I have been working as website developer in Germany for almost six years. During this time I had quite a lot of deadlines and sleepless nights, and also I reached the limits of concentration and skills a few times. Moreover I work at my HalmaStar game, blog and other projects during my free time. I want to share experiences how to keep productivity when you have a lot of work to do yourself.
The first thing what you need to be productive is motivation. You need a reason to work responsibly, be it monetary payment, step in career, or recognition and reputation. Inspirations can be raised by TED talks. One can also program motivation using Meta states.
In order to stay calm and not to get lost in all perplexing tasks of large scope, it’s necessary to write down a list of tasks, assign priorities, and complete them one by one, not taking care about the rest. Usually I create a list of tasks for each project on a separate sheet of paper. When I complete a task, I strike it out from the list. When I complete the sheet of tasks, I throw it away. Every completion is like an accomplished mission. You can feel the progress visually. The method of writing tasks down and assigning priorities is called “Getting Things Done” by the book of the same name written by David Allen.
One needs breaks, otherwise the brain will burn. Some people go to smoke whereas I go to make tea from time to time. So I drink about 5 cups of tea a day. Usually I make tea-breaks between different tasks. One can find Pomodoro technique in the Internets which is about doing tasks in 25-minute intervals doing 5-minute breaks. The name is coming from a kitchen timer of a shape of tomato used to count time how long to cook food.
To keep my mind sharp and comprehending, I use quite a lot of caffeine in the form of coffee, tea, red bull, fritz cola or club mate. Usually a red bull drank after lunch keeps me productive for about six hours.
Routine and easy, but long tasks are best to do at the end of a day, when the organism is tired, but there is some power left.
Jade horses get shot. But who isn’t at risk, doesn’t drink champagne!
Tags: lifestyle, psychology
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