| Some general advice that's helped me improve productivity since I started working for myself rather than for the man. 1) Don't "multi-task" ever. Make a plan and then do everything on the plan in serial and make sure you focus 100% effort at the task/project at hand. My immediate to-do list is only ever 2 items long. 2 items only because I am working on #1 and when I finish #1 I need to know that #2 is the next thing that needs to be done. When #2 becomes your focus you move it to #1 and add a new item. I do this at the macro level i.e my startup has 2 big projects to be shipped, I'm not going to put any effort/thought into anything that comes after, only what I need to finish right now. I also do it on the micro level, each feature has X user stories, I only have have 2 of these on my daily to-do list at any time. 2) Use timers like Pomodoro technique - I don't subscribe to the whole philosophy, I just enjoy the fact that a physical 25min timer gets me over the 'procrastination hump' for getting started. Keep working in 25 min chunks till said task at hand from (1) is done. 3) For pesky ongoing stuff add some rules to your life e.g I must publish a blog post every Wednesday (and I'm not going home till I do) 4) Whenever you finish a large project that might've taken you a few weeks to complete, give yourself some time to decompress and admire the work you've done. |
Basically it's this persons jobs to drive projects by saying to everyone else - 'Where the F is this? you said you'd have it done last week, don't do anything else until you've got this done. Oh you need help? let's jump in together and do it together now!'.
Only works in small teams and everybody considers their peers to be equal. I have an awesome cofounder who's a woman who nags me to do stuff sometimes. The more she nags the more gets done so I don't mind :)