TheWayoftheWeb

Content and Digital Marketing Specialists

productivity

3 quick productivity tips for the weekend

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If you’re like me, you’ve probably skimmed through a variety of productivity tips every week, planned to take a closer look, and then forgotten about them by the weekend. But recently, I’ve made 3 key changes which have really helped my productivity by reducing the information overload we’re all experience between email, social networks and the constrant stream of new content being published.

1. Archive all emails older than 2012:

With the amount of emails I get on a daily basis, Inbox Zero seemed about as likely as taking a vacation in Narnia this year. Prior to the last two weeks, I’d kept trying to delete or respond all emails, but the number never seemed to drop below 1500 which was pretty overwhelming. By archiving I can reassure the librarian squirrel instinct in me the email is still searchable, but now I’ve got a far more manageable 200 emails left for 2012 to action or file for responses. Much less stressful, and suddenly my email looks more like an actual action list, rather than a mess.

 

2. Cut down on RSS:

RSS is not dead – it’s still the most effective content delivery system around. The problem is it’s too effective in allowing me to hoarde every possible website I enjoy, but noone has come up with a way to de-dupe the echo chamber that is particularly bad for tech blogs. So in addition to removing a number of sites I rarely get useful information or great entertainment from, I’ve also cut down on the number that constantly publish ‘me too’ coverage.

I’ve also resolved to only check RSS at the end of the day, when everything else is done or scheduled for the following day – I love keeping up with the latest news and the best articles and features, but I’m not running a site for breaking news, so I don’t really need to check RSS every 30 or 60 minutes these days.

 

3. Kill cross-platform duplication

I’ve suddenly realised that I read some sites via RSS, see their updates on Facebook and their tweets on Twitter, as well as an occasional appearance on Google+. And there are very few people in the world who I need to pay that close attention to.

I’ve finally been making use of the ‘Hide All By’ option next to every Facebook update, and it’s definitely helping in making it a more usable social network, and letting me actually use it to keep up with my friends. The brands I like still get a ‘Like’ for their page for what it’s worth, and I don’t have to be bombarded by updates from a 10-year-old film I listed on my profile years ago.

 

OK, so this isn’t the most comprehensive productivity toolset you’ll see, but importantly I’m getting much more done with probably 30 minutes of effort to archive emails, unsubscribe to some sites and hide some Facebook posts. That’s short enough that you don’t have to wait until next weekend to get it done…

The best productivity tip you’ll ever get…

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One of the best things about running my own small businesses rather than working in a large company has been the fact that I’ve been facing up to challenges and weaknesses rather than being able to find someone to delegate them to. I’m lucky enough to be able to get very good advice from a number of successful people, and there are times when paying for external assistance makes sense – for instance, when it comes to legal issues or accounting. But it’s still down to me to get that assistance sorted and make the decisions, and it’s down to me to understand enough about each subject to judge whether I’ve gone with the right people.

And that means overcoming the force of resistance.

It’s something that I talked a little about in the context of reviewing ‘Do The Work‘, but there’s also a very simple phsychological trick which is invaluable, and which I picked up from the very useful 59 Seconds by Professor Richard Wiseman. It’s a really good book that distills down a lot of the self-help advice you see being sold into very quick and simple advice based on scientific research, and aims to help you change in a matter of minutes, not months.

One of the tips on motivation and productivity references the ‘Zeigarnik Effect‘, which you’ve probably experienced, even if you didn’t realise it. Named after Bluma Zeigarnik, who first noticed the effect of unfinished activity on waiters in the 1920s, the lesson is simple. If you start something for a few minutes, it will stick in your mind, and your anxious mind will keep referencing it until it’s finished. And that is likely to be enough for even chronic procrastinators to finish the most arduous of tasks without any other tricks or tools.

It’s why ToDo lists help, or why focusing for 20 minutes with the Pomodoro Technique can work so well – because you’re forced to sit down and start the thing you’ve been putting off because it’s big and scary.

But just by getting started, you’ll be much closer to finishing it, and moving onto the next thing!

And it’s certainly working for me – whether it’s writing down the initial outline or draft of a marketing strategy, tackling the admin side of business, or even getting blog posts published!

Three more reasons not to under-estimate gaming

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Most people are probably aware that I’m deeply interested in videogames and the gamification of the world which is occurring as more and more businesses and individuals look at what is able to be produced by game methodology.

For example:

  • More than a billion hours are being spent on Xbox Live each month. That’s just one of the three console platforms, and it equates to each of the 25 million current Xbox Live subscribers contributing around 40 hours of time each month.
  • Taken globally across every platform, there are figures as high as 3 billion hours a week. And while efforts to adapt that productivity are underway, it turns out that besides the potential risks of addiction etc, gaming actually may be beneficial to your health and wellbeing in some specific ways. That is – no matter how superficial the game and the output, by enabling you to experience positive emotions and social bonds, you’re likely to live longer, do better at work, and even have longer, happier marriages.
  • There’s a brilliant quote in the video of Tom Chatfield embedded below which sums up online gaming perfectly. For hundreds of thousands of years, humans have evolved in certain ways to perform tasks and get enjoyment from them. Crucially, videogames allow us to reverse-engineer everything, to create worlds which are perfectly tailored to the ways that humans have evolved.

Another of the points he makes which deserves repeating is the fact that an online game allows the measurement of over 1 billion data points – everything that anyone has ever done in that entire world can be tracked, measured and used for optimisation.

And it also justifies the inordinate amount of time I’ve spent in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 recently – the combination of a social group who are online almost nightly, and the rat pellet feed of rewards and achievements for frenetic (and frustrating on a slow net connection) action.

The other element of the games industry that will be of interest to the publishing/marketing/media non-gamers is that the games industry is relatively young, highly technical, and going through the same challenges as traditional media – how to compete with the challenges of a second-hand games market, how to utilise the ability for gamers to digitally download content, how to implement freemium and subscription models etc.

The difference is that there’s a lot less legacy and inertia to overcome – hence the success of Steam, or the release of the demo/minigame Dead Rising 2:Case Zero as a paid download exclusively for the Xbox 360. It sold 300,000 copies in the first week, and over 500,000 in the first fortnight as a prequel to the forthcoming full retail game, and as content sufficient enough to stand alone.

Through in motion-controls which are going to reach enough people to have an influence almost on a par with the touchscreens of smartphones and tablets, and there’s a lot there – something I’ll continue to expand upon…

So have you launched a new project yet?

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A reasonable amount of people apparently saw my post yesterday on how little it costs to launch a new media brand or project online.

So if you were one of those people – have you launched something yet? Plan to? Started thinking about it?

If you weren’t one of those people – go have a look, as it might prompt you to do something. Even if you’re one of the many digitally aware people who realise how quickly and easily you can produce content online, maybe it might spur you to actually go and do something with that knowledge.

And what better time to start than now? It’s Friday in the UK, and you’ve got a whole weekend ahead of you to get something done. Don’t fancy writing? Why not record some audio? Or some video?

I’d love it if just one person reading happens to be inspired to go and produce one thing this weekend – so let me know if you do…

And in return, I’m going to be finding ways to get more productive on my own sites, so I’ll be able to share some more tips and the results shortly…

Another great tool for improving email – this time, Outlook

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I’ve already shown how to improve your email experiences with the Remember The Milk gadget for Googlemail, and OtherInbox for filtering signups and other email detritus. But, like many people, I’m tied to Outlook for my main corporate email – but there’s an easy way to improve it with Xobni, that just got even better.

It’s an add-in for Outlook which search funtions, email anlytics and more, including a useful list of which documents have been sent to other people in email conversations. Plus it also already featured integration with LinkedIn for more details about who is emailing you.

Now the latest release includes integration with Yahoo Mail!, Facebook, Hoovers and enhanced Skype functionality.

If you’re using Outlook, Xobni is highly recommended.

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