HOWTO: Be more productive “With all the time you spend watching TV,” he tells me, “you could have written a novel by now.” Its hard to disagree with the sentiment writing a novel is undoubtedly a better use of time than watching TV but what about the hidden assumption? Such comments imply that time is “fungible” that time spent watching TV can just as easily be spent writing a novel. And sadly, thats just not the case. Time has various levels of quality. If Im walking to the subway station and Ive forgotten my notebook, then its pretty hard for me to write more than a couple paragraphs. And its tough to focus when you keep getting interrupted. Theres also a mental component: sometimes I feel happy and motivated and ready to work on something, but other times I feel so sad and tired I can only watch TV. If you want to be more productive then, you have to recognize this fact and deal with it. First, you have to make the best of each kind of time. And second, you have to try to make your time higher-quality. Spend time efficiently Choose good problems Life is short (or so Im told) so why waste it doing something dumb? Its easy to start working on something because its convenient, but you should always be questioning yourself about it. Is there something more important you can work on? Why dont you do that instead? Such questions are hard to face up to (eventually, if you follow this rule, youll have to ask yourself why youre not working on the most important problem in the world) but each little step makes you more productive. This isnt to say that all your time should be spent on the most important problem in the world. Mine certainly isnt (after all, Im writing this essay). But its definitely the standard against which I measure my life. Have a bunch of them Another common myth is that youll get more done if you pick one problem and focus on it exclusively. I find this is hardly ever true. Just this moment for example, Im trying to fix my posture, exercise some muscles, drink some fluids, clean off my desk, IM with my brother, and write this essay. Over the course the day, Ive worked on this essay, read a book, had some food, answered some email, chatted with friends, done some shopping, worked on a couple other essays, backed up my hard drive, and organized my book list. In the past week Ive worked on several different software projects, read several different books, studied a couple different programming languages, moved some of my stuff, and so on. Having a lot of different projects gives you work for different qualities of time. Plus, youll have other things to work on if you get stuck or bored (and that can give your mind time to unstick yourself). It also makes you more creative. Creativity comes from applying things you learn in other fields to the field you work in. If you have a bunch of different projects going in different fields, then you have many more ideas you can apply. Make a list Coming up with a bunch of different things to work on shouldnt be hard most people have tons of stuff they want to get done. But if you try to keep it all in your head it quickly gets overwhelming. The psychic pressure of having to remember all of it can make you crazy. The solution is again simple: write it down. Once you have a list of all the things you want to do, you can organize it by kind. For example, my list is programming, writing, thinking, errands, reading, listening, and watching (in that order). Most major projects involve a bunch of these different tasks. Writing this, for example, involves reading about other procrastination systems, thinking up new sections of the article, cleaning up sentences, emailing people with questions, and so on, all in addition to the actual work of writing the text. Each task can go under the appropriate section, so that you can do it when you have the right kind of time. Integrate the list with your life Once you have this list, the problem becomes remembering to look at it. And the best way to remember to look at it is to make looking at it what you would do anyway. For example, I keep a stack of books on my desk, with the ones Im currently reading on top. When I need a book to read, I just grab the top one off the stack. I do the same thing with TV/movies. Whenever I hear about a movie I should watch, I put it in a special folder on my computer. Now whenever I feel like watching TV, I just open up that folder. Ive also thought about some more intrusive ways of doing this. For example, a web page that pops up with a list of articles in my “to read” folder whenever I try to check some weblogs. Or maybe even a window that pops up with work suggestions occasionally for me to see when Im goofing off. Make your time higher quality Making the best use of the time you have can only get you so far. The much more important problem is making more higher quality time for yourself. Most peoples time is