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Online Productivity Enhancement

September 29, 2008

Tags: Beeps, business productivity, Caring For A New Puppy, Dali Burgado, Dr Neil, Dr. Neil Fiore, Habit, Half Hour, Interruptions, Jot, Minute Increments, online business, Precious Time, productivity enhancement, Reading Time, social networking, Text Messaging, The Now Habit, time wasters, Time Wasting Activities, Tiny Time
Posted in: Productivity Tips

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The easiest way to enhance your online business productivity is to keep written track of everything you do.

Keeping written track of what you do will allow you to realize the tiny time wasters that eat up the precious time you have to work your online business.

In most cases we don’t even realize when we are being distracted from our main task.

Consequently, in order to truly minimize the interruptions and concentrate on enhancing our business productivity the first step is to RECOGNIZE when those interruptions pop up.

Some evident examples of time wasters are: checking email, phones, and text messaging.  For those of us who love social networking (particularly Twitter), even hearing Thwirl or Tweetdeck beeps can distract us from our main task for the day.

So, what do we use to keep track of our time and enhance our productivity?

We use a simple sheet - and one of the best strategies I have found to recognize and eliminate time wasters and enhance productivity (from “The Now Habit” by Dr. Neil Fiore) - The Unschedule Sheet.

You can take a sheet such as the one you see in the picture and fill it in with what you are doing throughout the day.

Every half-hour you should jot down what you are working on (15-30 minute increments at a time) so that you keep track of what you do.  Within a week of keeping track of your daily activities you will notice a pattern of “time wasting” activities.

My present biggest time wasters happen to be caring for a new puppy (was evident to me) and email (not so evident because cut down my email reading time to 3-4 times a day months ago).   So now I know I have to adjust my email habits and check no more than twice a day.

If you are on Thwirl or TweetDeck keep your use these Twitter Tools to once or twice daily and make sure you completely exit the program so you don’t hear the “beeps” and get tempted to see what others are tweeting about and get sidetracked from your main project of the day.

I also recommend setting a particular days and times to do your social networking (or any given task for that matter), and give yourself a time limit too.

Once you start seeing the interruption patterns you can make a plan to eliminate them (i.e. check email once a day, turn your cell phone off when you are working on a big task, turn Thwirl off etc).

The great thing about the Unschedule Sheet too is that if you don’t have a set schedule, it will help you self-adjust to a schedule that works for you.

Let me know how you keep productive in your online business tasks.   Would love to hear from you.

Your Partner in Online Productivity,

Dali Burgado

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