I'm not busy at all.

But that does not mean I have time to meat people. :twisted:

I'm FAR too busy to write reply to this thread.

If you never take time... you will never have time.

I am not a busy person but time seems to fly sometimes... well most of the time.

I say I'm going to do something later, and when the time comes I never do it.

[size=18][b]33 Rules to Boost Your Productivity[/b][/size]

Productivity heuristics are behavioral rules (some general, some situation-specific) that can help us get things done more efficiently. Here are some of my favorites:

[list=1][*][b]Nuke it![/b] The most efficient way to get through a task is to delete it. If it doesn’t need to be done, get it off your to do list.
[*][b]Daily goals.[/b] Without a clear focus, it’s too easy to succumb to distractions. Set targets for each day in advance. Decide what you’ll do; then do it.
[*][b]Worst first.[/b] To defeat procrastination learn to tackle your most unpleasant task first thing in the morning instead of delaying it until later in the day. This small victory will set the tone for a very productive day.
[*][b]Peak times.[/b] Identify your peak cycles of productivity, and schedule your most important tasks for those times. Work on minor tasks during your non-peak times.
[*][b]No-comm zones.[/b] Allocate uninterruptible blocks of time for solo work where you must concentrate. Schedule light, interruptible tasks for your open-comm periods and more challenging projects for your no-comm periods.
[*][b]Mini-milestones.[/b] When you begin a task, identify the target you must reach before you can stop working. For example, when working on a book, you could decide not to get up until you’ve written at least 1000 words. Hit your target no matter what.
[*][b]Timeboxing.[/b] Give yourself a fixed time period, like 30 minutes, to make a dent in a task. Don’t worry about how far you get. Just put in the time.
[*][b]Batching.[/b] Batch similar tasks like phone calls or errands into a single chunk, and knock them off in a single session.
[*][b]Early bird.[/b] Get up early in the morning, like at 5am, and go straight to work on your most important task. You can often get more done before 8am than most people do in a day.
[*][b]Cone of silence.[/b] Take a laptop with no network or WiFi access, and go to a place where you can work flat out without distractions, such as a library, park, coffee house, or your own backyard. Leave your comm gadgets behind.
[*][b]Tempo.[/b] Deliberately pick up the pace, and try to move a little faster than usual. Speak faster. Walk faster. Type faster. Read faster. Go home sooner.
[*][b]Relaxify.[/b] Reduce stress by cultivating a relaxing, clutter-free workspace. See 10 Ways to Relaxify Your Workspace.
[*][b]Agendas.[/b] Provide clear written agendas to meeting participants in advance. This greatly improves meeting focus and efficiency. You can use it for phone calls too.
[*][b]Pareto.[/b] The Pareto principle is the 80-20 rule, which states that 80% of the value of a task comes from 20% of the effort. Focus your energy on that critical 20%, and don’t overengineer the non-critical 80%.
[*][b]Ready-fire-aim.[/b] Bust procrastination by taking action immediately after setting a goal, even if the action isn’t perfectly planned. You can always adjust course along the way.
[*][b]Minuteman.[/b] Once you have the information you need to make a decision, start a timer and give yourself just 60 seconds to make the actual decision. Take a whole minute to vacillate and second-guess yourself all you want, but come out the other end with a clear choice. Once your decision is made, take some kind of action to set it in motion.
[*][b]Deadline.[/b] Set a deadline for task completion, and use it as a focal point to stay on track.
[*][b]Promise.[/b] Tell others of your commitments, since they’ll help hold you accountable.
[*][b]Punctuality.[/b] Whatever it takes, show up on time. Arrive early.
[*][b]Gap reading.[/b] Use reading to fill in those odd periods like waiting for an appointment, standing in line, or while the coffee is brewing. If you’re a male, you can even read an article while shaving (preferably with an electric razor). That’s 365 articles a year.
[*][b]Resonance.[/b] Visualize your goal as already accomplished. Put yourself into a state of actually being there. Make it real in your mind, and you’ll soon see it in your reality.
[*][b]Glittering prizes.[/b] Give yourself frequent rewards for achievement. See a movie, book a professional massage, or spend a day at an amusement park.
[*][b]Quad 2.[/b] Separate the truly important tasks from the merely urgent. Allocate blocks of time to work on the critical Quadrant 2 tasks, those which are important but rarely urgent, such as physical exercise, writing a book, and finding a relationship partner.
[*][b]Continuum.[/b] At the end of your workday, identify the first task you’ll work on the next day, and set out the materials in advance. The next day begin working on that task immediately.
[*][b]Slice and dice.[/b] Break complex projects into smaller, well-defined tasks. Focus on completing just one of those tasks.
[*][b]Single-handling.[/b] Once you begin a task, stick with it until it’s 100% complete. Don’t switch tasks in the middle. When distractions come up, jot them down to be dealt with later.
[*][b]Randomize.[/b] Pick a totally random piece of a larger project, and complete it. Pay one random bill. Make one phone call. Write page 42 of your book.
[*][b]Insanely bad.[/b] Defeat perfectionism by completing your task in an intentionally terrible fashion, knowing you need never share the results with anyone. Write a blog post about the taste of salt, design a hideously dysfunctional web site, or create a business plan that guarantees a first-year bankruptcy. With a truly horrendous first draft, there’s nowhere to go but up.
[*][b]30 days.[/b] Identify a new habit you’d like to form, and commit to sticking with it for just 30 days. A temporary commitment is much easier to keep than a permanent one.
[*][b]Delegate.[/b] Convince someone else to do it for you.
[*][b]Cross-pollination.[/b] Sign up for martial arts, start a blog, or join an improv group. You’ll often encounter ideas in one field that can boost your performance in another.
[*][b]Intuition.[/b] Go with your gut instinct. It’s probably right.
[*][b]Optimization.[/b] Identify the processes you use most often, and write them down step-by-step. Refactor them on paper for greater efficiency. Then implement and test your improved processes. Sometimes we just can’t see what’s right in front of us until we examine it under a microscope.[/list:o]

I'm not loving the jargon but that could be a decent reference. Some of these things sink in over time and with practise and even if it only causes a one-off achievement, good.

_________________

On a tangential theme:

[list]

"[url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/05/03/do... wrote:

Bryony Gordon[/url]"][list][size=13]
[b]Slow down! You're all going nowhere fast[/b]

The earth did not shatter when psychologists announced yesterday that the pace of life in cities is faster than it was 10 years ago.

"What a surprise," I sneered, as I read the news while simultaneously making the kids' breakfast, conference-calling with some hedge-fund managers in Hong Kong, and instructing the nanny that tonight was football and could she stock up on some organic goji berries and new ballet slippers for Octavia. "Why don't these morons stop wasting my time?"

Or did I think it a nanosecond later, as I rushed out of the door, into my car, applying my lipstick and checking my BlackBerry to find out which of the 78 meetings I needed to go to first?

Hang on. Wait just one moment. There is something not quite right here. Oh yes. I don't have a BlackBerry. Or children. Or, indeed, a car. But mostly, what is wrong here is that I never rush anywhere.

I read this piece about pace of life some time around 10am. I say some time around 10am, but I cannot be sure as I do not own a watch. But it was definitely several hours after everybody else, or maybe several hours before - I can never be sure if people are too busy to read papers nowadays. If the latter is the case, good afternoon.

I read it on the Tube platform, letting several trains pass because I wanted a seat and didn't think spending 30 minutes pressed against an old man was worth it to get into the office four minutes early.

And as I watched my maniacal fellow Londoners fling themselves through Tube doors and into the safe, comforting warmth of a stranger's armpit - which is quite touching, really - I thought: "Yup. The world is getting faster. So why is it that I feel as if I am getting slower?"

If life was one of those film sequences where everyone is speeded up except for the person standing in the middle, I would be that person. That slow, ambling, slightly stunned person, whose editor is spinning around, barking at them to JUST THIS ONCE FILE YOUR NOTEBOOK ON TIME FOR GOD'S SAKE GORDON WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU WERE YOU DROPPED ON YOUR HEAD AS A BABY etc etc and so on.

I worry for her health, really I do. Hers and everyone else's. Whenever I inquire after the wellbeing of a colleague or a friend, they always say very quickly, "Gnnnnnnnr! stressed!", which is just a polite - if inarticulate - way of saying "I don't have time to talk to you unless you are also booked into this very important meeting I am rushing off to in training room 895."

But I am never booked into any meetings. I used to dream of being worthy enough to have to go to meetings - even unimportant ones - until I actually did have to rush off to one. I thought: "Hey, look at me! Aren't I cool? This is exciting!"

But it wasn't. It was just boring. People talked and talked about nothing in particular, and then nothing in particular got done about anything at all.

I have a close friend who is always busy. He works from six in the morning until eight in the evening most days. I met him for a brief drink the other day. It was so brief, this was about all of the conversation:

Me: "How can you possibly have enough work to fill 14 hours a day, five days a week? Are you the Prime Minister? [He is not]. What exactly do you do all day?"

Him [sighing]: "I'm not entirely sure, Bryony. I'm not entirely sure."

And it occurred to me, as he raced off to meet the head of gobbledegook at the bank of whateveritscalled and left me forlornly nursing my glass of red, that it is very lonely being slow, but not half as lonely as it must be to be going in such a hurry.

We have allowed ourselves to get into that horrible American habit of working for the sake of it, and looking stressed all the time to impress our bosses and, I rather suspect, our friends and underlings.

But quantity, as we all know, doesn't always equal quality. What exactly are we so busy doing?

They've got it right on the continent, haven't they? Shorter hours, siestas, happiness. And then there's us, hurrying to an early grave. Going nowhere fast.[/size][/list:u]

"khan" wrote:

[*][b]Gap reading.[/b] Use reading to fill in those odd periods like waiting for an appointment, standing in line, or while the coffee is brewing. [b] If you’re a male, you can even read an article while shaving (preferably with an electric razor). That’s 365 articles a year. [/b]

thats only about 24 articles a year :oops:

since i had a kid im always busy, im actually quite fed up but whining doesn't solve anything so i guess i've become resigned to it, it's life.

i was thinking the other day if i was wealthy enough i would hire someone to help me out, how Dave has someone to help Annette. As long as im present then i'd love that, coz right now im lucky if i get to go to the bathroom without this cling on crying his eyes out. I always feel on edge coz of it, i'm hardly every relaxed these days.

I get 45 mins-1 hr free in morn, and afternoon, that's whn he naps. If i'm lucky i have no domestic chores and i can do some reading or get online. Other than that i'm free from 10pm but i'm usually so worn out i just wana go to sleep.

I suppose it's good in one way i no longer have too much idle time on my hands. Before i got married i had far too much spare time, even if i engaged in lots of activities end of the day i spent too much time on the computer playing games, using forums etc etc.

My bruv said i'm like a drill sergeant with my kid, just coz i follow a routine, but that's the only way i'll keep my sanity. if he has no routine, he will control me, and parents are supposed to be in control not a lickle child with a wet nappy lol.

http//engtech.wordpress.com/2007/04/26/get-more-done-in-less-time-productivity-efficiency-effectiveness/