Bringing It All Together - Focused Productivity

I don't recommend getting into this position, but I have a shed load of work to do.  I have a very viable business idea that needs some cash and some effort to get it going.   And to fund it and to live while I am at it I have a reasonable consulting business operating.  So my problem is clocking up the billable hours while also keeping up pressure on the more lucrative in the long run project.


So faced with a large pile of work that I simply have to get done, I needed to come up with the most productive way of working possible.

My biggest problem is that I am easily distracted.  And when you are sitting in an office with no boss over your shoulder distractions are very easy to give in to.  On top of that I am very amenable to letting the work expand to fill the time available, and without fixed working hours the time available is basically nearly all the time there is.

So my solution was to try working at the public library.  Deplorable as the cuts are, this has now been cut down to a fairly small number of available hours.  It is only open either in the morning or in the afternoon.  So that is only a four hour slot.

The other good thing about working in a library is that you have social pressure on you. The other people in the library can see whether or not you are working.  So that makes you more inclined to work to project the image that you want to project.

And finally, there is the simple fact that distractions like the larder are now out of reach.  I have to make sure I am ready for a four hour work session, and go prepared.

I use the pomodoro technique, which is another way of increasing the focus.

The last thing that I am doing is using the chain technique.  I have now set myself the goal that all the time I spend in the library is time spent working. I have kept this up for multiple sessions now.  I really don't want to break that chain.  I am hoping that this is a habit I can extend to other areas and locations, but I am already well on the way to developing a sort of Pavlovian response to being in the library.  I am in the library, so I must be working. It is simply the way things work.

I'd love to be able to create other trigger habits like this. I'll focus on the library one for the time being because it is one that is really handy right now. But if I could do the same in my own office that would be great too.

Oh, and I am getting a pile of work done as well.  Which is always nice.