Productivity
February 22, 2024 | Productivity
Principles for Meetings
How to have Efficient and Effective meetings The following are a collection of ideas that I’ve collected over the years. These are principles (not rules). 1. Have a designated day for meetings If possible, and it usually is, have a designated day for meetings. This doesn’t mean you should now feel the compulsion to fill your Mondays with meetings. If the meeting isn’t necessary avoid it. Try lump any necessary meetings in this day to...
February 05, 2024 | Productivity
Your Inbox 0 Blue Print: Or how to sort, read and reply to emails in record time
Problem The average American spends about 30% of their work time on email, and only about 40% of their time on role specific tasks. There are many reasons for this somewhat shocking statistic. Some might say that spending this much time on email is just the new way to work, and that it’s inevitable. I disagree. The biggest reason people spend so much time on email is because of context switching. Context switching is the enemy...
August 14, 2022 | Productivity
How to use the Pomodoro Technique to unlock your productivity potential
I wrote this blog as a guest post for Eric Golban’s Blog. What is the Pomodoro Technique? The Pomodoro Technique is a time management technique invented by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980’s. “Pomodoro” is Tomato in Italian. It was named after the Tomato Kitchen timer that he used to time his work sessions. Each work session comprises of 25mins of working followed by a 5min break. What are the 5 steps in the Pomodoro...
June 06, 2021 | Productivity
How to do a weekly review
Most people are busy. We know this because they’ll tell us when we ask them. You know that whole thing where you say “How are you?” and the standard reply is “Busy.”. We all have busy days, but are we busy with the right things? We end up filling our days with favors and work for other people. How often is the work that we do on a daily basis actually contributing to our personal...
January 15, 2021 | Productivity
The Problem with todo lists
My first interaction with todo lists started when I was still in high school. All my teachers touted the idea of writing down our homework in a “homework diary”. As a millennial, the idea of writing stuff on paper wasn’t so attractive to me. Instead, I used Wunderlist for my homework. It was in Wunderlist that I first felt the glorious feeling of adding all my tasks to a todo list. This was great, I...
October 18, 2020 | Productivity
[Video] – Overview of my Notion Setup – no one does it like this
I’ve been using Notion since early 2019 (over a year now!). It has it’s pros and cons. One of the things that I love about it is the ability to create linked databases. In this video I talk about how I use linked databases to manage my Blog, my tasks and all my notes.
October 13, 2020 | Productivity
My Top Ten Productivity Tips
Over the years I have read hundreds of articles and books. I’ve been inspired by people like Thomas Frank, David Allen, Mat D’Avella and Ali Abdaal. And I have listened to thousands of podcasts and talks and this has given me a wealth of information on productivity tips. The aim of this article is hopefully to give you a few productivity tips that you can quickly apply to your life. I will briefly touch on...
August 12, 2020 | Productivity
My Daily Carry – 10 Apps that I use almost daily
This is going to be a working document showing all the apps that I use on a daily basis or just apps that I think are really cool. I thought it would be helpful to keep a list of all the apps that I consider part of my “daily carry”. These are apps that I use almost on a daily basis. This is going to be a working document, over time I will stop using...
April 07, 2020 | Productivity
My Personal Productivity System
## Introduction I’ve read a lot of productivity books over the years. I was never really a productivity enthusiast until I got a Job where my Boss was a productivity fanatic. And for good reason, the job wasn’t very cumbersome or hard. It just required really good time management and communication skills otherwise employees would be overwhelmed by a deluge of overwhelming requests, tasks and projects with no idea where to start. I was dropped...
March 28, 2020 | Productivity
Time Blocking
What is time blocking? Time Blocking or Time Boxing is a method used by people like Elon Musk and Bill Gates to get more out of their time. Quite simply, it is a method of allocating fixed amounts of time for tasks and integrating the resulting time blocks into your schedule or calendar. You might be thinking that this is a bold claim but I think it has some merit. Cal Newport estimates that he...
March 21, 2020 | Productivity
How to wake up earlier
15 December 2021 Update Hey there, it’s Ross. I wrote this article almost 2 years ago. It’s one of the most popular articles on my website. Since writing it I have fallen into the trap of hitting the dreaded snooze button again. But I am human, ok! 😀 What really helped me reforge the habit was putting my really loud alarm clock in a nearby room. That being said, a lot of the advice in...
November 18, 2019 | Productivity
The Mind Dump
Not so long ago I was sitting at my desk sipping a cup of coffee, trying to finish an assignment that I needed to submit that evening. Although, my brain was not where it should have been. I was worrying about a task that I needed to complete for work the next day. In comes the mind dump. I grabbed the nearest pen and piece of paper and wrote down everything that I needed to...
November 10, 2019 | Productivity
How To Boost Productivity With RescueTime
Overview: What is RescueTime Why RescueTime is better than other time trackers How RescueTime will boost your productivity How I use RescueTime Outline of RescueTime’s Features Billing and payment options Conclusion Download RescueTime What is RescueTime RescueTime is time tracking and productivity software that has been around since 2007. This article is going to focus on how to use RescueTime to improve your productivity. RescueTime has got this uncanny ability to show you where you...
October 29, 2019 | Productivity
Do One Thing Well
The problem with doing more is that you achieve less. In 1997 when Steve Jobs took over apple computer he ditched just about every research project that was currently in effect and put the entire company’s effort into one thing, the iPod. The iPod was, and is still massively successful. It turned Apple’s declining revenue around and saved the company that was heading into an irreparable decline. I’ve often observed people buying really cheap PC’s...
July 27, 2019 | Productivity
One Reason You Should Read Full-Length Books
Updated: 25-02-2024 A while ago I was talking to a friend, and he asked me how I can focus so intensely for such extended periods. This conversation got me thinking because I’ve never thought of myself as an intense thinker. Sure, I love thinking deep thoughts, but I’ve never thought of myself as someone that stands out from the crowd when it comes to deeply committed concentration. As I put more thought into it, I...
July 20, 2019 | Productivity
5 Ways to resist the urge to use your phone
I was leaving my house one day and I was doing the triple pat-down. You know, that thing you do when you check for your Keys, Wallet and Phone. That got me thinking, how often is our behaviour dictated by our phone? Have you ever experienced a ghost vibration? This is a phenomenon where it feels like your phone is vibrating, however, when you check your phone you realise that it was your mind playing...
May 15, 2019 | Productivity
Automatically sync items with a specific Todoist label to a single Evernote note
This article is going to show you how to sync items from Todoist to Evernote Automatically. James clear talks about how making a habit or task easy is one of the most important aspects when making sure we actually do it in his book: “Atomic Habits”. We all have multiple inboxes and sometimes we don’t even realise it. An inbox is anywhere that receives information. I talk a bit about this in “my top ten...
April 22, 2019 | Productivity
Why
Why do anything. Why do we do things? When asked this question it’s easy to give answers that seem obvious. Perhaps they are obvious and I sound stupid right now. Bare with me. Picture this, you’re going into a Job interview and your potential employer asks you what you’re expecting from the job and why you’ve decided to apply for a job at his company. What’s your answer? Is it something along the lines of...