The one productivity tip I am thankful for
To all of the US readers – Happy Thanksgiving. It got me thinking a bit about my business and things that I am thankful for. I am definitely thankful for a lot of things – my awesome clients, the friends I’ve made through sites like twitter, the inspiration I find in the guys who’ve paved the way before me in the wordpress theme market, ect. But todays article is going to touch on a specific productivity tip I am thankful for. I hope you enjoy and find some use for it.
Tracking my time – with a moleskine notebook
There are a vast amount of online time tracking tools out there and they all serve a great purpose, but for my own personal productivity I have found that using my moleskine notebook is the best possible solution for time tracking and kicking ass during my work hours. I don’t need to track hours and bill clients for them (I charge on a per project basis – I’ll write more on this in another post), but I do need to ensure that I’m focused on the work at hand and don’t get side tracked.
By writing the beginning time in my moleskine (every quarter hour – if I am ready at 8:06, I wait until 8:15) and then work as quickly as possible on the tasks I have in front of me. If I need to stop for some reason, I do it on the quarter hour. If I get done with the project beforehand, I round up just to ensure that next time I try to go faster and get the job done quicker.
Why a moleskine and not an online time tracker?
I am not sure actually. I tried them all and just felt comfortable with the moleskine notebook. The feeling of writing something down just makes me remember back in school when I had to jot down a note for homework or something to do the following day – it just feels normal to me.
The goal of it all is to get the work done in the quickest amount of time and once I write that starting time down, nothing gets in my way. It’s almost like a game I play with myself every day to see if I can beat yesterdays score. It may sound a bit weird, but it works.
What productivity tip(s) are you thankful for?
