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Productivity, multitasking and notification
It is now well established that multitasking is impacting productivity significantly. If you do a quick Google search with the terms “multitasking and productivity”, you will get over 1.4 million hits but the first few are quite interesting. The average reduction in productivity due to multitasking is estimated to be about 40%. Another interesting study related to impact on organization, across 45 different organizations, determined that the impact of reducing multitasking ranges from 13% to 150% increase in productivity.
In fact, what ever you do, including simple daily life tasks, multitasking simply means that each things you are doing simultaneously is done at less than full capacity, full attention.
Why not give (productivity) software this year!
n.
1. The quality of being productive.2. Economics The rate at which goods or services are produced especially output per unit of labor.3. Ecology The rate at which radiant energy is used by producers to form organic substances as food for consumers.
Why not give yourself or a love one access to well design software? With the new years usually comes the time to take resolution(s). And like most they are forgotten a few weeks later. This is because, we human being, get our attention so easily put elsewhere, diverted by what surround us, in particular the consumption media. So, we tend to get into an unproductive state by putting off what must or should be done. Simply stated procrastinating.
pro·cras·ti·nate (pr-krst-nt, pr-)
v. pro·cras·ti·nat·ed, pro·cras·ti·nat·ing, pro·cras·ti·natesv.intr.To put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness.
v.tr.
To postpone or delay needlessly.
- Professional digital document management: DevonThink Pro Office and DevonThink To Go. On the Mac, you have indexing and AI doing automatic filing for you. No need for Tags. Tagging is a good concept but it does not scale and its efficiency certainly breaks down once you have tens of thousands of files.
- Note taking app: Evernote (free) or NoteBook. I also find Apple Notes useful since it is always with me on my Mac, iPhone and iPad.
- Task manager: Wunderlist (free – perfect for student and much better than Apple Reminder) or professional grade Cultured Code Things and OmniFocus.
- MindMapping software: XMind (free) and iThoughts (Nice interface, intuitive to use, my favorite).
- Project management (for large projects): Merlin and OmniPlan.
- PDF management and citation software: Papers 2 (stay away from the “new” Papers 3), Sente or Zetero (free).
Some software should also allow you to get stuff done so you do not have to. In that category, I could not live in the digital world without:
- 1Password: Strong passwords for all for all of your accounts, safely stored using the best encryption scheme. Never loose time again with passwords.
- SaneBox: Made me realize that over 40% of my incoming e-mails are non actionable. SaneBox get them out of the way automatically for me. I never thought I would say this (I work with e-mail since 1991!!!), but 5$/month well spent. Work with IMAP, Exchange, iCloud, GMAIL.
- MacUpdate Desktop: Unless you get all of your software from the Apple Store on OSX, you need to track your software and keep them up to date. MacUpdate does this for you very efficiently. Run it once a month, no sweat.
- Alfred: Spotlight on steroid!
29 Ways to Stay Creative [infographic]
Lindsey Lawrence over at Daily Infographic has generated a very nice infographic about 29 things you can do in order to stay creative. I agree with most of the items, and while creativity is not related directly to productivity, some of these items work for both 😉
About productivity…
It is not enough to be busy… The question is: what are we busy about?
― Henry David Thoreau
Productivity is not the same creativity, though being creative will get you lots of things to do for which you will need to be productive to get them done. In short, you need both 😉
I have known individuals who define their work productivity by being present at work 7 days a week, non-stop for 12 hours per day. I must say these encounters were mainly while working as a postdoctoral fellow in the USA. While it might appears more acute in that country, it is encountered in others as well.
