False Memories

Your memory is not as reliable as you think it is. Even events that you vividly recall in your mind may never have happened. Here is an example.

I have two cousins, Josh and Sam. When they were little Sam sat on a cactus. It was a very painful experience and their mother told the story many times over the years. 25 years later, Josh thinks it happened to him. He can remember the pain, the extraction, everything–even though it didn’t happen to him. The experience was so imprinted on his mind that he has all these false memories of an event that never happened to him.

These types of memories are particularly troubling when it comes to eye witness accounts of crimes and other events where someone’s testimony could send an innocent person to prison. This is one of the reasons the police will try to keep witnesses from talking to each other before taking their testimonies. The power of suggestion is too strong and one witness can drastically affect another’s memory.

Even without witnesses clouding each other’s memories a single witness’s mind can fill in all kinds of unknown details. The policeman asks “What color was the thief’s hat?” and the witness’s mind thinks “This must be important, so I’ll concentrate very hard. I can’t seem to find any memories of the color, but maybe it was blue.” Then the brain tries it on for size and visualizes a blue hat. Now the witness has a mental image of the thief wearing a blue hat and informs the police that the thief was undoubtedly wearing a blue hat because they have a distinct mental picture of it. It is entirely possible that the thief was wearing no hat at all and the witness simply provided details in order to fill in the blanks.

This is why it is so important for people to be trained on how to ask questions without creating “facts” from pure imagination. It is kind of related to the horse that could “count” and do addition by pawing its hoof. It was later discovered that the horse was simply picking up very subtle clues from his owner about when to stop pawing. The owner wasn’t even aware of this.

One of the methods used to study false memories is to show people lists of words like:

• stove
• cook
• sink
• pan

Adults will tend to “fill in” other words. For example, they may remember seeing the word “kitchen” or “pot”. Some recent research has found that this doesn’t happen as much in children. Some people are hoping that these results will help boost how much credibility is given to the testimony of children in court cases. On the other hand, children can often be even more susceptible to suggestion through leading questions.

While the understanding that our strong memories may, in fact, be false is not very comforting, it can be a great help in dealing with others. When we realize that two people’s memories of a particular event maybe significantly different, it is easy to focus on the reality of the situation instead of the reality of the past. It is more productive to accept people’s perceptions and move on from there, rather than try to convince them that their strong mental image is incorrect.

If you are intersted in memory, you might enjoy our javascript tool for memorizing verbatim text and our  list of 10 memory resources.

Review of Shoeboxed.com

At times, the amount of paperwork that one person has do deal with can become extremely overwhelming. Many people find that a pile of unorganized paper can have drastic effects on the amount of work that they accomplish. For many of us, the motivation to organize the chaos is sometimes too much to even contemplate. However, an enterprising business has found a way to make the lives of the ordinary person much simpler.

Shoeboxed.com is an organization that provides a service that categorizes and organizes your receipts in a hassle-free manner. There are several levels of service that the company provides. One is the free version, in which you must scan in or direct your online order receipts into the account and organize them yourself. They also offer Basic, Classic or Express accounts.

The Basic account offers international service for customers with a relatively small volume of receipts to process for a price of $9.95 per month.

With this option, Shoeboxed will scan in and organize your receipts for you and shred them to protect your privacy.

The Classic account is their most popular account that is suited to one’s personal or business use at $19.95 per month. With this account type, Shoeboxed processes and organizes your receipts, scans them, and sends them back to you in an envelope.

The account level with the most options and fastest service processing is the Express account. For a fee of $59.95 per month, Shoeboxed provides even more efficient service to a client, with tasks being processed in 1 business day. The Express offers the same options and processing capacity as the Classic version, but the Express completes processing the task in a shorter amount of time.

Because so much of a person’s time can be taken up by frustration and disorganization, the service that this business provides would be very helpful to anyone that either does not possess that knack of organization or simply does not have the time to organize and keep track of their own receipts. The system is straightforward and fairly easy to understand, and also provides the option to export the scanned-in receipt information into Excel spreadsheets and other programs that work with large amounts of financial data. Someone who does not have a substantial number of receipts to keep track of would most likely not benefit from this program. However, for those that are searching for a way to keep control of their purchase records, this tool could become indispensable.

Links of Interest

This is a very large list of links to articles we found interesting here at Productivity501 on no topic in particular. If you like these you might want to add Productivity501 as a friend on StumbleUpon, Digg, and/or Twitter.

• Matt Goes Digital - Matthew Cornell
  Matt Cornell shares some tips on moving away from a paper based system. Particularly useful if you use a Mac and OS X.
• Organizing Your Desk and Paper-Ariane Benefit
  Some helpful advice for keeping you desk from becoming one massive pile of clutter. Also gives tips for using items you already have around the house to help you become more organized.
• Research That Reveals New Paths to Productivity-Penelope Trunk
  This article speaks of the newest research related to productivity, such as days of the week that we tend to be productive and other factors that affect our efficiency. A few tips from the article are to make exercise options readily available and to stop obsessing over each and every decision.
• 10 Useful Steps for Optimizing Ubiquitous Capture-Getting Things Done
  Advocates getting things done through using simple tools, using tools that are fun, and also finding tools that are inexpensive. This author also recommends creating your own shorthand and date-stamping all documents.
• Search Commands: Find What You Are Looking For in Word 2007-GTD Wannabe
  This page offers some helpful advice for anyone who is slightly stumped to where some commands are located in Word 2007. The article tells about a new program that is specially designed to help users find things that are switched around from the locations on previous versions of Word.
• Linked In and Productivity-Productivity in Context
  This article tells how using LinkedIn can improve your productivity while searching for a job. This resource also highlights just how critical a good list of references can be in finding a new job.
• The Morning Tea Break: Making Better People Out of Nurses-LifeDev
  Some interesting insight as to how a short break during shifts can help nurses be more productive. This study also shows an improvement in morale as a result of these breaks.
• 10 Steps in Overcoming Clutter-Life Lists
  This article offers some helpful advice for reducing clutter in your home and office and, as a result, reducing stress in the process. Some suggestions include minimizing unnecessary belongings, carefully considering purchases and creating a recycling center.
• My Top Three Habits for an Organized Office-My Bad Habits
  This article gives three highly useful tips for keeping an organized office. One of these tips is to throw anything that might become just more clutter, away.
• Speeding Your Email-WOWNDADI
  Tells how you can eliminate any unnecessary messages that are cluttering up your inbox. The author recommends deleting irrelevant messages right away and separating actionable emails from unactionable ones.
• I’m Still Here I Promise-Sam I Am
  This article offers some helpful advice on how to keep your stress level down when you seem to be working through a mountain of different tasks. One idea that the author mentions is to keep your immediate surroundings orderly.
• A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words With Evernote-Stress-Free Productivity
  This site offers tips for stress-free productivity. In this particular article, the author explains how useful Evernote Beta can be in a business setting.
• 7 Ways to Increase Productivity…By Moving Stuff-Simple Productivity Blog
  Helpful tips on how to help simplify your life and increase productivity by simply moving things to different stations within your home or office. This helps organize things in an effective way.
• 5 Minute Calendar-Success Begins Today
  This site offers some practical and useful ideas for creating a calendar that you can carry with you on the run. This guide takes you through the steps to create a convenient 5 Minute Calendar.
• What Causes Clutter in Your Life?-Unclutterer
  This page talks about the different things in your life that may result in an increase of clutter in your office or home. Some of these causes include physical exhaustion, emotional avoidance and lack of time.
• Got Supplements?-World Fitness Network
  Offers some good advice on which dietary supplements are beneficial to take, and which supplements you might need to take, if any. The author also discusses the elements needed in a healthy diet.
• Turn Your Computer into a Fax Machine-Apace of Change
  This article explains how to use your PC as a means to fax documents to businesses that still use that medium of communication. This author guides you through the steps to send a PDF or other file to a fax machine.
• Productivity Boosters-Organized Thoughts
  Gives a few simple and easy steps to increasing your productivity. Some of these steps are getting an adequate amount of sleep, drinking plenty of water and eating healthily.
• Engage: Get Moving-David Zinger
  Explains how exercise is so beneficial to us mentally. He recommends that a person get up and moving every hour or 90 minutes.
• 5 Ways to Market Your Business for Little or No Money-Drew McClellan
  This article outlines several different ways to market your business without hurting your bank account. The author gives a few tips, such as hanging out at places where you can interact with potential customers.
• Wannabe Clutter-Ellen Hankes
  Talks about a phenomenon that most of us, if not all have experience with: wannabe clutter. This clutter is a result of projects that we have lost interest in, and the tools for that project now are nothing more than items that collect dust.
• How Do You Introduce Yourself?-Escape from Cubicle Nation
  A guide on how to introduce yourself in a business setting. One of the topics discussed is how to meet potential angel investors that might be interested in supporting your business venture.
• How to Deal With Rising Food Prices-Fiscal Musings
  This page offers some helpful advice on how to save, even with food prices rising to new heights. Making changes in the quantity and type of the food you buy could have a positive impact on your grocery bill.
• Make A Productive Visit to Your Local Library-Productivity 101
  Tells how enjoyable and productive it can be to spend an afternoon at your local library. The author discusses the benefits of a library trip being refreshing, inexpensive and informative.
• 10 Steps to More Productive Feed Reading-GearFire
  This page offers some tips to make it easier for a person to keep items in a feed reader organized and clutter-free. It also discusses the importance of using a good feed reader.
• The Manager’s Most Useful Tool-Andrew Rondeau
  This article offers some insight as to what a manager’s priorities are or can be. It examines the way that managers interact with the employees under them, and the results of that interaction.
• Eight Tips for Making Yourself Happier In the Next Hour-The Happiness Project
  Provides some insight as to how a person can boost his or her energy level, reduce stress and get nagging tasks out of the way. This article would be a helpful resource for anyone that is struggling with a lengthy to-do list.
• Black Light: Dealing With Criticism-InMyHeels.com
  This article is a good resource for anyone who is dealing with heavy criticism in the workplace. It explains the difference between positive and negative criticism and how to discern the two.
• Organize Your Life Online With SnapPages-jeetblog
  Tells how SnapPages can have a big impact on a person’s life through the tools it provides for organization. SnapPages allows people to keep track of their photos and calendars.
• How to Keep Your Idea File Alive and Useful-Joel Falconer
  This article would be a helpful resource for anyone that is constantly coming up with good ideas and then forgetting them. The offer recommends using an “idea file” to store these thoughts before they are lost.
• Next Actions 101-Rephrase Dormant Tasks to Spur Action-Andrew Flusche
  This article would be a helpful resource for anyone that has started a big project and feels “stuck” in the middle of it. The author offers some advice for re-invigorating these dormant projects.
• Change Your Mindset to Improve Your Productivity-Donald Latumahina
  Offers some tips as to how an improved mindset can benefit someone attempting to use productivity techniques. The author explains how strongly our mindset affects our level of productivity.
• Give Me 5 Minutes and I’ll Make You a Faster Reader-Miguel Pineiro
  This article provides some resources that would be helpful to anyone that needs a way to read a large amount of material consistently in a very short amount of time.The author also mentions that this method would be very useful for students.
• 10 Financial Tips for New Grads-My Dollar Plan
  This article provides some tips for new graduates on how to conserve money and invest wisely. The author recommends getting health insurance immediately, and starting a 401K account for retirement.
• Saving Time With Index Cards and a Timer-Nate’s Productivity Tips
  This article explains how using note cards for your to-do list can improve your efficiency and productivity. The author also mentions using a stopwatch to improve efficiency.
• Ideal Client Mix-Nick Rice
  Tells how essential effective marketing is to a small business. The author discusses the effects that a good marketing strategy can have on a small business’s performance.
• The Farmer’s Market in Los Angeles Can Make You More Productive-Organizing LA Blog
  This article speaks a bit about how much time malls cause a person to waste in just one day. Because malls generally attempt to cause customers to stay in the building for as long as possible, they cause customers to lose valuable minutes.
• Excel Keyboard Shortcuts-Practical Productivity
  This article offers some tips for completing documents in Excel quickly. This can be accomplished by simply learning the shortcuts listed in the article.
• Simplicity, Complexity and Productivity-Productive Flourishing
  Explains why spending time developing and implementing your own productivity system can ultimately have time-saving results. The author mentions that, though the implementation of this system may seem to be a waste of time, it will make a person’s life much simpler in the long run.
• How to Get Things Done Using the “Prioritizer”-Steve Bannister
  Would be a good guide for anyone that is looking for an efficient way to prioritize their tasks. This author provides some resources that will help you reach your goals.
• How to Overcome the #1 Fear: Public Speaking-David B. Bohl
  This article offers some tips for overcoming a fear of public speaking. Some of the recommendations include lots of practice, selecting a topic that you would be able to speak about well, and to simply be yourself.
• 10 More Work At Home Ideas You Can Do In Your Fuzzy Bunny Slippers-Sparkplugging.com
  This article clarifies and debunks the myth that those who work at home are not as motivated or as hard working as any other employee. The author states that, often, those who work from home work more hours than other employees.
• How to Win Hours Back Every Day: A Presentation and Resource Guide-Technotheory.com
  This article provides resources for those wanting to save time using computer software. The author lists many different links to information about these programs that will help you make the most of the time that you have.
• Quiet Moments That Boost Productivity-The Daily Saint.com
  This article speaks about the importance of setting aside quiet time that will boost your productivity. The author provides some tips for making the most of the time that you have set aside.
• How To Make Your Own Laundry Detergent and Save Big Money-The Simple Dollar
  Some neat ideas about saving money by making your own laundry detergent. The cost of ingredients allows the cost spent per load of laundry to be greatly reduced from that of detergents bought from a store.
• Can You Have Too Much Insurance?-The Wisdom Journal
  This article discusses the importance of having adequate insurance coverage. Statistics show that a person is often at much more of a risk for becoming disabled than that person may realize.
• The Difference Between Phone and Email Interviews-thursdaybram.com
  Discusses the benefits of interviews done through email rather than in person or over the phone. The author lists advantages and disadvantages of each of these types of interviews by comparing and contrasting them.
• No More Stress-Varsity Blah
  This article offers some helpful advice for those that want to find practical ways to deal with stressful situations. The author recommends meditation, relaxation and expression as the keys to ridding your life of stress.

Poisoning Her Husband Slowly

There once was a woman who hated her husband. She decided to kill him. After contemplating a direct murder, she couldn’t come up with any plan that seemed unlikely to result in her getting caught. Finally, she settled on poisoning him with a bad diet. She figured no one would suspect her if he died from eating a typical American unhealthy food.

To accomplish her evil intent she started cooking for him. She made him all kinds of fried fatty foods. She fed him donuts and always encouraged him to eat an extra large helping of desert. The husband of course thought he was in heaven as his wife tried to slowly kill him. In the end they worked things out and she stopped trying to kill him. (To the best of my knowledge this is a true story, but I can’t remember the source.)

What you eat is directly tied to the way you function. It determines how well you mind works. It determines how much energy your body has. It can even determine how much sleep you need.

Take a look at your diet and make sure you aren’t eating consistently from the deadly menu the woman was trying to use to poison her husband.

5 Tips for Dealing with Mail

Everyone gets mail. It can consume a lot of your time, effort and storage space to process and store. Here are 5 tips to help you manage your incoming mail.

1. Open your mail over a trash can.
   This simple tip can help make sure that any mail that doesn’t belong in your house gets taken back out. If you have a trash can outside, that may be an even better place to open it. This is a particularly good way to make sure that the envelopes and generic mailings don’t clutter up your work area.
2. Get off the lists.
   If a company has you on their mailing list, but you don’t want to receive anything else from them, simply ask to be taken off. It is better for the company, better for the environment, and will save you time in the long run.
3. Be careful what you do with personal information.
   Back to the idea of opening the mail over the trash: Do not simply throw away mail that has personal information on it. Credit card applications shouldn’t just be trashed, they need to be shredded or otherwise destroyed. Think in terms of “What would someone be able to do if they had this information?” Even if it seems harmless, think about what they could do if they put that information together with the other information you throw out over the course of a month.
4. Throw away extra sheets of paper.
   Next time you get a bank statement in the mail, look at how much you don’t really need. Usually there is a single page with the important info for your records, a page of advertising, a second page that contains not useful information, and sometimes even more pieces of paper that are useless to you. If you can throw away (or shred) those extra sheets before you even try to process your mail, it will save you time and helps make sure you aren’t storing useless information.
5. Online statements.
   It doesn’t work for everyone, but consider going to online statements. Most places don’t have a good infrastructure for sending you statements by email, so it might take more time than it is worth to log in to a bunch of different websites. But if most of your mail comes from one place, it might be worth considering for that one place.

Reader Question - Smarter People

What makes some people smarter than others?

How smart someone is can be measured in many different ways. The most common standard way of measuring intelligence is an IQ test. If you have an IQ of 100 then you are a completely average person. If you IQ is above 100 you are above average.

A raw IQ score measures on type of intelligence. However there are many people with modest IQs who have amassed an extremely large amount of knowledge. This pool of knowledge makes them extremely intelligent. Often they will outperform someone with a higher IQ simply because they know so much.

In theory, there is very little you can do to improve your raw IQ. However you can very easily expand your knowledge through study and training. A college education is a great way to improve your knowledge, but if you truly want to increase your intelligence, it needs to be something you work on your entire life.

Here are some ideas for increasing your intelligence:

• Become an avid reader. Spend time learning about new things by reading books, magazines, and journals. Be sure to cover a wide variety of subjects and give yourself a chance to discover areas where you don’t initially have a lot of interest.
• Take some classes. Local colleges and distance education programs from major universities offer a wide array of study options. There should be something to fit almost any schedule.
• Write. There are few things that help you organize and clarify your thoughts like writing.

Articles on Sleep

Sleep is one of those little things we often overlook that can make or break our productivity. Here are 10 great articles with tips and thoughts on how to get the most out of your sleep. If you know of any other great articles on sleep, please add them in the comments.

• Good Sleep, Good Learning, Good Life-Dr. Pitor Wozniak
  Although many Western civilizations may consider the traditional “siesta” of the Latin American countries to be out-dated, research shows that these short naps are rich in NREM sleep, and improve alertness during the day. Napping may also provide relief from severe sleep deprivation, and also may play a significant role in memory consolidation.
• Sleep’s Healing Properties-William Collinge, M. P. H., P.h.D.
  In today’s busy world, it is relatively easy to overlook one of the simplest ways to improve your health. Though there are many expensive medicines and other products that may be good for your health, sleep is effective, as well as free! Actions such as going to sleep by 10 o’clock at night and reducing stimulants have been found to fight fatigue and help restore health.
• Too Much Sleep is as Dangerous as Too Little: Study-CBC News
  A British scientific team has discovered that too much sleep may cause serious health problems. A consistent amount of seven hours of sleep per night has been found to be the optimal amount of rest for an average person. Researchers also discovered that too little sleep results in severe health issues such as cardiovascular disease.
• Lack of Sleep’s Effects on Learning, Undoes Rejuvenating Effects on the Brain-Medical News Today
  Scientists have found that loss of sleep has a very negative effect on spatial learning, such as remembering how to find a new location. These scientists also suggest that learning stimulates and helps the brain by causing it to produce new cells, a process called neurogenesis. On the other hand, scientists also found that sleep deprived individuals experience adverse effects to their memories.
• Adolescents and Sleep-Sarah Spinks
  Researchers have discovered that an internal “biological clock” could explain the reasons why the sleep patterns of teens seem to differ from those of the average adult. The biological clock could provide an explanation for the phenomenon of why exhausted travelers cannot sleep, or perhaps why older people have so much trouble with sleeping soundly.
• Sleep and Stress: Ideas and Tips-Lynne Smiley, P.h.D.
  Dr. Lynne Smiley provides some helpful tips for eliminating stress in order to allow a person to sleep more soundly. A few of these tips include keeping a pen and paper by your bed so you can write down things that you think of at night, setting aside a specific block of the day for your “worry time”, and cutting down on caffeine consumption during the evening hours.
• 28 Ways to Prevent Allergy Sleep Loss-Ellen Michaud and Julie Bain
  Ellen Michaud and Julie Bain list many different ways to prevent loss of sleep caused by allergies. Your body’s automatic immunological responses to an allergic reaction affect your patterns of sleep. A few ways to minimize the effects of allergies on your sleep are to wash away dust and mold in your home, avoid over-the-counter decongestants, and exercise after 10 o’clock in the morning.
• Allergies Keeping You Awake?-WebMD
  Doctors have found some simple precautions to help a person find relief from allergies while sleeping. Several of these suggestions are purchasing hypoallergenic pillows and bedding, vacuuming carpets and furniture regularly and changing the water in your humidifier on a regular basis.
• Sleeping Well as We Age-Helpguide.org
  Many individuals have heard that with age comes insomnia; however, this is not necessarily true. Often, poor sleep habits, medications and untreated sleep disorders are at fault for loss of sleep as we age. The symptoms that are frequently attributed to age may very well be caused by something that can be altered.
• Sleep: It’s About Time-Medicine.net
  There are many everyday practices that a person can do to ensure a good night’s rest. These tips are an effective way to modify your lifestyle to improve your quality of sleep and lessen fatigue. A few of these tips are to stick to a sleep schedule, exercise 5-6 hours before bedtime, avoid large meals late at night, and to have the correct sunlight exposure.

Reader Question - Guns and Safety Deposit Boxes

Can I keep a gun in a safety deposit box?

I talked with someone in the safety deposit department of a large national bank in Kansas City and they said it was not allowed. Even if it was, there is the issue of taking a gun into the bank in the first place. Many banks have security devices behind the scenes that are watching for these types of things. The individual I spoke with couldn’t tell me about the bank’s security system, but he made it clear that bringing a gun into a bank would not be a very wise thing to do–even if you were just going to put it in the safety deposit box.

I also talked to the VP at a small bank in Oklahoma. He said it wouldn’t be a problem at his bank if they knew you well. At least one of his customers keeps antique guns there.

The policy may vary from bank to bank and from state to state. It is probably wise to ask before you try to put a gun in the box.

On Fridays we publish questions from our readers. If you have a question you’d like to see answer here, please send it to questions@productivity501.com.

Changes at Productivity501

We’ve made a lot of changes to Productivity501’s look over the past week and I wanted to point out some of the changes. If you have any suggestions please post them in the comments. Since I haven’t had a single comment about the new look, I’ve been worried that either everyone hates it or all of my readers are strictly using RSS.

New Theme

For those of you who only read Productivity501 in a feed reader or email, be sure to checkout our new look. The site has been redesigned in a way that will hopefully make it more usable and a little better looking. I’m still tweaking some things to try to make it a bit more user friendly.

Main Page

One of the biggest changes we’ve made is to the front page. In the past the front page listed the full text of the last 10 or 20 posts. With the new site it highlights various posts and makes much more use of pictures.

The idea behind the change is to design the front page for first time visitors to try to engage them in the content. With the old site if the first post or two didn’t capture their attention it was easy to move on to something else. The new front page will hopefully show them something of interest by presenting more linked articles at once.

Blog Page

Since the main page is designed to appeal more to the first time visitors, we needed an easy way for regular readers to scan through the site and see if there is anything new. This is the function of the Blog section. It lists all of the posts just like the front page use to. You can go back to previous posts using the navigation at the bottom of the page. This page will also show some content that doesn’t show up on the front of the site.

Asides

When I started Productivity501, my goal was to create a site that was primarily articles. This was a little bit in reaction to some of the blogs I had seen that mainly consisted of links to other content on the web. That is where the 501 came from. I wanted it to be a “graduate” blog–a site that is actually producing content instead of just quoting others. Over the years I’ve avoided posting short posts with links that would be useful to readers because of this focus.

I think I’ve come up with a good compromise. We now have two types of posts. Regular posts behave just like they always have before. Asides are short posts without a title that make it easy to ad short notes or links to things that might be useful to readers.

This change works out well with the theme change. Normal posts require several photos attached to them to make things show up on the front page correctly. Asides don’t show up on the front page, so they don’t require these extra images. I’m hoping to use these types of posts to point readers to useful content, tools, and news.

Currently the asides still show up normally in the RSS feed and email subscriptions.  Since the way these are presented is determined outside of Productivity501 it doesn’t look like there is a way to style them any differently.

Behind the scenes

Productivity501 has also switched to a different server that will give us a little more flexibility under heavy loads and simplifies a lot of the server maintenance. In the past we’ve been hosted on rented servers. At the end of the year we purchased our own dedicated machine and the site is now fulling running on that.

We’ve also upgraded to the newest version of Wordpress. If you have a Wordpress site, 2.5 is well worth the effort of upgrading. There are a lot of little time savers (like being able to upload more than one picture at a time). It also helps keep you out of trouble if you have multiple users by warning you if you are trying edit a post that someone else is editing. I’ve been working with my assistant on adding photos to posts and this feature has kept us from overwriting each other’s work.

Group Interview - Distraction Free Internet

The internet can help your productivity, but it can also be a distraction. How do you obtain the benefits while avoiding the downsides?.

I finally had to do two things that are working for me:

1. In the Bookmark Bar, I narrowed the categories to only those related to business.
2. I allow myself a set amount of time (20 minutes) to check the newsfeeds and other favorite sites for 20 minutes maximum 4 times during the day. On minute 21, I close the browser window.That means I potentially “lose” 1:20 minutes of work. As a result of the routine, it never amounts to that much.

Steve Roesler from All Things Workplace (rss)

Steve’s suggestion to allow a certain amount of time for “unproductive” browsing is a good one. It is easier to stay focuses if you’ve already used up your allocated browsing time, than if you’ve just decided you aren’t going to do any browsing at all.

Assign your e-mail/internet to a specific time during your workday. If you train yourself to only answer e-mail/check the internet at certain times, it prevents random surfing when you need to do work.
Scott H Young from ScottHYoung.com (rss)

This can be a very useful practice as well. You can schedule your web browsing for times of day when you aren’t at your peak productivity anyway. For example, right after lunch.

I track my time using the web-based timers we built into Intervals.Having done this for a while, I know how many hours I should have tracked by the end of the day. If I check my timesheet midday and see only 3 hours tracked, I know I lost an hour to distractions and need to focus more on work. There are so many distractions out there, it really helps to quantify my time each day. My coworkers track their time using Intervals, too, so there is a competitive feeling in the air that helps us stay focused. I’m going to work better knowing that we’ll go over everyone’s timesheets in our weekly meeting. The key here is that I’ve had to discipline myself to focus on work and ignore distractions. I did it using timers, but it doesn’t matter what you use as long as you can learn to stay focused.
John Reeve from Intervals find time (rss)

Peer pressure is a powerful motivator.

The internet is no different from any other tool, i.e. you can make any tool be a distraction! The way I obtain benefits while avoiding the downside is to make sure I know what I have to do for work. I chunk my work into small pieces, so I always have a way to make progress.
Johanna Rothman from Managing Products Development (rss)

Personally I find I can stay more focused when I feel like I’m making, small but continuous progress. When I’m completing a bunch of smaller tasks in regular intervals, it is a lot easier to stay focused and “in the zone” than when I’m working on a large project where I don’t feel like I’ve made any progress for the last 4 hours.

First of all I only use websites and online applications that will provide value and help me achieve my objectives. If you signup to every new social site or web application that is launched you will end up wasting a lot of time.Secondly, focus on one thing at a time. If you are writing something it would be a good idea to turn off your IM client, for instance.
Daniel Scocco from Daily Bits (rss)

I’m generally pretty careful what social networking tools I invest time in. I’ve been amazed at how many friends I have who sign up for every new application that comes out (and then invite me). I constantly wonder how they have time to get anything else done.

It’s a constant struggle. One of the ways that I’ve found to curb distractions is to set time limits and schedules. For example, I check my RSS feed reader twice a day, for 15 minutes each time. I start by
reading the blogs that are of highest priority to me and then comb through the others as time permits. When the 15 minutes have passed, I select “mark all as read” and close down the reader.
Erin PJDoland from Unclutterer (rss)

This is a great strategy for dealing with RSS feeds. If you practice this, you probably won’t miss anything important, but you’ll keep your news reader from becoming a huge time sink. I like having my reader setup so I can read it from my Blackberry. That way I can catch up on feeds while I wait for appointments, etc.

Well, I try to limit extra Internet “white noise” as much as possible. I pull this off by limiting my IM, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and any other outside chatter that puts the brakes on my productivity. Also, I think overly complicated productivity systems can get in the way as well. Constantly trying and “tweaking” your productivity setup can be a huge time sink and always keeps you looking for the next best thing. I try to combat this by switching or changing my productivity system only when something is really not needing my needs. Otherwise, I try to stick it out.
Glen Stansberry from LifeDev (rss)

A lot of the value of a productivity system comes from having a system–not having a superior system. If you invest 30 hours in finding the perfect notebook to write your tasks, it is unlikely that you’ll gain those hours back over just using typing paper. It is easy to feel like you are becoming more productive because you are working on your system, but sometimes it is just a form of procrastination.

Next Page »