What are your productivity secrets? My friend Ben Yoskovitz started a group writing project called “The Ultimate Guide to Productivity”, with the objective of exploring that question and sharing the results.
While there are many facets of productivity I wanted to answer the questions focusing on blogging specifically. In order to become more productive as a blogger you need to understand where you are creating value on your blog. Some people will create value through the design, others through the networking.
The vast majority, however, will create value through the content. That is, readers are coming to your blog because they want to absorb the information that you publish there; because they can use that information. The question then becomes: “How can we produce more original and quality content?”
Unplug!
Personally I become very productive when I unplug. That is, when I close Firefox, Email client, instant messaging software and anything else that might distract my mind. The funny thing is that I discovered that casually.
I live in a small town near Sao Paulo, in Brazil. While Sao Paulo is a really big city (5th biggest in the World with a population of 20 millions), my city counts just over 100,000 people. As you can imagine there are not many Internet service providers here, and I was forced to grab a radio-based connection that is not quite reliable.
Every once in a while the service just dies, and the downtime can last up to a couple of hours. Guess what, on those occasions I would say to myself: “Alright, there is nothing else you can do except to open the word processor and start writing.”
Interestingly I produced some of my best articles when I could not access the Internet. So that is my productivity tip: unplug from distractions when you need to get some work done.
For the sake of the writing project I am tagging Maki, JohnTP, Everton, Collis and Liz! What about you, what are your productivity secrets?
About Daniel
Daniel Scocco is a programmer and entrepreneur located in São Paulo, Brazil. His first company, Online Profits, builds and manages websites in different niches. His second company, Kubic, specializes in developing mobile apps for the iOS and Android platforms.
I always have my inbox opened in a tab while surfing. When I write a blog post, I close the tab. If an email arrives, I tend to check it immediately and this takes me away from my ideas.
When I’m working I have to have something on in the background, the radio or even a dvd. Sitting in silence just doesn’t work for me.
On the other hand, I think I do need to unplug once in a while, at least from email and firefox as they are both easy distractions.
My work is mainly working on/developing websites rather than writing for my blog, so being disconnected completely wouldn’t be very productive.
when i try to think like search engines…i mean how SE will see my post ..productivity increases, pretty evil though :). But at the end of the day it works..
Hi Daniel
The question is actually the theme of blogging,
`How can we produce more original and quality content?
Nowadays I have seen it on all blogs, everybody is trying to improve blogging as a whole. I think it is a great change.
I started the “Be Original” project a long time ago and with more than 20 participants till now I have started compiling the “101 Ways to create original blog posts.”
I am sure you and the readers here will love it if they loved this post.
Amanda, I think the productivity issue is very personal. There are people that can work or study while listening to music (some even need the music). I am quite the opposite, I need to have absolute silence to be productive.
I talk to people when I post, I usually get ideas or complain through out the whole process. sometimes i’m plain lazy like that
So true. I’m sitting here trying to catch up on my blog and I keep getting distracted with some “bright idea” I have and there I go off to search the web. I’d better unplug for the afternoon and see if I can get anything done at all.
You are very right , my thoughts ofen come to my head when I am on the road ,and I will write it down ,then do it.
That is a good and creative one. I guess the “state of the mind” can have an impact on your productivity and on the quality of the work.
Cool. Agree to it, I always close my IM client and music etc when writing a post … friends online and writing a post is a big mess.
How about adding this from my side –
Blog with fresh mind … make your mind a bit happy, and cool. I watch some funny clips on yYoutube before writing any article.
🙂