Organization and Productivity: My Current Methods

I was originally planning on doing another series of posts about getting organized, but those proved difficult to write (mostly because my mind has been churning on other ideas that I’m more excited to work on). I wanted to write about the topic because it’s something that I’ve been working on this year, and I think I’ve been making some real progress in it.

As someone who has a ton of interests (reading, writing, playing games, playing music, watching TV shows and movies, and learning new things to name most of them), giving enough time to each one has been one of the biggest challenges of my life. This has resulted in huge backlogs in each area, since I will get really passionate about one interest, spend a few months focusing on it, and then moving on to the next thing. Of course those few months aren’t nearly enough to go through all of the crap I’ve accumulated, whether it be unplayed games, unwatched movies, or story ideas that haven’t been written about at all. Just about the only thing that I have been able to keep up with is music, but I’m more easily forced into that by being in a band.

And that doesn’t even include all of the time I need to spend just being an adult. Chores always have to be done. I need to eat everyday. Exercise is becoming more necessary as I get older. I don’t even want to think about what’s going to happen when kids start appearing. And of course I still have to spend the majority of my days making money. Thankfully, I love what I do for work, it is my one true passion that never gets old (though the projects I work on often do).

So I have been working on ways to get the most of my time for years. It will always be a work in progress as things change, but I thought I would share some of the things I’ve been doing lately that seem to be working quite well.

Dealing with Chores

Ah chores. No matter how many times you do them, they always need doing. I’m sure it is for that very reason that most people put off chores until the last possible minute (or just not do them at all). I haven’t really been having that problem lately though, and I’ll explain why. There are basically two things I’ve done to make chores easier to get done.

First, I categorized my chores in terms of priority, frequency, and amount of time needed. Just as a few examples:

• Wash the dishes - high priority, daily, 10-20 minutes depending on amount of dishes
• Empty the catbox - highest priority (don’t want to miss this), every two days, 5 minutes
• Make dinner - medium priority (I can always go out if I don’t have time), 3 times a week, 20-40 minutes (any longer than that and I tend to not be interested in making it)
• Take out trash/recycling - medium priority, 2-3 times a week, 5 minutes
• Dust and vacuum apartment - low priority, once every 1-2 months, 2 hours

Second, once you have things categorized, batch them into chunks and put them at times when you are more likely to actually get them done. The latter point is probably the more important aspect as I’ve recently discovered. I used to be horrible about doing the dishes every night after dinner. I would usually just let them pile up for a couple days and then do a whole dishwasher load in one go, which would take way longer to do. So I made one simple change that has gotten me to do dishes every day and it takes a lot less time: I moved the chore to the morning instead of the evening. Now when we have dinner, I put the dishes in the sink and let them soak overnight, then take care of them in the morning after I shower. A very simple change, but I don’t stress about doing them after dinner now, so I have more relaxing evenings, and doing them in the mornings is a snap.

The other aspect is batching them. So now in my mind, I have a morning batch and an evening batch (weekends are usually just one morning/afternoon batch). In the morning batch before work, I have dishes and catbox (sometimes dinner if I’m using the slow cooker). In the evening batch, I have dinner and any trash/recycling that needs to be taken out. By knowing this in advance, I can judge how much time I will need since chores are no longer spontaneous. The other thing I do is that I make sure that these batches get done as soon as possible. I do my morning chores immediately after showering, and I do my evening chores immediately after getting home. The instant you sit down to relax, the likelihood of procrastinating skyrockets. You will actually save time and stress this way because when it’s done, you don’t have to worry about it anymore. If you decide to rest a bit before doing it, the need to do it just gnaws on your mind and you start hating the task. Just get it over with first and enjoy your day/night.

Exercising More Often

I like exercising. I don’t love it, but I do enjoy it. However, I have always been bad about actually doing it, at least since I’ve had a full time job. When I had a part time job I was exercising every day, but what else are you going to do? For the last five years it’s just been a cycle of getting into a good mindset, signing up for some gym (or using another available facility), aiming to do at least 3 times a week, and then never actually getting there for a couple months before quitting again. So then I tell myself it will just be easier to do it at home, I have enough equipment to do it. Doesn’t change anything. I try moving my schedule around to exercise in the morning before work, right after work, or right before bed. Nothing works.

At least until now. One of the things I decided last year was that, since I enjoy running now more than I ever did before, I want to work up to doing a marathon in the next couple years. So I’ve been doing a 5K every month for a few months, and I discovered something that I didn’t expect. While I was terrible about going to the gym to get conditioned for the 5K, actually going to the 5K was easy. Why was that? It couldn’t have been because of money, I was paying for both. No, it was the time constraint. Doing a 5K is easy because it starts at a time and it goes until I’m done with it. Most gyms don’t have that unless you want to pay more money to sign up for classes.

At around the time I was realizing this, an Orange Theory Fitness opened up in my area. I didn’t know anything about it, but I knew my current gym plan wasn’t working, so I started investigating other options, and it came up. Instead of being a normal gym, all you have are classes, and you just pay for what you use instead of having the buffet plan of regular gyms. I immediately thought that this would be a great solution to the problem I was facing, and so far I have been absolutely right. I’m only obligated to go twice a week, a time is set, and it’s very easy to show up.

So if you are like me and have trouble getting motivated to go to an all-purpose gym (mostly by yourself, having a buddy will help significantly too), then just doing classes might be the right solution for you too. Granted, it will usually cost more, but it has been well worth it for me.

Killing the Backlog

This is probably going to be the most obscure one for most people, mostly because I’m using a tool that few people will know about or understand. As I stated in the beginning of this post, I have a lot of interests. Having a lot of interests (and a decent amount of spending money) leads to big backlogs of things that I want to do. Big piles of games, books, movies, TV shows, etc. Also being the kind of person that I am, I want to keep track of all these things so that I can measure progress and know what I still have remaining.

Back when the lists were small, I could get away with just having a simple computer document that listed them all out. But then that became a hassle. So then I looked for online solutions and realized that there’s a backlog type of system for every geekery. I was using Netflix to keep track of TV shows and movies I wanted to watch, Goodreads to keep track of my books, Backloggery to keep track of games, and so on. And this worked for a while. But then I was having to juggle multiple sites to keep everything going. I needed something simpler.

And then I came up with an ingenious idea: bug tracking software. Specifically the one we use at Amazon, JIRA. Certainly not what it is designed for, but it has two major advantages that I’m absolutely loving. First, it has a lot of flexibility, so it’s very easy to keep track of my tasks (aka a game/movie/book) and categorize them for quick access. Second, with the sprint planning functionality, I can plan out what I want to do for the next month and be able to set realistic expectations for myself. I know that I can manage about 3 hours a day, on average, to do things that I want to do. That comes out to around 90 hours a month, so I can set up that much stuff to do and feel confident that I can get most of it done.

To me, this tool makes perfect sense because I’m a programmer and it’s something that I already use regularly. For most other people, it probably doesn’t make sense, but I would bet that another online program with similar functionality wrapped in a more user-friendly interface would probably do really well. I can attest that my focus has been a lot better since I started using it, and I get encouraged when I see how many things I’m actually getting done every month.

Incentivizing Goals

Just one last section before I leave you, and this one is more recent so I can’t say if it’s really going to work in the long run or not. It was just an idea I came up with after listening to an interview about gamification. The general concept is that you can get more engagement from regular people by providing a game-like reward system for doing things, specifically things that are not games in and of themselves. A lot of apps do this to retain customers, especially when it comes to fitness or learning, which is absolutely great because those are great areas to use reward systems.

So I posed a question to myself: is there a way that I can gamify my long-term goals so that I’m more likely to do continuous work on them? Some things I thought of specifically were: learn enough French to get by when we visit Paris later this year, get into good enough shape to run a half/full marathon, actually publish some works of fiction, get better at playing guitar, and become a more proficient cook. There are plenty more, but those are things that I’m actively working on.

My solution was an incentive system. If this proves to be successful, I can post the full rules that I came up with, but the basic idea is this: You define some goals to work on. Using those goals, you create rewardable actions that you can do that will get you closer to that goal. For example, when learning French, you just have to do the lessons, so doing lessons counts as a rewardable action. Each rewardable action is worth a certain amount of points, generally 1-5 based on difficulty. You get points each time you do a rewardable action, and you can exchange those points for an actual reward. I have it set up so that the reward has to be provided by someone else since it’s too easy to just reward oneself for no reason at all. The better the reward, the more points it costs. Very simple system.

To be honest, it hasn’t been catching on with my girlfriend and I too much yet, but that might just be because we don’t have any pre-defined rewards yet, so we don’t really know what we’re working towards. I think once those are in place, the incentives to do well will increase. It’s an experiment, so I will probably talk more about it in the future.

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This ended up being pretty long, but it probably should be considering that I’ve been silent for half a year. It is in my goals to be better about this, and I’m using my successes above to make it easier to find time for writing. It’s been on the forefront of my mind for a couple weeks, so I suspect it is about that time for writing to make a comeback for me. Look forward to it.

Achieving Greatness: Cultivating Success

The is the last post I will be writing about achieving greatness, at least for the first round. It’s possible that there will be supplementary material as time goes on. After last week’s post, I thought of a few more things that specifically pertain to becoming content, so that may become a post in the future.

So now that we have gone over how to improve performance and find happiness, this week we are going to combine those together and work on cultivating success. A lot of people will tell you that happiness comes from success, and that is true to a degree, but I feel like it is the other way around. A successful venture that comes from a place of discontentment is not really a success at all. In order to have lasting success that continues to build with time, you need to have the right mindset first.

Once you have the other tips under your belt (feel free to go back through the blog to find the first three posts if you haven’t already), these three will help propel you forward into becoming the great person you want to be. These are things that I have done and continue to do, and while success is slow to come, I am always making progress.

Define a Legacy

When we are all kids, one of the most common questions we get from adults is, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” That question later turns into “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?” when we hit high school and college. How many people actually have answers to these questions? Sure kids are quick to come up with an answer that they think is cool, but those dreams are often forgotten over time. Very few people actually have a dream from the beginning and stick to it. Most people either pick a practical profession to get by or don’t pick anything at all and just float through life wondering when things are going to turn around for them.

This is why I prefer this question more than the other ones: “What do you want your legacy to be?” I had thought about this before, but the importance of the question didn’t really hit me until I heard this interview with Dr. Jeffrey Spencer on what he calls the Champions Blueprint. Defining your legacy is not only a vital step to achieving lifelong success, it is the first step. Until you have a destination, you can’t really know what to do next to get there.

The best part about defining a legacy is that legacy can mean anything. You can reach for the stars (“I want to be remembered as one of the best presidents ever!”), or you can keep it simple (“I want to be the one that my whole family can rely on in all situations”). This can in line with your chosen profession, but it doesn’t have to, it can be completely outside of it. Perhaps what you really want to be remembered for has nothing to do with what you are currently doing. If that is the case, then it’s even more important that you decide now what you want to leave behind so that you can make the next steps towards it. Deciding what your legacy should be will put you into the right mindset, which you will need to be able to work towards it every day.

Just to take myself as an example, I have three main aspects to the legacy I want to leave behind. First, I want to be remembered as a great provider of entertainment to millions. Second, I want to be remembered as a great teacher to young and old alike. And third, I want to be remembered as a great friend and family man. As I said before, your legacy doesn’t have to be big. When you boil my legacy down, all I need to do is be a good person, help others grow, and be creative. Of course I also want to be well-known too, I’m not ashamed of having a little ego.

If you haven’t given your legacy much thought, I encourage you to do so sooner rather than later. It doesn’t have to be set in stone, but you need some end point to go to. Otherwise you just end up sitting at the starting line.

Learn Useful Skills

I remember late last year when the internet blew up over an article written by David Wong on Cracked. A great number of people didn’t like what he had to say about being useful to others. Personally, I think it’s one of the best articles written on the subject, and you really should go read it if you haven’t (fair warning, lots of expletives ahead).

If you just want the short version, your usefulness is 100% tied to the skills that you have. Being a good person doesn’t make success. Doing things for others makes success. So if you don’t have skills that are useful to others, you’re not going to go very far. The best part about gaining skills is that you can do it whenever you want. And the rarer the skill is, the more likely you will get asked to do it and get rewarded well for it.

I would suggest that you do what David says at the beginning of the article. Take a piece of paper and write down five skills you have that you can use to help others. These can include the skills you use for work. And remember that a skill is something that is difficult enough that most people cannot do it with zero training. I will go ahead and do five for myself as an example:

• Can program in multiple languages
• Can play drums
• Can write
• Can teach mathematics
• Can cook

Obviously I’m better at some of these than others, but I never stop trying to get better at them. And there are plenty of other skills I would love to add to my repertoire. Things like learning to play guitar. Becoming conversationally fluent in German. Learning to knit and sew (yes, seriously). Becoming a mixologist. The list just continues to grow.

Learning a new skill can seem really daunting, especially for adults who are busy just trying to get other things done. But I think most people will realize that they have the time, they just don’t prioritize enough. They spend more time consuming things than producing. There is certainly nothing wrong with consuming media to unwind, but you need to also spend some time progressing. Which leads me to the last point.

Be Creative Every Day

Much liking reading every day helps focus, being creative every day helps progress skills and goals. Now being creative is not limited to producing things for others to consume, it just means using your brain to do things that require some thought. It could mean spending some time writing a blog post, or it could mean working on a painting. It could mean coming up with something different for dinner, or it could mean coming up with a bedtime story for your kids.

For a lot of us, we are lucky in that our profession forces us to be creative. Being an engineer automatically makes me creative every workday because the whole job is about solving problems. For us, it can be hard to be creative outside of work because we only have so much capacity per day. It is much more important for those of you who have jobs that demand more physically than mentally. Admittedly, physical jobs can be just as draining as mental ones, so the preference is to veg out on the couch. But even if you spend just 15 minutes putting your brain to use, it will make a difference. Once you set a baseline, you will find that it gets easier to go for longer periods of time. If you can, try to do this as soon as you get home. You are more likely to get distracted the longer you wait.

Why is it so important to be creative on a daily basis? Surely it’s okay to just do it on the weekends or whatever days you have free. You can go ahead and say that, but when you get to those free days, you know what you’re going to do? The same time wasting activities you do after work. You don’t make good habits by only doing them twice a week. I know, I’ve tried. Lots of times. It never works.

Be sure to put some of the other tips to use when it comes to it too. I put a creative goal on my today list every single day. There are days when I cannot be fully expected to keep it (like this weekend where I was at PAX all Friday and Saturday), but it doesn’t break my habit unless I go for a week or more. And the more you do it, the easier it gets and the better you become at it. You’ve heard it a million times, but practice is the only sure way to improve. And the only people who are truly successful in this world are those who create products and solutions, so practice a lot!

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Thanks for reading my thoughts on how to become a great person. Again, if you missed the first three installments, just go back through the blog archive to find them. Next week I might do a shorter wrap-up post with some supplementary material. Or I might have some thoughts on my first week at my new job instead. We will see.

Achieving Greatness: Finding Happiness

This is the third of four posts I will be writing about achieving greatness. The first two posts were all about how I get more things done each day. This week’s is about how I try to bring more happiness into my life. I meant to do this post last week, but I was exceptionally busy with getting a new job and beginning the process of moving into a new apartment. I also had to deal with some severe neck pain early in the week which took me out for a whole day. So, a week late, but certainly still worthwhile.

Happiness is one of those topics that is really hard to quantify. No one can really come up with a singular definition that everyone can agree on. I took an entire college class on the subject and still couldn’t come away with a consensus. I think one thing that most experts can agree on though, is that happiness is not having constant joy in one’s life. It is true that the good feelings we get when something pleasant happens tends to happen more often to those who say they are happy, but it is impossible to be in that state all the time. Even people who are happy have bad things happen to them, and no matter how happy they are the rest of the time, those things will get them down.

I choose to think of happiness as a state where everything that happens, good or bad, results in a positive outcome, so I never get into a negative state of mind. It’s a state of being content with all things. I find that when I’m in that state, things just seem to go my way all the time. Bad things happening don’t really get to me as much as those do. The only things that do get me out of this state of mind are doubt and worry. The more I worry about things that I have to do or have doubts about where I am in life, the more negative I get.

With this in mind, there are three things that I’ve gathered from reading and personal experience that I find gets me more into the content state of mind. But before that, to throw in a fourth point I’ve already covered, eliminating unnecessary information and focusing my time on being productive has a major impact on my overall happiness, so don’t forget to do that too!

Let Go of People Who Hold You Back

This point was hammered into me by the fine fellows at The Art of Charm several years ago now, and it’s becoming even more important as time goes on. This strongly ties in with the elimination I just mentioned, except this is related to people instead of information. This is a hard one for most people to swallow for two reasons: 1) It is hard to do, especially as relationships grow over time; and 2) It can make you come off as callous, which is generally frowned upon. And it is true, doing this will result in people not liking you. But as any successful person will tell you, those people tend to be worthless and ignoring them is vital to continue succeeding. Remember that this is all about you.

It is generally easy to tell which people to avoid and let go of. They tend to be overly negative, though it can be in different ways. Some will try to bring everyone around them down to their level. They will tell you that anything risky you do will fail. Others are negative by complaining about things all the time, usually things they have no control over. They will be the drama spreaders. You need to avoid these people for two reasons: 1) Just being around their negativity will make you feel worse (just like how being around positive people will automatically make you feel better and more energized); and 2) Since nothing they say to you is productive, they waste your time.

A lot of people don’t even realize how much the negativity gets to them. Especially when they are reading it online, it doesn’t tend to be as oppressive as it does in person, but the overall effect is still bringing you down. It’s for this reason that on my Facebook, I only read the positive posts that my friends put up. If someone is being negative all the time, I remove them from my feed because I know that it is subconsciously causing me to worry about them. Again, it seems callous to admit that you don’t care about someone’s problems, but when it is that constant, it has more to do with their mindset rather than any problems they actually have. I also actively avoid websites and forums that are well known for people being mean to others (which seems to be all of them these days). And even on the sites I do visit, I never read the comments, no matter how hilarious I am promised they are. More often than not, the “hilarity” comes from the commenters being stupid or ignorant. In other words, I’m supposed to be making fun of them, which is a negative attitude to have towards people. Being mean to people gets you nothing. I’d prefer to think the best of people and be positive as much as possible. Being positive is the only way I know to be content in life.

This is something that you need to do slowly, get used to it. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. Start with those people farthest away from you and work your way inward. And always be trying to make new friends with people who are more positive. They aren’t hard to find, and they will provide you with so much more.

Travel Often, Never Tour

I will never fully understand people who don’t like to travel. If there’s one thing that pretty much every rich or successful person has in common, it is that they travel all the time. Why? Because when you have enough money to not worry about material needs, the only thing to spend it on experiences. I am a strong proponent of gaining experiences as they will generally do more to improve your outlook on life than things. Don’t get me wrong, I spend plenty on entertainment, but none of those compare to the fun I have going to new places.

So yes, you should travel often. But what do I mean by never tour? Basically, travel is great, but acting like a tourist is never great, at least in my opinion. I personally rarely have any fun doing tourist activities, which usually involve visiting landmarks. Things like natural formations or castles or museums or some dead guy’s house. While some are admittedly impressive to behold, they don’t excite me. Immersing myself in the culture of the place I’m visiting is much more fun to me.

For example, I visited England and Ireland several years ago. I saw a lot of castles and churches there. A lot of them were amazing, but I had a lot more fun just doing the normal things. Using the tube. Getting paninis at the cafes. Roaming the streets and parks. Navigating the roads. Watching the sheep wander around. Things that people who are living there do all the time. It was on that trip that I finally realized that when I visit a place, I want to see the way a regular citizen would. I want to do the things that they find cool, not the things that are designed to get tourists. I think those kinds of experiences are much more worthwhile than doing what an airport guide tells me to do.

Of course everyone’s mileage will vary on this one. I know my parents love seeing the landmarks. But I feel that if you really want to experience other cultures, you need to do more than just visit their cool stuff. You should actively try to be like them.

Aggressively Help Others

I think helping others is one that everyone can relate to. I’m pretty sure everyone has helped someone else at one point and felt good about it afterwards. But, there are still a lot of people who view it as an annoyance. You don’t want to be that person. You want to feel good about helping others, and I encourage you to seek out opportunities to do so. And be aggressive about it.

Now when I say be aggressive, I don’t mean force your way into helping someone who doesn’t want it. I mean that when you find an opportunity to help someone, convince them that it is in their best interest for you to help them. If they still don’t want the help, then respect their wishes and move on.

I could be wrong in this assumption, but it seems like most people don’t really like helping others. Think about the last time you asked people to help you move. You don’t want to be like those people. You want to help others. No successful person ever got where they are without help from others. And the best way to get others to help you is to help them. That’s why you should be aggressive about it. It changes your mindset so that you are always trying to help others, and the help that comes back is often much greater than what you put into it.

Not every opportunity is going to be fruitful. Plenty of people get help from others and don’t appreciate it, so they never give anything back. It happens, but you shouldn’t let that deter you. For every one of those people, there are nine more who will thank you. Many of them will even go out of their way to help you out with something you need. Who knows? You might even make a great friend along the way.

I know that personally, helping others feels great. Even something as simple as giving someone directions puts a smile on my face. Leveraging your skills will also make it easier and more enjoyable. I don’t get many chances to anymore, but I loved tutoring in math when I was in school. Math has always come easy for me, so teaching others seems like an obvious use of my talents, and I ended up benefiting from it too. Someday, when I get tired of my profession, I would love to go back to teaching all the time.

It doesn’t really matter what you do. You can tutor like I used to. You can give some time to a volunteer organization. You can donate your money to a cause you believe in (I give money to Child’s Play because I want to give comfort to kids in hospitals). You can do something as simple as help a co-worker with a problem. Or offer to take on a task that no one else wants to do. You can even be the one who is glad to help your friend move! The important thing is that you see where people need help, and put yourself in a position to help them.

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Next week, the final post about greatness. See you then!

Achieving Greatness: Improving Performance (Part 2)

This is the second of four posts I will be writing about achieving greatness. The first post was focused on things I do to improve my performance, and this post will be continuing in the same vein. Those first three tips are things that I try to do on a daily basis as they help give me the energy, mental clarity, and encouragement I need to do everything else. These next three tips are what I do to get more focus on what I have to do and get more time to have fun.

Create “Today” Lists

This is one that I discovered only a month ago, but I’m really glad I did as it has helped me significantly already. The idea came from successful entrepreneur Martin Bjergegaard. The concept is very simple: Instead of making a never-ending “To-do” list, make a short “Today” list. That is, just write down the things that you intend to have accomplished by the end of the day. And if you have something on your list, get it done before you start goofing off. Make sure you write this list down either first thing in the morning or the night before.

The main benefit I’ve seen from making these lists is that I don’t forget to do things as much as I used to. If I do forget that I have to do something, I just check the list and get reminded. The things I put on the list are things I need to do and should do before I start doing leisure activities. My list usually includes reading (as I discussed last week), working out, doing daily chores, and other tasks to get done. I will also put events on there so that I don’t overload myself. For example, yesterday I ran a 5K and did service on my car, which took most of the day up.

Another thing I do with my list, but is not necessary, is that I will put asterisks next to the items that are more important than others. Sometimes things will get in the way of accomplishing a task for a day, so I will usually star it the next day to make sure I prioritize it over other things if time doesn’t allow for everything.

This is not meant to discourage anyone from making long-term goals, this is just a way to focus on what needs to be done day-to-day and not get bogged down by decision paralysis when trying to use a gigantic “to-do” list. I know how it goes, my “to-do” lists would just balloon out of control and I wouldn’t know where to start. Use “today” lists to focus on a few tasks at a time, and eventually those “to-do” lists will sort themselves out.

Prepare / Offload / Automate

I don’t know how true this is for most people out there, but I always feel like I never have enough time to do anything. I also have a lot of trouble making unimportant decisions, so coming to an answer can take much longer than necessary. For example, I have been known to sit in a spot for up to half an hour trying to decide what to eat. If I don’t have something ready to eat or make, I will go around in circles until I have to do the easiest thing, which is usually go out and eat something bad for me.

So for the last few months, I’ve been forcing myself to make a menu every week. And I don’t just mean dinners, I mean every meal. If I don’t plan out my breakfasts and lunches, I end up going out for all of them unless I just happen to have leftovers from the night before. Knowing this, I combat my indecision by planning out the whole week. It’s okay if it doesn’t go 100% according to plan, just having it helps me a lot. I also make most of my breakfasts in advance because I hate making food in the morning.

The point of my food anecdote is that it is important to recognize what your weaknesses are, and find ways to either make it easier to get around them or remove them entirely. I have a lot of trouble deciding what to eat in any given moment, so I prepare a menu ahead of time to remove the need to make a decision. Saves time and lets my brain answer questions that are more important.

Another way to get time back is to offload menial tasks. This isn’t easy for everyone since this will usually require money, but there are other things you can do. For myself, since I live with my girlfriend, we split chores up. We share cooking duties so that one can make dinner while the other relaxes. I do the dishes every night, and in exchange she does the laundry every week. Another thing I don’t like doing is going to stores, so I offload that task by doing most of my shopping online. Let other people get what I need and send it to me.

The last thing that ties in with this is to automate wherever possible. Technology allows us to do a lot of things easily that required a lot of time before. Things like paying bills or shifting money around between accounts. With the exception of rent, I pay for all my bills online, and I always do auto-pay if available. All I need to do is check my accounts once or twice a week to make sure everything is going smoothly.

Using these tips, I generally only spend, on average, one hour per day on chores, leaving plenty of time to do other tasks.

Avoid Distractions / Practice Selective Ignorance

Out of everything on this list of tips so far, I feel like this one will be the hardest for a lot of people. While the Internet is one of the greatest tools we have ever created, it is also creating new generations of people who don’t know how to unhook from it. And I totally get it. When I’m at work and I don’t feel like working on my current task, my first thought is to check Facebook or one of the forums I frequent. For many people, they waste time on news sites, blogs, Reddit, Twitter, etc.

If you want to be truly productive, you have to learn to step away from all of that and focus on the task at hand. My policy at work is to go the entire day without going to any non-work related site. Sometimes I fail at this, but just setting that restriction on myself has increased my focus on work significantly. I’m talking 200% or more output compared to when I would check Facebook every hour or so, just because I wasn’t breaking my concentration. I do my status updating when I get home, and that’s all anyone really needs to keep updated.

One of the things that really resonated with me when I read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss was his section on elimination. He encourages taking in the things that are necessary to your tasks and ignoring all the rest, and I try to follow it as much as possible. In other words, practicing selective ignorance. This is why I don’t read the news. If something is worth hearing about, I’ll hear about it in person, but otherwise it is just so much garbage to wade through and virtually none of it has any affect on my life. This is also why I don’t spend any time looking at funny pictures or videos. Yes, they are funny and cute, but I have better things to do. I also don’t spend a bunch of time on Wikipedia looking at articles that give me useless knowledge I won’t remember later anyway. Sure, lots of interesting stuff, but if I can’t use it, then I just wasted 10 minutes that I could’ve spent writing something of my own.

Avoiding distractions is similar to losing weight. If you want to stop eating things that are bad for you, don’t put them in your house to begin with. If you want to stop wasting time, don’t go to websites that are specifically designed to do so. I know it’s hard, especially when you have friends who are always asking, “Hey, did you see this adorable picture?” or saying, “Dude, you have to watch this prank video.” Ignore them! Cute cats and skateboarding fails do not make you a better person. Of course, there are things out there that are worth your time if the topic is something you care about, but 99% of the media on the Internet is useless. I don’t have time for that crap and neither do you if you want to improve your performance and have time to get things done.

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Next week, three tips on how I try to increase my happiness. See you then!

Achieving Greatness: Improving Performance (Part 1)

This is the first of four posts I will be writing about achieving greatness. This is a topic that I’ve been spending more time thinking about in the last few months, mostly thanks to the work of Lewis Howes on his fantastic podcast, The School of Greatness. One of the questions he always asks of his guests is what their definition of greatness is. For me, greatness is fully realizing my potential. In fact, that’s what most of his guests answer with, or something very similar. Greatness is all about just doing the best that you can do at everything you do. It never has anything to do with the final product or what it can get you. If you are truly excelling at what you do, the results will come naturally.

Part of me feels like this is a topic that I shouldn’t be giving advice on, seeing as how I am not even close to realizing my potential. And that is very true. But then again, no truly great person has ever acknowledged they have realized their potential. They just keep aiming higher. So, even though I have not reached my goals, I have learned a lot of things along the way, and I want to help others get down the right path as well.

One of the things I do a lot of is listen to interviews with successful people. And, on occasion, if I really connect with someone, I will read some of their work and try to glean some advice on how to be successful as well. These posts will be about the things that I’ve learned from hundreds of interviews and several books, things that have specifically worked for me. Honestly, a lot of these people tend to just say the same things, or sometimes their claims are rather far-fetched, and other times their advice just doesn’t apply to most people. I’m not a self-help guru, so I am not going to make any claims that these will work for everyone. I do know that they work for me, and I think that they are general enough that most people can apply the principle.

This post is about improving performance and being more productive. When I think about performance, my focus has always been on doing things properly and quickly. Not just in the workplace, but at home as well. Here are three tips to improve your performance.

Put Your Health First

This always sounds cliché since everybody says the put your health first, but yet so few people actually do. I’m just as guilty of this as the next guy. In high school I was in fantastic shape. Then I went to college and gained around 40 pounds by the time I graduated. They just built up over time. When I got out, I went on a diet and exercise regimen and lost almost all of it. Then I hurt myself and couldn’t do the exercise anymore, so I gained it all back over the next four years, which I still carry today.

And this is exactly why I am putting my health first again. I am choosing to sacrifice some of my vices in order to make sure this happens.

The first component is to not eat crap. Duh! “Eating right” is a very dumb phrase since there are hundreds of ways to do it. Just look at the shelves of books on diets that “work” at bookstores. So instead of saying “eat right”, my phrase is “don’t eat crap.” And it’s really easy to tell what crap is. All sweets, fried foods, sodas, alcohols, and most carbs fall under “crap”. Avoiding those will do most of the work. Not eating crap is pretty easy for me, but I still struggle a lot with eating enough fruits and vegetables, so I am focusing more on getting those in my meals. I am still constantly amazed at how much better I feel eating good foods versus crap foods.

The second component is to control portions. This is really, really hard in America since most restaurants serve way too much food, especially at dinner when you should be eating the least. I am the worst at controlling portions, always have been. When I see food in front of me, my instincts are to finish all of it. But I still work at it because I want to be better. For best results, I will eat a small breakfast when I get up, just to take the edge off, then eat another small portion two hours later, have my biggest meal at lunch, and finish with a smaller dinner. Often I won’t even eat enough at dinner to feel full. I take half of what I think I should have, and then eat again before bed if I get hungry enough. Having significant food in my stomach when I go to bed is the surest way to see the scale go up in the morning rather than down.

The third component is to exercise regularly, daily if possible, but I have yet to reach that point. Again, it’s really hard to find the time to do it. Any decent workout is going to take an hour. And then stretching and showering takes another 30 minutes. Put in the time it takes to get to the gym and back, and my workouts end up taking two hours out of my day. But it’s worth it to me, so I sacrifice by getting up early to make time for it. I have found that going to the gym at lunch break works best for me, but doing it before or after work is just fine too. Figure out when you like it best.

The fourth and last component is sleep. One of the most universal truths I’ve heard from the successful people I mentioned earlier is that getting enough sleep is critical to success. Just as universal, the recommended amount is 8-9 hours. Growing up as a borderline insomniac in school, it has taken me a long time to get to where I can do that consistently, and it really does make a huge difference. When I get the full amount, I have much more energy than I would with only 6 hours (which I did fine with for years). Don’t overindulge though, as going over the recommended amount will result in feeling groggy again earlier in the day than you should. When I get 8 hours, I find it hard to stay in bed anyway, my body just wants to get going.

Read Every Day

This is one that I picked up from James Altucher’s Choose Yourself. After college, it took me about four years to get back into reading regularly. However, I would read when I felt like it, preferring to play games or watch movies instead. But then I read James’ book, and he said that you should read at least two hours a day, it is that important. I admit that I don’t always read two hours a day, but I do get at least one, and I’m happy that I do.

I have found that reading has two major benefits. The first is that reading keeps me sharp and focused. I tend to be more productive at work when I read for an hour before I start than otherwise. I also find that I get a lot more from reading than any other medium, things that I can use in my own works.

The second benefit is that reading is very good at getting my brain to relax. This is especially useful at bedtime. I tend to fall asleep much faster when I read before bed over when I watch a movie or play a game. Tim Ferriss also recommends reading an hour before bed for this very reason.

Seriously, reading is good! I find that the more I read, the more I want to read. And it doesn’t have to be all serious stuff like biographies (I don’t read those at all) or other non-fiction. I mostly read fantasy and sci-fi novels, with some graphic novels thrown in for good measure. In fact I just got The Contract With God Trilogy by Will Eisner in the mail yesterday, and I’m looking forward to that one.

Monitor Your Progress

Another thing that most successful people will tell you is that recording your progress is the best thing to keep your motivation high, especially among athletes. I agree with them, for the most part. They will often take things to an extreme level. I like to simply focus on a few things that will show that my efforts are not in vain.

Two of the main things I record are my weight (daily) and what I do during my workouts. I really like seeing both of these improve over time, especially on the workouts. I am definitely getting stronger faster than I am losing weight, but that could easily be written off as muscle weight replacing fat weight.

Another thing I have started recording are my daily goals and how well I do on them. I will discuss this more next week.

Most people have poor memories about where they used to be compared to where they are now. Obviously if you lose 100 pounds, you will notice the difference there, but that’s over the course of months. You barely notice the daily changes, which is why recording those things is useful. Everyday you know that you are progressing in something, even if it’s not something that useful (I record my progress in the video games I play, for example). No matter how you do it, either using a notepad or a spreadsheet (I use both!) or a bunch of sticky notes on a board, monitoring your progress will make it easier to stay on path.

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Next week, three more tips on improving performance. Look forward to it!