Getting more done

There's an interesting thread on Slashdot: http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/03/07/24/2355245.shtml?tid=146&tid=99 about being more productive. The comments are very much worth reading; there are a lot of good ideas there.

One thing I didn't see mentioned is improving your reading speed. I'm very lucky in that regard; I naturally read quickly, and that has made a tremendous difference in my ability to get work done. For those without natural ability, speed reading techniques can add valuable hours to your day. I simply cannot imagine how I could get through my typical day if I couldn't gulp down volumes of written words quickly.

Exercise was mentioned frequently and I agree that is very important. Your brain works better if it has a healthy body supporting it, and exercise is simply too important to ignore. I work most days (the weekend is just days with less outside interruption ) but I also find time for exercise: walking, swimming, and a few pushups and stretching exercises. It may seem like it steals time from your day, but it actually has the opposite effect by making you sharper, more alert, and able to work harder.

Another technique that lets me do more work than most people think they could do is not to always be a perfectionist. I could spend several hours writing a little piece like this, and no doubt it would be better for my attention to it. But I don't work that way: I write it once, read it once, make any obvious corrections needed and leave it at that. Yes, that leaves me open to bad spelling and bad grammar now and then, and sometimes I put down some pretty baffling phrases. But, generally speaking, I trust that it's good enough. If I spent hours and hours worrying about the best way to say things, where to break paragraphs and particularly worried about punctuation (it is my observation that too many people spend too much time worrying about punctuation!), I couldn't get half as much done.

Note that I'm not saying quantity is better than quality - just that you need to know when good enough is good enough and when efforts to polish your work farther run into the law of diminishing returns. Writing is an area where perhaps some people spend too little time polishing and buffing, but I'm convinced that most spend far too much time.

Of course we want to take pride in our work, and attention to detail is often extremely important, but some things just aren't worth fretting over. If you are pressed for time, does the color pattern on the roll of paper towels you are about to buy really matter? If your business is interior design, maybe it does, but for most of us, that's just time wasting effort of little value. Save the time for the important things.

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