Recently while I was in conversation with one of my aniblogger pals, she was lamenting that she felt like she had too much to do and not enough time/energy/etc. to get it done. Turns out that thanks to my hectic line of work, I’ve discovered quite a few resources and strategies over the years that have helped me maximize my results, and I figured you might find them helpful too. Here are a couple of the ones that have benefited me the most:

  1. Would you like to quadruple your efficiency? I’m putting this one first because it’s been the #1 resource for me for nearly ten years. The first time I tried putting it into practice, I found that what had formerly taken me eight hours in the office to accomplish I was now getting done in two hours. Every day. It’s Brian Tracy’s tiny masterpiece of a book, Eat That Frog. (By the way, that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; if you click it, I might make some money.)
    In a nutshell, Eat That Frog is Tracy’s distillation of the strategies for productivity that he’s found most effective personally, boiled down to just a couple of pages each. Guys and gals, it’s a mere $11 new. Personally, I’m fine if you check it out from the library (librarians are horribly under-appreciated, so it’s great to support them) or find it free in a book giveaway (because that’s what I did). Either way, I just implemented two or three of the 21 major ideas in the book, and found I was saving six hours of work every day.
  2. How about keeping better organized and enjoying your work more? I’m something of a content management hobbyist, always trying new organizational schemes and tools. One of the best that I’ve found—and which is absolutely free—is Trello.com. After migrating my office record-keeping over to Trello, I found the next day that I was so enjoying using it for eight hours in the office that when I went home I put in five more hours of (uncompensated) office work—so much pleasure was it to use Trello. It’s helped me become insanely more productive in the office, and now I use it for home stuff as well: I have my anime blogging all planned out there, and there’s a special list called “Honeydew” to which my wife can email tasks for me without worrying that I’ll lose track of them. (Yay?)

Anywho, there are other ideas I might put forth, but these seem to me the simplest, the most “bang for your buck” as it were. If you’re not already familiar with them, I encourage you to check them out. (And if you have your own ways to be efficient, feel free to share it below.)

Thanks for reading!

6 thoughts on “Getting more done in less time”

  1. I am intrigued. Thanks for posting this! I have a hard time not running away from productivity ideas, because I’ve associated them with failure since early teenagehood (it took a while before simple to-do lists stopped scaring me). But I’ve found some things that help, so I now know success is possible, and I’m desperate to improve my productivity levels again. I’ll have to check out that book.

    I MIGHT check out Trello, because it sounds helpful. But I like to deal with the physical. It helps make the to-do items and the time reserved for them feel more real. That, and it’s nice to have even a small part of my work not be centered on my 13-inch laptop screen. So I have a planner that helps me map out what I do when. I’m thinking about getting a wall calendar and a small whiteboard for my home “office,” so I can easily reference the upcoming deadlines (calendar) and the status of various projects (whiteboard).

    Here’s the list of productivity tools I’ve found helpful—some of which I’m not using as well as I have in the past:

    An At-A-Glance brand planner that allows me to schedule everything from waking up to settling down for the night. They label it as an “Appointment Book,” which is great; I can schedule appointments for tasks. (Theoretically. I’ve let sleep interrupt compromise my morning tasks too often lately, which throws the whole day off.) Post-it notes supplement the note space provided, giving me space to write more to-dos and notes not bound to a specific time.
    StayFocusd: a free Chrome extension that will block me from what I’ve designated as distracting websites after a certain amount of time. I need to put Twitter back on the blocked list. I took it off for an important DM conversation and didn’t put it back on. I really, really like and recommend this extension. There are sassy pop-up windows when you try to give yourself more time on the blocked websites. And there’s a nuclear option for when you need to focus NOW, and enact measures right away, before your willpower leaves you. You can set the extension so it’s only active on work days.
    RescueTime (just the free part): Tells me how much of my device time I’ve spent on what and how productive I’ve been. Actually, I still need to download the app on my new phone. I forgot about that. Though I don’t think I want to know how much time I spend on the game BTS Superstar. -_-;;

    … just writing those out actually helped me.

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  3. Drafting and scheduling posts days or even weeks in advance will get you to where you need quickly! You don’t have to work EVERY day, you just gotta work hard one day, and let the schedule handle the rest.

    All of my posts last week were actually 2 weeks old in the draft before they were published.

    They really ease the workload by

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  4. Well…I’m always running out of time lol 😂😂So I will definitely see if I can read that book at some point in the future. Thanks for sharing this one 😊😊

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