Ten Tips on Personal Productivity from #SBSummit

Last week, I shared ten tips from the Savvy Blogging Summit talk about Effective Monetization.  This week, I’ll share ten tips from the talk called Communication and Personal Productivity that was given by Lisa Hone.  (This talk is available for purchase in its entirety, plus worksheets, from the Savvy Blogging team.)

1. Make your goals SMART. This acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timed.

2. Prioritize your goals. Instead of trying to do a million things at once (and spreading yourself so thin that you can’t properly do any of them), invest your energy on the one most important goal at the present.

3. Set aside one (or a few) times a day to do things like check email, go on Twitter, surf the Internet, and the like. Rather than just popping on and off the computer throughout the day, make your time purposeful.  Have specific times of the day (morning, noon, and night, perhaps) when you do your online tasks, and have specific, systematic ways that you do it.

4. Block off a solid block of time for quiet work at your desk (or wherever you work).  Even if it isn’t a long block of time, try to find some time that you can block off that is just for you and your blog.

5. When working on tasks, keep in mind the urgent/important matrix. For this, every task will fall into one part of a quadrant and that will help you to know how to deal with it.

• Urgent and Important – Perform these tasks now
• Urgent, but Not Urgent – Plan to do these tasks next
• Urgent, but Not Important – These don’t move you forward toward your goal.  Postpone these tasks
• Not Urgent and Not Important – Avoid these, if at all possible.  Just be careful that the things you label as Not Urgent and Not Important are correct for this category.

6. Know when good is enough!

7.  Instead of being overwhelmed by a large project, deconstruct it into smaller, bite-sized projects.

8. If you can do a task in a minute or less, do it immediately! Don’t put it off.

9. Try setting your e-mail program to download e-mail every 30 to 60 minutes, rather than every minute. This will prevent you from being distracted and help you maintain a more continuous workflow.

10. Nine tips for overcoming procrastination on tough or time consuming tasks:

• Delete It - What will happen if you just don’t do the task?  Is it really something that has to be done?
• Delegate – See if this task is something that only you can do.  Is there any part of it that someone else can do?
• Do It Now – Putting things off can cause stress and anxiety.  If you can, just do it now.
• Ask for Advice – If you’re stuck, ask a trusted friend or mentor.  If you are part of a blogging network, that is also a great place to get advice and help.
• Chop It Up – Break down a big, tough task into small, manageable portions.
• Obey the 15 Minute Rule – Break down the task into portions that will take 15 minutes or less.
• Have Clear Deadlines – Assign yourself actual deadlines for portions of the task.
• Give Yourself a Reward – Celebrate your accomplishments when you finish a particularly tough task.
• Remove Distractions – If possible, remove any distractions you can while working on your task.  (Since one of my distractions is social media, like Twitter and Facebook, I use Leech Block to help me with this part.)

If you are interested in hearing the whole talk, it is available for purchase (as are all of the Savvy Blogging Summit talks) through the Savvy Blogging Summit website.