Archive for the ‘productivity’ tag
Better Everyday – get things done, one success a day – I had many today
Where will you succeed today?
My school’s motto was “Better Everyday“. I kept screaming “Better Everyday, Better Everyday” during Friday morning school assemblies for over six years, but did not really understand what it meant.
I have been overwhelmed with work (happens every 3 months, it’s been a pattern, but more about it some other day). And while I was reflecting on this pile of work, I realized I did get at least one solid item off my list almost every day. But I was stressed as that list kept getting longer.
What if I focused on my successes, rather than failures? What if I could succeed in just one thing everyday?
I reviewed the work I did get done last week and felt very happy. That’s when I twitted:
Nothing motivates more than success. Where will you succeed today?
I wrote it, was proud and went to sleep. But when I booted up my MacBook this morning, I noticed it again.
And I stopped. Thought about where do I want to succeed today. Made a mental note of it. And began working.
This is how my day went:
- By 10.30, I had one client happy. Work was moving slowly on that project, but today we nailed it.
- Around 11.30, I had another client happy. Solved an annoying bug within minutes and the client said “Wahoo! That’s brilliant!”
- One major customer called before noon, complaining about a mail server issue. I talked to my team and gave an update in an hour. By the end of our day, we had a good enough solution in place.
- Shown stick to a project team in our standup meeting at noon. They completed pending work before signing out.
- Worked on cleaning up some malformed XML files in afternoon. This project was facing lot of technical challenges. But I had a working prototype ready at 6.45pm when I left work.
- And I even fixed an annoying bug in PlannerX just before I started this post.
Amazing how much happened by focusing on where I want to succeed today.
And I could say:
Satisfying day. Progress on projects. Made 5 customers happy!
Incremental improvements carried out daily can make transform your life in three months. Focusing on small successes can bring you big victories. I understand that’s what our school wanted us to learn from “Better Everyday”.
Did you get better today?
What are you going to succeed at tomorrow?
Thunderbird Productivity Tip: Folder Views
I was surprised when I discovered this feature! It helped me focus on relevant emails in Thunderbird. All I had to do, was click on two arrows! Ok, let me get to the point!
Thunderbird shows All Folders by default. But there are two arrows next to “All Folders” that allow you to navigate between All, Recent, Favorite and Unread folders. Keeping my view to show only Recent folders reduces a lot of eyeball movement and helps me stay focused! Here’s the “before and after” view of my folders!
BTW, another tip! Use Vertical View Layout for message display. The three pane view with folders on left, message list in center and message content on right. This works super especially in wide screens.
Bad Habits Are Limiting Your Productivity, Kill Them
First, some introspection!
How was the last month for you? What are your achievements? What are the things you wanted to complete, but did not?
And if you could redo yesterday, how would you work? If you could really relive yesterday, how would you start your day? What all actions would you take? What would you not do?
More than 80% of us would like to be more productive, more expressed and more satisfied if they could relive yesterday. Why did we not live yesterday like that than? It’s not that we couldn’t do it. It’s not a question of ability, it’s a question of going beyond the usual.
You may know that we have a Monthly Review Meeting in Magnet. Different teams meet once a month to review the last month, share the learnings and to create something for the month ahead. We started with these introspective questions this time.
