Okay you've overcome procrastination, you've got a clear working environment avoiding distractions and you have your list of what you need to do prioritised so you know what is important. What is the best way to work now? I looked into the various gurus and advice available, and it turns out that there is nobody with any credibility in this field. There are plenty of people who will give you all sorts of tips, quite likely good ones. But I want hard data on actual productivity. Well, I'm a scientist. If there is no data out there I'll generate it myself. I will devise an experimental design to test the various factors that might be important and run tests on myself to see which ones work the best.
Let's look at the factors first. These are the various things I want to know.
1. Finishing specific jobs versus doing a set amount of time on each task.
2. Affirmations - do they improve your productivity.
3. Regular breaks - do you get more done with them than without them.
4. Batching - does it really help or is it a more sophisticated form of procrastination?
5. Does tidiness help, i.e., is time spent keeping things in good order time well spent or is it better to focus on getting things done and tidy up later as a separate exercise?
Five factors is rather a lot for a single experiment, and quite a few of those factors have fine tuning issues themselves. This is a classic example of where a factorial experimental design would be helpful.
In the meantime, today I am going to tackle one of the easier issues. I normally give myself regular breaks so today I am going to have just the one break at lunchtime. I'll make that a little easier on myself by doing some tidying up when I would normally take a break.
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