What are the best daily routines of highly productive people?

Ship69

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Hello

I found an interesting thread on Quora which I wanted to get your views on.
"What are the best daily routines of highly productive people?"
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-b...ductive-people


There are some interesting ideas e.g. this guy sounds sensible to me.

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Despite the fact that there are too many things that can be viewed as the best daily routines of the most productive, here are a few ones that are worth your attention. Overall, the highly productive people do a lot of things. But in order to be productive, they:

They Escape Time Stealers. They go offline and shut the social media sites down. There is always someone who want to interrupt the working process and start another pointless chat. They do not let their time be so easily stolen. Productive people finish such conversations right away and avoid the meaningless waste of time.

They Delegate Or Pay. There is no sense in wasting your time trying to do the things you are not good at. If you can pay for something to get done, do it. If you have someone to delegate the task to, do it. You can be sure that your struggles won`t pay off. The highly productive do not try to prove the opposite. They just delegate or pay.

They Use A Second Couple Of Eyes. Instead of spending hours trying to find flaws in in the piece of work, they ask a friend or colleague to take a fresh look at your piece and provide a feedback or a comment. It won`t take too much time for her, whereas it will save you a decent amount of energy that you can channel now towards the things that matter.

They Give Themselves Early Deadlines. Time pressure is their virtue. It makes a positive impact on their focus and productivity since they do not have any time for the things that do not matter. Nevertheless, they keep the deadlines realistic. Otherwise, there is a risk harming the quality and becoming stressed and overwhelmed.

They Monotask. Although it might seem counterintuitive, it takes much more time to multitask the work than execute the tasks one by one. One thing at a time. That`s the rule that allows to be highly productive and get the things done faster.

They Start One Night Before. The highly productive have a ritual. Before going to bed, they devote a few minutes to planning and organizing the next day. Clarity does matter. Having a clear vision of what and how you want to get done next day is crucial. It allows to visualize the way you execute the task and create the easiest and the fastest way to meet your objectives.

They Schedule Everything. Schedule is crucial. It is not just an order of tasks to undertake, it is a blueprint for the upcoming day.Have a scheduled sequence of tasks before you get down to work. It will save you a decent amount of time during the working process, because you will not need to decide what to do next, but rather merely follow the plan.

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Do you have any favourite tips from either that thread or from elsewhere on this subject, that you'd like to share?

Cheers

J
 

TesTeq

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Ship69 said:
They Give Themselves Early Deadlines. Time pressure is their virtue. It makes a positive impact on their focus and productivity since they do not have any time for the things that do not matter. Nevertheless, they keep the deadlines realistic. Otherwise, there is a risk harming the quality and becoming stressed and overwhelmed.

I know a very accomplished CEO that does everything at the last possible moment. And beyond. It is very effective method for him because some problems dissolve automagically by themselves and for solving other problem he has limited time so in the crisis mode he is very focused and efficient.

What do you think?
 

Gardener

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A book about programming that I've read in the past year (Peopleware? Slack? Something else?) states that there's evidence that programmers are most productive when they have NO schedule. Now, it didn't assert that that was a realistic situation; the point was that tight schedules don't increase productivity, but instead reduce it. ("Quote: People under time pressure don't THINK faster.")

In general, I don't believe that time pressure is valuable; I believe that it usually opposes a quality result, and even opposes productivity and efficiency. Time pressure encourages getting it over with, getting it done, getting to the relief of a deadline completed and a line on the progress report to the manager or a demo-ready feature.

Time pressure rewards "done"; it doesn't reward doing and it doesn't reward doing well. And there's a potential cost to "done"--you release the task and the thought process and the associated support materials. If you have to pick all that up again because it was only kinda-sorta-good-enough-for-the-status-report done, that takes time again. If you'd just calmly kept working until you were really, truly, "done done", you'd probably have taken less time and produced a better product.

I do believe that a personal culture of finishing, of not leaving a bunch of loose ends, is valuable. And I think that a culture of finishing is in conflict with a culture of time pressure.
 

Oogiem

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Gardener said:
I do believe that a personal culture of finishing, of not leaving a bunch of loose ends, is valuable. And I think that a culture of finishing is in conflict with a culture of time pressure.

YES!!!!!

No time to explain my hearty endorsement but YES YES YES
 

bcmyers2112

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In support of Testeq's observation, here is an interesting defense of procrastination: http://www.cracked.com/video_19906_why-procrastination-actually-good-you.html

I think the benefits or lack thereof of "time pressure," as with anything we discuss here, depend a lot on circumstances. Some people may do their best work under pressure and others may not.

As for a conflict between a "culture of finishing" vs. a "culture of time pressure," again I think it depends. On the one hand, sending out a product before it is ready is a bad idea. I read somewhere that a rush to get the Samsung Note 7 to market may have led to the creation of the only phone that is at significant risk of exploding in your pocket. That was good for no one.

On the other hand, I remember reading about the productivity principles practiced by Jack Kirby, the illustrator who co-created a lot of Marvel Comics' most enduring properties. Whether he used the phrase or not, he was a big believer that "done is better than perfect." He had to crank out art on a deadline, and he found a way to meet those deadlines while still creating brilliant and innovative work. I myself have found that it is often best to stop diddling with a project or task and just finish it. The alternative is often standing still, striving for an unattainable level of perfection.

As for the other productivity principles in the original post, if they work for someone, great. They're not all my cup of tea. I've tried scheduling my days and it never worked for me. Does that mean scheduling everything is always bad? I can't say. I'm not a producitivity expert. I just know it didn't work for me.
 

Gardener

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bcmyers2112 said:
Whether he used the phrase or not, he was a big believer that "done is better than perfect."

Oh, I'm with him/you there. When I say "finishing", I don't mean "perfect". In fact, "finishing" can often be a good defense against perfectionism. When you're looking at a bunch of loose ends, you have, as I see it, three choices for each one:

1) Do it just right.
2) Think it over and find and implement a compromise.
3) Put it off to think about later.

(3) takes the least time, and that's what time pressure encourages. It's also what perfectionism encourages--perfection is rarely possible, so if you insist on perfection, you're likely to put things off until you can find a way to be perfect.

But a culture of "finishing" discourages putting things off. So that leaves you with (1) and (2)--you choose which things to do just right, and which ones to compromise on. And that choice takes some time, and then implementing the choices takes time. But when you're done, you're finished.

I realize that there's something a bit circular about this--after all, you could sit and work on one tiny thing forever and ever. The fact that you ever finish anything to a level short of perfection suggests that there's some time pressure floating around somewhere.

I guess the distinction that I'm making is whether the time pressure is artificial.

As a non-office example, I recently prepared a garden bed for garlic. There were obstacles to perfection--the soil was the wrong moisture level, I had no one available to keep me company if I used the rototiller (we have a rule of no power tilling without someone to call 911 when I cut my foot off), I was dithering about whether to use more compost to improve the soil tilth or less compost to avoid encouraging symphlans. (A soil pest in my area--long story.) And I was uncertain about how to optimize fertilization to minimize feeding during the growing season when I may be too busy to do so.

If I were reporting to some manager, with outside time pressure, I would have broadforked the beds so that I could report in my status report, "It's forked, so it's mostly done, just a few loose ends, compost, irrigation, mumble mumble."

If I were setting an artificial "time pressure" deadline for myself of, say, getting X beds prepped by Y date, I might have similarly just broadforked it and left it alone until I got back to it. Getting back to it would have involved a non-trivial bit of effort to pick the task up again. Edited to add: Or I might never have picked up the task again, and either skipped planting the garlic or planted the garlic in an only half-prepared bed.

If I were going for perfection, I would have waited for a perfect moisture level, waited for someone to be available as a rototiller spotter, done a bunch of research on compost and symphlans, done a bunch more research on rock powders and other slow-release fertilizer, and gotten the bed done about two months after the garlic should have gone in.

But I was going for "finished". I presoaked the bed to get it to an acceptable though not perfect moisture level, broadforked it and forked it AND hoed it to get it to an acceptable though not perfect level of tilth, chose an acceptable though not perfect compost and fertilization scheme, set up near-perfect permanent irrigation for the bed (because in a region with summer drought, one of my biggest goals is maximum efficiency in water use) and the bed was Finished.

Getting it Finished took about twice as much time as the time-pressure "just broadfork it and check it off" time. And it wasn't perfect. The end result was, IMO, a very good compromise of schedule, effort, and quality of result.
 

RAM

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Gardener said:
A book about programming that I've read in the past year (Peopleware? Slack? Something else?) states that there's evidence that programmers are most productive when they have NO schedule. .

It could have been: Peopleware: Productive projects and teams.

The main points from the chapter 'Parkinson’s Law Revisited' are:
  • Parkinson law is the notion that work expands to fill the time allocated for it.
  • The Parkinson law does not apply to people who enjoy their job.
  • Data from the University of South Wales (1985) showed that if a supervisor made the estimate the productivity is 6.6, if the programmer made the estimate the productivity is 8.0, and without any estimate the productivity is 12.0
The given explanation for the lower productivity is that the 'morale drops to the bottom' in case of unrealistic deadlines.

From my own experience I know that programmers having to meet a tight deadline will not test their own code at all, and just deliver the product on the deadline knowing that not all required features have been coded yet and doing that without telling that, which is of course a sign of bad morale. After two or three weeks the testers deliver a structured report which features do not work yet. Meanwhile, as programmer you started to work on another project managed by another supervisor, who was waiting long for your resources coming available. The first supervisor will probably have a hard time to get you back for doing the rework. This causes a lot of delay and decreases productivity.

in general: not meeting the deadlines of a schedule is demotivating
 

jlchan37

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TesTeq said:
I know a very accomplished CEO that does everything at the last possible moment. And beyond. It is very effective method for him because some problems dissolve automagically by themselves and for solving other problem he has limited time so in the crisis mode he is very focused and efficient.

What do you think?

I think that this CEO's work habits are very hard on his support staff and others who depend on him for direction and leadership. Some higher-ups do work from "crisis to crisis" quite well but most employees don't like the pressure that management style brings with it.

For example, I had a boss who would simply ignore clients/customers until they threatened to take their business elsewhere or sue him. He was able to talk people around beautifully but he lost me, as a valued support staff member, because I got run down by the 15, "why doesn't ----- ever return my phone calls" interactions I had to deal with everyday.

Also, some of your CEO's problems probably really did disappear by themselves but others likely just fell through the cracks temporarily only to reappear in the future as bigger issues of concern.
 

Gardener

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RAM said:
It could have been: Peopleware: Productive projects and teams.

The main points from the chapter 'Parkinson’s Law Revisited' are:
  • Parkinson law is the notion that work expands to fill the time allocated for it.
  • The Parkinson law does not apply to people who enjoy their job.
  • Data from the University of South Wales (1985) showed that if a supervisor made the estimate the productivity is 6.6, if the programmer made the estimate the productivity is 8.0, and without any estimate the productivity is 12.0
The given explanation for the lower productivity is that the 'morale drops to the bottom' in case of unrealistic deadlines.

From my own experience I know that programmers having to meet a tight deadline will not test their own code at all, and just deliver the product on the deadline knowing that not all required features have been coded yet and doing that without telling that, which is of course a sign of bad morale. After two or three weeks the testers deliver a structured report which features do not work yet. Meanwhile, as programmer you started to work on another project managed by another supervisor, who was waiting long for your resources coming available. The first supervisor will probably have a hard time to get you back for doing the rework. This causes a lot of delay and decreases productivity.

in general: not meeting the deadlines of a schedule is demotivating

Yes! What you quote definitely sounds like it.

And, yep, your experience sounds about right.
 

bcmyers2112

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@Gardener: I read your post a few times to make sure I understood you. It sounds like you're saying that imposing time pressure without regard for quality can result in half-@$$ed work. If so, I agree with you. If that's not what you meant, then pardon my confusion.

Although in a professional setting your employer has the right to set productivity goals and impose deadlines, however "arbitrary" you feel them to be. I look at any deadline imposed by my boss as real.

I do understand the pain of working for a boss who focuses on the number of activities accomplished at the expense of the larger outcomes that should be achieved. In fact, I changed jobs over the summer for that very reason.

Edited to add: Maybe my summary is too simplistic. If I understand you correctly, you're saying a balance needs to be struck between setting unrealistic deadlines and just never getting anything done. Again, I agree. I think setting deadlines, however, arbitrary, is useful in a group setting but only if one allows for renegotiation of such deadlines where warranted. Again, if I'm just not getting it I'm open to being corrected. :)
 

Gardener

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bcmyers2112 said:
@Gardener: I read your post a few times to make sure I understood you. It sounds like you're saying that imposing time pressure without regard for quality can result in half-@$$ed work. If so, I agree with you. If that's not what you meant, then pardon my confusion.

Well, I would argue that imposing time pressure, period, is likely to cause a deterioration in the quality of the work. I feel that time pressure is inherently negative. It may in many cases be unavoidable, but it's not good. The person doing a task is best equipped to judge the balance of time and quality. Letting them make that judgement is likely to result in the greatest value per unit of effort.

This assumes, of course, that the person doing the task cares about the task. And management tends to be based on the assumption that no one cares about anything. But that assumption is generally wrong. When it's right--when it's true that the employees don't care about the quality of their work--that rightness is very strong evidence that management is doing a really, really lousy job. The solution isn't to do an even worse job by increasing time pressure.

bcmyers2112 said:
Although in a professional setting your employer has the right to set productivity goals and impose deadlines, however "arbitrary" you feel them to be. I look at any deadline imposed by my boss as real.

That depends on your definition of real. Will there be consequences for not meeting the deadline? Yes. Are those consequences inherent in the work (missing the ideal planting time, missing a market window) or are they just a result of a deadline that has no inherent meaning?

One of the points made in either Slack or Peopleware is that management tends to have the false idea that unrealistic deadlines may not help, but at least won't hurt. And they're wrong; they will hurt. If a project's realistic completion date is June, then telling the team that they must finish by April is likely to result in them finishing by September.

Yes, I picked those dates out of the air; my point is that time pressure causes delays, it doesn't eliminate them. It results in hurried work to simulate completion of milestones, rework of that sloppy hurried work, repeat, repeat, repeat. Even after all the cleanup and rework is done, odds are that the product is of lower quality than it would have been if the realistic completion date, plus some slack for the unexpected, had been accepted in the first place.
 

Oogiem

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Gardener said:
Well, I would argue that imposing time pressure, period, is likely to cause a deterioration in the quality of the work. I feel that time pressure is inherently negative. It may in many cases be unavoidable, but it's not good. The person doing a task is best equipped to judge the balance of time and quality. Letting them make that judgement is likely to result in the greatest value per unit of effort.....

my point is that time pressure causes delays, it doesn't eliminate them. It results in hurried work to simulate completion of milestones, rework of that sloppy hurried work, repeat, repeat, repeat. Even after all the cleanup and rework is done, odds are that the product is of lower quality than it would have been if the realistic completion date, plus some slack for the unexpected, had been accepted in the first place.

As a former Systems Engineer I strongly support this notion. Nothing is guaranteed to demoralize an engineering team than be given deadlines they had no part in deciding on. For many complex projects the total magnitude of the work isn't known until you are well into the design and implementation. In my experience engineers work best when given a clear description of the desired result and then management gets the heck out of the way. A good manager runs interference between the engineering team and the rest of the company. The manager should intercept interruptions, deal with internal issues and in general make sure the team actually doing the work has the time and freedom to get it done.
 

matwbt

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I like getting up early to work on personal hobbies uninterrupted for a little over an hour.

As far as work goes, I'll spend around 15 minutes every morning doing a simplified GTD list on paper divided into two columns- what actions I need to do NOW and what action can wait until LATER. This has helped me focus and be more efficient.
 
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