How to be more productive: tips from the creator of the Asana service

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The wonderful Quora service continues to delight us with great answers to pressing questions. This time, we want to tell you what Justin Rosenstein, an excellent programmer and Internet entrepreneur who has put his efforts to create such famous projects as Gmail, Facebook and Asana, told in response to the invitation to share his secrets of productivity.

During his tenure as a programmer and project manager, Justin learned first-hand how important the right organization is, and he put a lot of effort into this issue. As a result, he realized that the effectiveness of any activity depends on many parameters and requires optimization in three directions at once: ordering your environment, your mind and the actual work process.

Optimization of the environment

Avoid any distractions

Let's start right away: multitasking hurts your productivity!

Yes, your feelings can deceive you, and you can feel like a productivity genius while working on multiple tasks at the same time. But in reality this is not the case, and numerous scientific studies prove this. The repeated constant switching between tasks really slows you down!

Therefore, the first and most important thing is focus.

• Turn on Do Not Disturb on your mobile phone.
• Close all browser windows and tabs that are not related to the current task.
• If you need to send a letter, then do not go after that to view unread correspondence.
• Turn off new email notifications on your computer.
• Log out of all chats.

Look for the state of the flow

If you are constantly distracted and your entire day consists of a jumble of meetings, calls and conversations with colleagues, then it is very difficult to find that special state called flow. It is in this state that the best performance is achieved and solutions to even the most complex problems come.

• Set aside special times for meetings and conferences. Let all your colleagues know that it is best to contact you only at this time.
• If possible, ask your company management to set aside one day a week when there will be no meetings.
• Track your performance at different times of the day. Try to distribute tasks in accordance with the observations made.

Master working tools

If your main work is connected with the computer, then every time you reach for the mouse, you waste a few seconds and exit the flow state. Learn and use the most essential keyboard shortcuts that not only save you time, but also reduce distractions.

• Hot keys are present not only in any program, but also in most web applications. Many of them are identical, so once you learn one keyboard shortcut, you can use it all the time.
• Use a program to quickly organize windows on your desktop.

Optimizing the mind

Everything you need to know about proper motivation and engagement can be found in the books of an American journalist and writer. From them you will learn that you really should not manage time or tasks, but your energy.

Take regular breaks

Common sense tells us that the more time we spend at work, the more we get done. But this is not at all true. Humans are not robots, we need time to recover and rest. Research shows that taking a short break every 90 minutes can significantly increase your overall productivity.

Meditate

Here, everything has already been written about the benefits of meditation.

Take care of your body

• Drink water. At the beginning of each day, I put five tall glasses of water on my table. I drink them all for the rest of the day. Their appearance does not allow me to forget about the need to drink more.
• Eat right. A hearty meal with an excess of carbohydrates can be a real disaster for your productivity.
• Go in for sports. Exercising cardio at least twice a week will give you an extra boost in energy.
• In short, make sure that you are not using your free time to harm yourself, but rather to restore and increase your energy reserves.

Find the causes of procrastination and fix them

We usually procrastinate not because we are pathologically lazy, no. Usually the reason is that the task before us causes us some kind of latent (or obvious) discomfort. You can avoid this in the following ways:

• Try to honestly admit to yourself what is the reason for your procrastination and procrastination. Write down on paper what specifically you dislike about your job or current task.
• Break the task down into several easy steps and take them one at a time.
• If you are not able to force yourself to complete any task at the moment, then move on to another, easier and more enjoyable one, and do not immediately run off aimlessly flipping through the Facebook feed. In this case, your work will somehow move, and not stand still.

Process optimization

Have a clear work plan. Clearly distribute all your tasks in it according to their importance and urgency. Precisely prioritizing cases is the key to being productive.

• Do not begin work until all subsequent steps are crystal clear and understandable for you.
• Start with the essentials. Determine what your goal is. Why do you want to achieve it? What steps are required to achieve it? Who is responsible for each step? In what order should the actions be performed?

Assemble a team. Some people prefer to work alone, but big things are not done that way.

• Find a teammate who is the easiest for you to work with. Sometimes there are tasks that you can fight for several days alone, but they will also be completed in a couple of hours with the help of a partner. "Pair programming" is a common technique in software development, but it can be applied to everything else.
• If you still prefer to work on your own, then sometimes have short meetings with yourself. You can ask yourself questions about what you are currently working on, what difficulties you have encountered, and what tasks you have to solve right in a text editor or magazine. Formulating and writing down the answers to these and other questions helps a lot to look at the process from the outside.
• Set and publicly announce deadlines. If you confidently said in front of everyone that you will finish this work by Friday, then you will have to go out of your way so as not to be known as idle talk.
• Track the progress of each task. Of course, as the creator of the service, I recommend it for organizing individual and team work.
• Leave time at the end of each day to take stock. Try to be honest about your current achievements and failures. Draw conclusions from the mistakes you make.

The tips and tricks listed above alone mean too little to make you the most productive person in the world overnight. But all together they build up a powerful system that will help you work many times more efficiently.