3 hours with minimal noise. I can double my productivity during this period. Put some motivational music that jives you up first thing, settle at your computer with hot beverage and focus. Works wonders for me.
A couple of things that helps me to stay productive:
1) Only check emails every two hours, unless there’s a current crisis going on.
2) Define certain tasks for certain parts of the day (e.g. admin tasks, timelines, estimates 8AM-10AM, project work 10AM-2PM, etc)
3) Lists of things to do, so I can go through and check each off.
4) Remember to breathe:)
What I usually do is play some relaxing music in the background or a podcast. I’m not sure why, but podcasts really get my going when I have to start working.
Hmmm, I was expecting to see what you do to boost your productivity here as well…
Anyways. I need to completely switch off the outside world. No e-mails, IM, phone, music, people. If I ever get to work in a cleanroom laboratory environment I will be the most productive person in the world.
LOL My productivity feels like it’s stinking lately, which is why I posted this for your ideas T_T…it might just be me, a lot of my clients last month pushed around their projects on my schedule, so I have nothing on my schedule for this month but a ton of open work so it makes me feel all scatterbrained >_<
All productivity books can be summarized in 11 words: One thing at a time. Most important thing first. Start now. (via lifehacker.com)