Go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=93&v=REFh5TMOoS0
and watch the presentation A More Human Approach to Productivity.
His book is presented at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW2F4dOCC3U . You can choose this video instead.
Present your thoughts on the productivity project and share with us your personal experiences.
and watch the presentation A More Human Approach to Productivity.
His book is presented at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW2F4dOCC3U . You can choose this video instead.
Present your thoughts on the productivity project and share with us your personal experiences.
Comments
I definitelly agree with the presenter about multitasking. We are not really built to multitask and we don't do it well. If I want something done quickly, I usually try to focus on just this one task. I also found it's not worth weaking up early, especially if you have a habit to go to bad late :) It doesn't help you at all and your energy level and productivity falls sharply during the day. Exercising, eating well, not using internet constantly helps as well. Properly managing tasks using e-mail, calendar and proper prioritization is very important as well.
What I found new in this video was the idea of meditation. I never actually meditated, at least no longer then few minutes, so I will definitely want to try this one.
But what is really important in my experience is the knowledge, or awareness, why we want to be productive. Realization that once you finish whatever task you have set for yourself for the day, you will be "free" to do whatever you want with your time without feeling guilty. I remember procrastinating a lot before I finished some tasks and there was always a hint of guilt in it. I knew I should be doing something else. So once you set yourself some goals, finish them and then start having a good time/relaxing/procrastinating, you will instantly consider it a reward for doing something good/worthy. And this is probably the best feeling to finish your day with.
When it comes to procrastination inducing tasks, often its not as simple to manage them because they do not follow "the rules" they are not boring nor complex to the point they feel overwhelming, in my case they are usually given to me by someone who himself does not care about particular project/task. Its hard to feel motivated and eager to work on something when u know that other involved parties are not.
That's one of the reasons why i have problems with doing my homework given by uninvolved teachers, and have no issues with tasks given by inspiring and involved tutors.
It is definitely worth sleeping as much as needed for a given person. Less sleep isn't conducive to the body so that during the day we won't have strength. I think that when we go to bed late, it's better to get up later to have energy for the all day.
The whole presentation focuses on the techniques of raising productivity level as well as some tips and tricks. However, the term "Productivity" itself needed a clarification. Chris pointed out that in his interpretation it is not determined by your level of efficiency, but instead it should be estimated by the amount of tasks you manage to accomplish. Which is, in my opinion, highly incorrect. A straight linear function is clearly visible here, with the time spent and the amount of successfully accomplished tasks being the arguments, directly proportional to the efficiency. I don’t see, how can you separate the term “Efficiency”, which includes “Accomplishing tasks successfully” in itself, from the term “Productivity”.
The author presented the results of a bunch of experiments which he took on himself in his attempt to separate myths from actually working strategies. But the truth is, that each one could simply ton work on this particular person, as everyone is unique. For instance, getting up early did not work out for Chris, however later in his book he implements the term “Biological prime time”, which clearly shows that getting up at 5:30 might simply not work for everyone, but that does not mean that it does not work at all. Personally I have discovered those prime hours for myself a couple of years ago, and know when the job is done the most easily for me. So this tip works for me.
Overall, the author’s main goal, which was “To separate actually working strategies from the so-called Productivity porn”, sadly nearly ended up as one of them, with just slightly rearranged patterns and repeated experiments with getting up early and disconnecting from the Internet.
I will try to implement “Rule of 3” and concentrate only on the most important tasks for particular day.
What I found the most interesting in this video was the idea of meditation and its influence on productivity. I never thought about using meditation to get more energy or to get rid of stress but I will definitely give it a try after Chris Bailey recommendation.
But after a few weeks I realised that even a small break can be a huge help. And when I started to meditate I was more calm and focused at work.
Chris suggested to cut off the internet. 5 days ago I decided to do a test: 7 days without unnecessary internet connection (work or homework is a must, but everything else- begone!) and without my laptop (as before- only work, no games, no movies... nothing).
After those 5 days I think that my test will last longer than 7 days. I have a lot of time, I'm more calm, more focused at stuff I'm working on and feel... free. You should try it!
Also I belive that cultivating your energy is also really important thing to do and I want to focuse on that in the next 3 weeks.
One of his experiment was using a phone for just an hour a day. I also tried that a couple weeks ago. I was using my smartphone just an hour a day for a week and I must say that I am thinking about trying to do it again because after the experiment I was more vigorous, I have more time for things that I've always wanted to do, I was more focused on the important stuff and I think it helps me to be calmer, to find peace with myself.
The first one tip was about using smartphone for an hour a day. In our world I would say, it's complicated, because a lot of people get information from the internet by using smartphone. To my mind we need to use it correctly. Correctly It's not when you use it for social networks or some like that. And this tip I would change on "Using social networks for an hour a day", because a lot of people spend hours a day there.
The second one tip was about that we should at the beginning of each day, before you start working, decide what three things you want to accomplish by the end of the day. It could be a very good tip, I didn’t use it before, but I will try it. We spend a lot of time when we don’t know what exactly we want to accomplish today and very often we do a little of everything in a day without bringing a single case to the end.
The last one tip was about “prime time”. That not all of us need to get up early, for someone it’s not good, because their productivity falls and I'm one of them.
As it was mentioned in comments above meditation is also a very interesting concept but in my opinion, meditation is kind of vague statement that might need more explanation for example how meditation might look like (maybe it's explained in the book itself).
Overall, I find this talk very informative and relatable. I might even take a look at the book.
In my opinion, human beings need to make more important changes in their lives for better performance, and these changes must be done with proper management of behavior.
In the face of problems, asking these questions are tips like
is boring, difficult,frustrating,unstructured or ambiguous,lacking in personal meaning,and lacking in intrinsic value,Helps us to understand the right issues and to better manage and solve bigger problems by turning into smaller problems, and thus increase our productivity.
I must say that the video presented above is really interesting and helpful and I will be looking forward to try new ideas how to get more productive. But the most important think that I need to remember is that I'm only a human and start initiate them slowly not to quit completely.
He pointed out the meditation, but actually it wasn’t about meditation. It is pretty obvious for me (and for most of us, I think) that our brain needs time to relax. And everyone has their own way of relaxation. Someone goes to the gym, someone practices yoga, someone watches movies and those things could work as well.
After the first part, when he was talking about his own experience, he goes to the second part, when he gives 5 advices. They are pretty useful, but I want to give my opinion on two of them.
The rule of three - why three? I think it depends on your goals. For IT guy like most of us there the goal “I want to fix this bug today” could be a 10 hours long task. But for a housewife sometimes 5 goals for a day is a good result.
Disconnect from the internet - it’s a pretty good advice, but how should we do that? Procrastinating on the internet is often a big problem for us, but how can we stop? I think he could give some advices on that, like start reading a book every time you want to watch memes :)
After watching Chris Bailey TED talk I will agree with him with few things. The first thing is creating "to do list" what we have to do to the end of the day. I do this kind of thing for a lomg time. Every day after wake up I create a list "what i must to do to improve my game". This list is very helpful. Tne second thing is how internet and social media have influence to our productivity. Unfortunately watching videos with small puppies all day long is my Achilles' heel. ;(
I am happy that Chris Bailey has covered the topic of waking up early - in my opinion waking up late is not a "bad habit", but it's really depends from the person - I know a lot of people which won't be productive in the morning, no matter how long did they slept.
Chris gave us 5 advices - I think they will fit majority of people. I would like to share my "tips":
1) Plan Your day - if You will do it, they Your "goal" is set down. It would be best if it's possible to measure it - was it done in 50%, 100% ?
It requires a little bit of experience - with the time You will get better with estimating the amount of job You can do.
2) Do 1 thing at a time
3) Take a break - Your brain has to relax, especially if You try to figure out a solution to a problem. Try to schedule it - e.g. focus on working for 1 hour, and later make a 10 minute break
4) Turn off Your notification - don't get distracted !
5) Find a hobby/activity that You like and it's not connected with You job position - let Your brain focus on completely different area
6) Activity - as Chris said, it will give us an energy kick
Certainly the next tip that I will take to myself and try to implement is to limit the use of social media. Facebook and Instagram are such time wasters.
What about my system? I'm trying to plan my day every afternoon. When I get new task in my job I have to evaluate time which I can spend on it. It's very hard but it's very helpful. You have to think about it and be focused. I think that we shouldn't use computers (at work) for private things - Facebook, Twitter is something which can destroy our day.
In addition, Thomas Frank's video is better for me. I like eye-catching movies with images etc. I will try to add some features to my daily life because it can help me.
Now I know that there is nothing wrong with it! As the author of this presentation sad it is not important what we did but what we wanted to accomplish by the end of the day. If my goal was to order a large pizza and watch some Netflix so I can call my day a productive one because I accomplished my goals!
Also, I like the 5 tips the author provided by the end of his presentation. I think that the most important one is "one thing at the time" because it is a simple idea that can be easily achieved. I will give it a shot while working on my Engineer Thesis :)
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As for the tips itself, I do not know if in today's world we can afford to give up using the smartphones for an hour a day. But it will definitely be a good decision to remove "disturbers", that is, all social community apps like Instagram or other things. Just changing the notifications so that they do not appear immediately on the locked screen but after entering to the application will reduce the usability of the phone to a minimum and will not distract us from the current tasks.
I've been writing lists of tasks for a long time, and it is really helpful. The main advantage of such lists is that you can keep your head free from thoughts like "oh, I have so many things to do" or "I don't have enough time to do everything", that can lead you to the procrastination or apathy. These lists also help to set priorities to each task, and there is no easier approach to complete the list than to do from the easiest or the less time-consuming task to the hardest, at least, for me.
*I'm very happy about the fact that this blog platform now has automatic spelling check and more comfortable interface and visuals than last year :)*
For now I know that for my productivity it is the best to focus on one case at the time. I use a kanban in my life which is a scheduling system used often in software development. It helps me to have a wide perspective on my priorities and what I have to do to finish some big cases in time.
I think that if we have something complicated to achieve we have to split it to smaller tasks. Then it is much easier to start doing something smaller what don't takes e.g. a month. Such approach let me almost finish my IT studies and it's helping me with achieving successes in my life.
When it comes to myself, I try to take maximum from my day. There is a saying that more work you have, more work you are able to do and it's 100% correct when it comes to me. So when I'm trying to be productive first thing I must do is having a lot of things to do ( that's why I'm studying, working, teaching...). It's also very important to give yourself a break sometimes, especially brain. Boxing classes or jogging works best for me, also yoga is quite good.
If I'm thinking more about it, it's also very easy to fall into trap of rat race when it comes to productivity. It's really short line between being well organized or ambitious and some unhealthy trends to be best at labor market.
Last thing I want to mention are my cheats how to stay well organized: first thing, as I said, you should have a lot of things to do - being well organized while being jobless is something weird in my opinion. Second thing is already mentioned by someone above me, well known for everyone "to do" list. No matter if you have it on paper or in smartphone, just have it, may help a lot. Last thing is a skill to making your life-work life balance at some healthy level - remember, you must relax sometimes ;)
In my opinion subject of this video is interesting but everyone should find own ways and limits to be most productivity. I will agree fully with the author of this video that healthy lifestyle for example jogging or training at the gym helps us achieve such goal. I must agree also with the sentence that we are not multi-tasking and if we want to do something very good we have to focus on it and try to working in short sprint eg if you are doing something important, do it for 30 minutes and take a 5 minutes break.
Btw I found such a nice application on the iPhone that helps you focus on your „project”. This app set time for doing something and will inform you when you have to take a brak to work more productive.
I think they are common and well-known techniques.
Working as a software developer is not easy to disconnect from the internet, but I try to rememeber to mute notifications from apps like facebook. (There is also a very usefull browser extension called focus).
Doing only one thing at the time is also very important and it’s easy when you use tools like Jira or trello, which also help prioritizing and dividing big tasks into smaller subtasks.
To the first trick “Rule of 3” I would add focus on why this is the most important things to do in this day, it can increase motivation.
The only new thing for me is meditation. I’ve heard about it, but never use it. I will try.
To be efficient, just as Chris is saying, we need full attention and energy. That, multiplied by time, gives us our productivity, but I think that without proper plan of work it still might not me enough.
Knowing how to do the tasks correctly might be even more important for productivity than energy and attention we put into tasks. Just like running with said chair around the house. Very fast, fully focused, lot of time spent, and result the same as the one from person slowly moving, dragging the chair with one hand while having a phone in other, but going straight to the goal.
Rest well, eat well, have some healthy routine during the day. For me it was always a problem and still is. As much as giving my full attention to the task at hand.
But having a good plan and knowledge how to do the work is also a key to productivity.
The idea of disconnecting from the internet was perceived by me in a different way. Instead of just turning off the internet I removed most social medias(except of some messangers) in order to feel the difference and I did. This helped me realize that I used to spend significant amount of my valuable time on some useless things like scrolling someone’s profiles or watching some funny stupid videos.
The most unexpected thing for me was that physical activity can actually increase your productivity. Before this video I considered doing sports like something that I have to do in order to keep fit. It was a waste of time for me(from the perspective of education) but I don’t think so anymore.
I watched the second video of Thomas Frank describing 5 lessons he learned from Chris Bailey’s book. I agree with all the conclusions he made. However, I disagree with some of the comments made by other students, particularly those saying that „it’s common knowledge”. It’s not. Writing such statements only diminishes the importance of methodical productivity and, in my opinion, proves that they have far too little experience and expertise in the industry to deal with such absolutes.
As for the productivity itself, I’d like to add one tip from myself — if you can’t focus, take a break, go for a walk in the park or around the block. Oxygenating the brain is proven to have a tremendous impact on our ability to concentrate and I highly recommend it, especially when working on a tedious task for a long time.
I think this book is an interesting attempt to describe the nature of productivity, yet I would not consider it as some guideline but would rather treat it as set of interesting techniques which would definitely boost you on your path of becoming productive and hardworking person.
In his book Chris Bailey tells us about 3 important components of being productive: time, attention and energy. Being able to properly manage all three of them is, no doubt, a significant advantage that will help a lot. And I agree with such a way of thinking about it, but I believe even before that, comes something that is the very bedrock of productivity. Motivation.
In my opinion it is the most important part of being productive. I make such a conclusion from personal experience. Lack of motivation immediately renders any task in my head useless, pointless work completing which will grant nothing. And it affects not only productivity but your mood in general. Whenever apathy strikes, I don’t feel like doing anything is bringing joy, even activities which are considered as resting, like surfing the net or watching some movies. And what is apathy if not absence of motivation.
So my advice and overall comment on this topic would be like that: before you start work on something, clearly define your goal. Know what you want to achieve by spending your time energy and attention. Because if you have a goal and see a purpose in what you are doing, then it becomes your motivation, your fuel for a new height to reach.
I’d argue that a sample size of one person is a little small, and Bailey’s experimentation has surely provided a good insight into how productivity works… for himself. As Kyrylo said in earlier comment, Chris never really delves into what his actual measure of productivity was and what he had accomplished. What can’t be undermined though is the methodology he used to determine what worked for him. It presents a sound set of factors one should consider when looking to increase their productivity, but seeing that people are different, it might not always lead to the same conclusions as Bailey arrived at.
Overall, the presentation gave me a few ideas to look into on the search for my optimal way of keeping myself productive, and I’d urge anyone having problems with that to watch it.
Even if I didn’t appreciate his presentation as much as expected, I realized that he is just right and all of that rules, advices and experiment results are not empty slogans. He simply perpetuate that knowledge for me, at the same time a little enlarging my understanding of some slogans. For example three ingredients of productivity hit home.
To sum up, this video maybe will not change my life, but definitely it wasn’t waste of time.
So now more about the topic - project productivity. In the first part this guy talks a lot about his personal unsuccessful/successful experience of project productivity, two times reminds us that he has a girlfriend (again this is important information for target - nerds) and tells us a little bit about meditation and weight loss. In the second part there is something about important things: time, attention, energy. And also he ignores standard magical numbers in motivational speech: 4 and 7. He choose less common: 5. Five rules of productivity project.
My advice is more concisely:
- Go to your first job as soon as possible to understand mechanism of team working and to understand how important are people as resource in business.
- Try to plan your daily tasks by using one of the agile methodologies (This is a standard that is using in the most companies)
- Don't listen to guys which used to wear a Liverpool T-shirt
On point was missing in my opinion and that's the why or better said “the motivation”. Because knowing why we do something, it increases the understanding of a topic, which allows us to link the dots faster. Consequently, productivity raises. Otherwise, there can be times that you ask yourself, why do I do that? If it’s a job, it’s quite an easy answer, but besides that, it can be hard to focus on topics which are not well defined or their outcome is not clear. We lose track of the task, or we get easily distracted. So understanding allows us to be focused!
Furthermore, listening to his explanation about how we put attention to a task reminded me of an article with Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. It’s about being focused, and this is the single most important factor(Word) in their success through life! So feel free to read it.
I’m gonna agree about multitasking. Unfortunately doing more isn’t more efficient. I’m not „day planning” person, but I like to do things step by step to not get distracted. Good thing is I can predict time needed to do something.
Talking about distractions - you know, everything is for people. Right now I’ve got one full-time job and one part-time job, because I have enough time to do so. Besides that I spend a lot of time on social medias, YouTube etc.
The most important thing is to stay OK with yourself.
If you’re thinking „I could be better at this or that”, then stop thinking and just change something.
The most important part of the presentation was the phrase: "It does not how busy and efficient we are. What matter is how much we accomplish at the end of the day." It is important to have the routine and it is more important to become better version of yourself everyday.
Meditation for my opinion is the best way to balance your job. It helps me to refresh myself after long work.
I can give one advice for boosting productivity:
Treat yourself as the one you like and give yourself present for finishing the work as if you give that kind of person.
Recently I take a break for 2 weeks from this job. I went to bed late(5 am), woke up late(3-4 pm) so my rutine was damaged. Fortunatelly I managed that quite good! The paradox is that if we have more responsibilities and less time we are able to plan them better. The more task I've got the more complex and pleasant my schedule become. I don't have "time gaps" so I'm not distracted.
As Chris said - "to do" list is what we have to do - it helps a lot. Personally, I don't have to write it, I just have to think of upcoming task and squeez it into my "mind schedule". It's get better with practise :)
One of my biggest problems is social media influence - it's totally destroy my schedule, rutine or plans. Now I know, that I have to work on this and pay attention to this small distractions :)
If the mail will receive a message from the chief with an urgent task,or important information and you will not see it, it is not only work.
Chris Bailey just combined different methods and rules.
The Pareto principle of 20/80 (the most effective as for me)
The philosophy of " Do less»
Diet Information
Live on shedule
Everyone is looking for what suits him best.
As banal as it may sound, but it is a fact-high productivity depends on the mood with which you approach the tasks. Do what you like – the most basic secret of productive work! It is clear that often we are forced to do something that we are not interested and do not like, and this is inevitable, but in any process, you can find some positive aspects.
Since this topic is very popular and there is a lot of material on this topic, the presentation by Chris Bailey should serve as a good fixing material. Especially it concerns 5 tactical installations, about which he speaks at the end of his speech. It would be great to match them. The only moment that confused me was the question of multitasking, it seems to me, being a modern person, it is very difficult to concentrate on one problem. On this issue, I will analyze for a long time.
Well, the introduction of meditative techniques - the pearl of his speech!